Chapter 22: Loyally Disloyal

HAYLEY

Hayley looked up to see people running past Frankie. Behind them, she heard the sound of engines. The guys around the SUVs opened fire, but the bikers were quick and got away.

~BOOM!~ Another loud explosion caused all the guys to throw themselves to the ground. Frankie covered Hayley, but she could still look up and see the warehouse in flames. Her heart dropped when she realized Luca wasn’t with them.

“Luca!” she whispered, and she pushed Frankie off her and ran toward the burning building.

“Hayley!” Frankie ran up behind her, trying to catch her, but she’d already stopped of her own accord.

Three men were walking calmly out of the smoke.

Ric was smiling as he lit a cigarette. Nic looked stressed but had a little smile on his face. But it was the gorgeous man in the middle—walking with purpose and total calm—that captured her gaze.

“Luca!” she cried as she ran toward him, and this time she didn’t stop until she slammed into him; he hoisted her up, and her legs were wrapped around him.

LUCA

Holding his glass of whiskey to his forehead, Luca kept his eyes focused on the screens—particularly the one showing Hayley.

The cuts and bruises didn’t hurt, yet he felt pain. It had been a long night.

She stirred in his bed, and he huffed angrily. He just couldn’t shake the image of her holding a gun to her own head or the image of Borroni touching her.

“Boss.” Frankie entered the room.

He and Nic had been out searching for answers all night.

“What do we know?” Luca asked as Frankie took the chair beside him. He had to find the people who’d betrayed him—he wanted blood.

“We have one of the rats at the lockup,” Frankie said, an evil glint in his eyes. “Nic has made him sing like Pavarotti.”

Luca nodded and took a sip of the brown liquor, then looked back at his friend. “Who?” He poured more whiskey for himself after pouring a glass for Frankie.

“One of our new drivers: Nate.”

Luca had heard the name, but it took a minute to place him.

Nate was once just a runner passing cash between the Marcellos and the dealers, but Frankie had taken a particular interest in the boy and gotten him trained as a driver. This pissed Luca off.

The boy came from nothing. He’d been welcomed into the family and offered a salary that couldn’t be beat. Yet he’d betrayed the family and nearly gotten Hayley killed.

“He gave us another name: the waiter from the restaurant—Joseph. He helped.” Frankie took a sip of the whiskey. “Ric and Dom have gone to pick him up.

“And that’s not the best bit. Nate told us Borroni has a rat among us, an informant. He knew where you would be, and he knew where Hayley would be: Jonas Leone.”

Luca’s stomach dropped when he heard the name. Jonas had been in the family for over two years, and at one stage, Luca thought he’d join the ranks of his close confidants, like Frankie and Nic.

But when he and his wife had a child last year, he’d distanced himself from the family to help her out.

His was a bigger betrayal than Nate’s or the waiter’s.

“According to Nate, Borroni wanted you and the girl in this photo.” Frankie held out a piece of paper.

Luca took it and instantly recognized it as one of the photos that was sent to him the night after the 1920s party. It was the one where he and Hayley had left the casino together, when she was safe in his arms.

“Before Nate picked you up to take you to the restaurant,” Frankie continued, “Jonas took your phone and replaced it with a fake and took all your tracking devices.

“They figured, correctly, that by the time you noticed, you’d be in Borroni’s hands. Then Nate went to the restaurant to pick up Hayley. But the ~truly~ best bit is, Jonas has no clue that we know.”

Frankie was smiling like the Cheshire Cat, which pissed Luca off. There was no best bit—Hayley had nearly died!

“Get on with it, Frankie, or I’ll cheer myself up by shooting you,” Luca warned.

Frankie laughed. “That won’t make you happy.”

Luca sighed. He was right. Maybe it would be for like half a second—a stress reliever—but he’d regret it afterward. Possibly. If anything, he’d be annoyed that Frankie bled on his nice floors.

“But what ~would~ make you happy is this.” Frankie leaned over and pressed a couple of keys on the keyboard. The basement, where Luca had created a bar-type man cave, appeared on the screen.

Jonas Leone was sitting on a barstool, sipping a beer.

***

Luca pulled up a barstool next to Jonas, and Frankie stood on his other side. Jonas just puffed on his cigarette and nodded at Luca.

“Hey, Boss, how’s Hayley?”

Luca wanted to ram the cigarette down the bastard’s throat.

“She’ll live. Shame I can’t say the same about you.” Ignoring the shocked look on Jonas’s face, Luca pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it.

