Carla was getting antsier the longer she waited for Leon’s call to confirm he had reached the warehouse where his bodyguards were holding Don Sebastian and his men. And Benny, of course.
She had no idea if Benny was still alive. She hoped so, for his sake, but every time she thought of how close he’d come to killing Leon, she wanted to hurt Benny herself.
Maybe she was cut out to be a mobster’s girlfriend after all!
In the meantime, she’d kept busy after Leon left, quickly showering and dressing, aware it should have only taken him fifteen minutes, twenty tops, to reach the warehouse before he called her. It had now been an hour, and Leon still hadn’t called.
Maybe it was a case of out of sight, out of mind?
Words spoken out of obligation because she’d declared her love for him first?
Perhaps he’d just been humoring her in the hope of another round of that glorious sex—
No!
She refused to believe that of Leon. He simply wasn’t the type of man to tell a woman he loved her one minute and forget about her the next. Carla completely believed him when he said he’d never told any other woman he loved her.
Even the thought of that filled her with the sort of overflowing happiness she’d never know before.
She was loved by Leonardo Brunelli!
Then maybe, if she was going to be a gangster’s girlfriend, she was going to have to learn some patience?
Maybe she was.
But that wasn’t about to happen today.
Carla pulled on her jacket and picked up her phone and bag before hurrying out of her apartment.
Except when she got outside, she found the SUV still parked in the same spot, as expected, but there was no sign of Padraic.
Carla searched the front and back of the building. Without success. Where the hell—
She stilled as she heard a thumping sound, listening closely to try to decipher what the sound was. She finally realized it was coming from the SUV.
There was no one sitting in the front seats of the vehicle, and it was difficult to see inside the darkened windows, but the noise seemed to be coming from the storage area at the back.
Carla jumped back with startled gasp as the back window suddenly burst outward before landing on the tarmacked road behind. Seconds later, before Carla had chance to recover from her shock, a familiar head popped up into the space where the window should be.
Despite the fact he had a black eye and cuts and bruises on his face, with a gag tied tightly about his mouth and his hands secured behind his back, Carla recognized him as Padraic. The bodyguard Leon had left here to keep her safe.
Leon!
Carla rushed forward to pull down the gag over Padraic’s mouth. “Where’s Leon?”
“Bastards took him about an hour ago. They’d already shot me, and they then secured me and thrown me in the trunk of the SUV before the boss left the building.”
Someone had taken Leon?
What the fuck— How fucking dare they? Leon wasn’t going to be taken by anyone but her! She would wipe them all from the face of the fucking earth—
Dear God, she was channeling Leon and the way he always used the f-bomb when he was upset or angry. Admittedly, she was both right now, but swearing wasn’t going to help get Leon back.
“Do you know who took him?” she demanded.
Padraic nodded grimly. “I recognized Roberto Russo, younger brother of Don Sebastian.”
“His brother?” No wonder Don Sebastian wasn’t talking if he’d known his brother was close enough to try to rescue him.
Padraic grimaced. “Roberto wasn’t invited to the wedding, so we had no idea he was even in London until I saw him today.”
“We need to go to the warehouse— Wait a minute, did you say they shot you?” While they were talking, Carla had unlocked and lowered the back door before managing to find the little tool kit her father insisted she keep in her bag. She offered up silent words of thanks for his fussing as it now enabled her to cut the plastic ties off Padraic’s wrists and ankles. “Where were you shot?”
He raised his hand and pulled back his jacket, allowing Carla to see a hole in his shirt, exactly over his heart. “Bastards didn’t know I’m wearing a vest.”
Which meant they’d intended to kill him. “Are you hurt?”
“I’ve probably cracked a rib or two, but otherwise, I’m fine.”
He wasn’t fine, but Carla didn’t have the time right now to challenge him on the claim. “Can you walk?”
She helped to steady him after he nodded and slowly got down from the vehicle to stand up. Obviously, he was hampered by both the blood returning to his feet and hands and his possible broken ribs. “Give me the keys to the SUV, and I’ll drive us to the warehouse,” she instructed grimly. “We’re going to need the help of some of your cousins if we’re going after Leon.”
He took the keys from his pocket and turned off the alarm as well as unlocking the doors. “I can drive us—”
“You should be going to an A&E. You aren’t capable of driving us anywhere.”
“We don’t have time for that, and I’ve driven under worse conditions than this,” Padraic dismissed. “Also, the boss isn’t going to like it if you—”
“The boss isn’t here to like or dislike anything I do right now,” Carla’s voice broke as she pointed out the obvious. “I’m driving,” she repeated firmly before helping him into the passenger seat and then hurrying round the vehicle to get in behind the wheel.
She took a moment to adjust the seat and mirrors before familiarizing herself with the workings of the SUV. She had a full driving license, but it was years since she’d bothered to get behind the wheel of a car. The bus and underground services were so good in London, and regularly parking a vehicle in the city was almost impossible. She’d never driven an automatic either, which she was guessing the powerful SUV was, but she would manage. She had to if she wanted to save Leon.
If he was still alive, that was.
“You’re going to die very slowly, Roberto,” Leon told the younger man in a conversational tone. “A prolonged beating and lots of broken bones first, which I’m sure Padraic’s cousins will very much enjoy administering. After which, I’ll allow them to kill you in whatever manner they decide upon. I have no doubt it will be a suitable ending for the man whose men tried to kill their cousin.” At least he hoped it was only tried.