Jonas tried to rise from his seat, but Frankie pushed his shoulder down so he remained sitting.

Luca didn’t look at Jonas, just at his cigarette or the liquor bottles along the back of the bar.

“I remember the day each of my men came to me,” Luca said, taking a drag from the cigarette. “I remember the reasons why they joined, and I remember the vows of silence and loyalty to the Marcello name.”

He was starting to sound just like his father, but what could he do?

“I like to think I take care of my men. I like to think the motto, ‘When you’re good to the family, the family is good to you,’ is true.

“Do you agree, Frankie?” Luca asked his friend, who still stood with his hand firmly on the rat’s shoulder.

“Yep,” was all Frankie said.

Luca flicked the cigarette ash into a marble ashtray, then looked at Jonas for the first time. “Speaking of family, how are Marsha and little Abigail?”

Jonas’s face hardened at the names of his wife and daughter.

“You’re going to answer all my questions, Jonas. Every. Single. One.” Luca’s tone was dark, but Jonas shook his head defiantly.

“No. You’ll have to kill me.”

Luca laughed at Jonas’s words. “Don’t worry, I will. But not until after I find out what I want to know. Now, how long have you been working for Borroni?”

Jonas laughed and shook his head, so Luca brought his cigarette down onto the back of his hand, which was resting on the bar, and ground it in. Jonas cried out, and Luca pulled the now extinguished cigarette away.

“I’ve never ‘worked’ for Borroni,” Jonas said through gritted teeth. “I’ve always been in his family. My father was too. I offered to be an informant.”

Luca smiled wickedly at Frankie, and then turned back to Jonas.

“Wow, how very loyal of you.” Then, in a flash, he plunged his knife into Jonas’s hand. His scream was so loud that Luca, fearing it would wake Hayley two floors up, slapped his hand over Jonas’s mouth.

“Death, the ultimate sacrifice to prove your loyalty. Also, the appropriate punishment for disloyalty.”

Luca stood up and looked pointedly at Jonas’s other hand, and Frankie stabbed his own knife into it.

Luca rolled his eyes as Jonas screamed into his palm. “Why did he take Hayley?”

Now Jonas was just whimpering, so Luca removed his hand from his mouth. When Jonas tried to be brave and shook his head, Frankie twisted the knife in his hand. Luca could see the pain ripple through Jonas’s body.

“Talk, and this will be less painful,” Luca explained, but Jonas shook his head again.

Luca sighed and walked behind the bar, where he began to pull out a vast array of sharp objects, including knives, needles, and broken glass. “One more time, Jonas. Why did the bastard want her?”

But the idiot shook his head again, so Luca nodded at Frankie, who picked up another knife and plunged it into Jonas’s arm. He screamed again, and this time Frankie covered his mouth.

Luca picked up another knife and handed it to his friend, who repeated the same action in the opposite shoulder. Then Luca went for a needle. He popped it onto an empty syringe and gave the whole thing to Frankie.

“Neck or eye, Boss?” Frankie said, holding the needle close to Jonas.

Jonas was sweating, his eyes filled with horror at Frankie’s question.

“Eye, I think.”

But just as Frankie nodded and moved the needle closer to his eye, Jonas said, “Okay!” and Frankie removed his hand.

“He wants revenge,” Jonas said, breathing through his pain. “For Elianna, and for his father. He thinks if he had her, it would at least make up for Elianna. You bastard!” he yelled. “He really loved her!”

Frankie stabbed him in the neck with the syringe and then covered his mouth again.

Luca thought of Hayley—she was in danger because of his feelings for her. He couldn’t put her through this again. ~He~ couldn’t do this again.

“You’re going to wait here,” Luca said fiercely as he walked around the bar and toward the door. He gestured for Frankie to follow.

Once Frankie had closed the door, Luca turned to him.

“Get him out of my house and make him suffer for his betrayal, Frankie. Send him to Borroni like a fucking jigsaw puzzle to let him know I’m not going to be fucked by him.”

Luca was hard and cold, how he used to be, how his father had trained him. His dark side was taking over. “Find out anything he’ll tell you, what he told Borroni. If he says nothing, just destroy him.

“And make sure Marsha finds out her husband’s fate. A bouquet or something, with a reminder that if she calls the cops, her daughter will go missing.”

Frankie nodded and took out his phone.

Luca walked back up the stairs and to the camera room, where he took a seat and watched Hayley as she slept. She looked so peaceful now, yet she’d nearly been killed because of him.

He had to let her go.