Leon had been able to do nothing but watch, after stepping out of Carla’s apartment building, as what he hoped was an unconscious Padraic had his wrists and ankles tied and a gag tied over his mouth before he was thrown into the back of the SUV. Surely they wouldn’t have applied the ties and tape if Padraic was already dead?
Leon then had a black hood thrown over his head and his own arms and legs tied. He was thrown into the back of a different SUV and driven here.
Leon had known his own death was imminent the moment he’d been brought inside what turned out to be a deserted and run-down building and been tied to a chair before the black hood had been removed from his head. That allowed him to see and recognize Roberto Russo, Sebastian’s younger and more hot-headed brother, and the half a dozen men he had with him. A recognition that meant Roberto intended to kill him rather than have Leon identify him as being part of the plot to kill him.
Roberto sneered. “Big words coming from a dead man!”
Leon shrugged. “Words are what I have at the moment. So tell me, was it your idea or Sebastian’s to import the drugs from banned cartels, along with the organized trafficking in women and children destined for your unapproved brothels?” Leon would never, ever be able to forget the haunted look in the eyes of the woman who had thanked God her daughter had died before they reached the States.
Roberto relaxed back against the wall. “That was all me,” he admitted proudly. “Sebastian leaves all those little details to me.”
“Sebastian is a fucking idiot to trust a loose cannon like you to organize anything beyond finding your dick in the morning so you don’t pee on the floor!”
Roberto slapped Leon hard across the face with the back of his hand. “You’re alive right now only because after our idiot nephew-by-marriage failed to eliminate you, Sebastian decided he wanted the added kudos of killing you himself.”
Leon flexed his bruised jaw, checking for lost or loosened teeth. There weren’t any.
Inwardly, he was relieved he hadn’t allowed Carla to come with him earlier. Part of him had wanted to say yes to her, because he couldn’t bear to be parted from her so soon after she’d told him she loved him. But if he’d given in to that need, she would be tied up and a prisoner beside him in this abandoned building.
Or already dead.
Leon had already imagined seeing Carla with a bullet-wound in her head once before, on the night Benito Calabro had tried to kill him. The anger Leon had experienced then was nothing compared to the overwhelming fury and desolation he now felt at the mere idea of losing the woman he loved. Carla was now everything to him.
The air he breathed.
She was the last thought he’d had before he fell asleep last night and his first thought when he woke up again.
Carla was also the reason Leon was determined to live through this.
He wanted a future with her, maybe even more children, if she wanted them. He wasn’t going to give that up because of the greed of one of his dons and the man’s even greedier younger brother.
“Strange, I don’t see Sebastian here right now,” he taunted Roberto.
Roberto administered another hard slap, this time to Leon’s cheek. “He’ll be here. We’ve already sent word to your men and offered your life in exchange for Sebastian’s.”
Leon calmly ran his tongue across his cut lip, tasting the blood. “My men have instructions never to negotiate for my life.” They also had other instructions for the time they were all in England. Leon could only hope they had implemented them.
He had no doubt the London Russian bratva, primarily the head of the organization, Gregori Markovic, and his second-in-command, Nikolai Volkov, two powerful men who had become Leon’s allies several months ago, would be more than a match for Sebastian and Roberto Russo.
Roberto gave a confident smile. “Oh, we have no intention of actually going through with an exchange. We’ll just let your men think we are until we have Sebastian back. Then he’s going to shoot you in front of your men.”
Leon gave a confident shake of his head. “That’s never going to happen.”
The other man eyed him mockingly. “Your daughter is too well guarded, but maybe we should bring that puttana here, the one you’ve been fucking while you’re in London, and have a little fun with her in front of you— Ah, a reaction at last,” Roberto mused as Leon swore at the same time as he pulled and strained against the plastic binding about his wrists. “Perhaps she’s not just a puttana to you.”
Leon willed his fury down to a glowering simmer, knowing it was foolish on his part to show this man a moment of weakness, or reveal how important Carla was to him. Eventually he would make Roberto pay for daring to insult Carla in that way. “No puttana could ever mean anything to me.” It was nothing but the truth, because Carla wasn’t and never would be any man’s whore. “Do you speak to your mother with that same filthy mouth?”
Roberto looked unsettled by the change of subject for a moment, and then he chuckled. “I am very much going to enjoy watching Sebastian gun you down, you arrogant bastardo.” He straightened. “But Sebastian didn’t say I couldn’t have a little fun with you in the meantime.” He landed another blow. This time, it was his fist to the side of Leon’s jaw.
Leon had a feeling it was going to be a long, and painful, wait for him to be rescued.
“I want to know where they’re keeping Leon, you piece of shit.” Carla ignored all of Leon’s men standing about the warehouse. Instead, her gaze was fixed on Sebastian Russo as she marched across the cavernous room where he and his men were strapped to a row of chairs. Russo looked as if he had two black eyes, a broken nose, and swollen lips and jaw. No doubt he had other bruises on his overweight body that couldn’t be seen. “As for you, you chickenshit.” She paused to bend at the waist until her face was on a level with Benny’s battered and bruised one. “I ought to tell them to end you now for even thinking of trying to kill the man I love.”
Benny looked dazed as he blinked at her. “Carla…?”
“Yes, it’s Carla,” she snapped before turning her attention back to Russo. “Where’s your brother keeping Leon?”
He looked her up and down between bruised and puffy eyelids. “Vaffanculo,” he finally told her contemptuously.
“Hey.” Benny was the one to protest. “You can’t speak to her like that.”
“I just did, idiot,” the older man scorned.
Carla wasn’t in the least concerned by anything Russo said to her, but Benny’s defense of her was a bit of a surprise. It didn’t absolve him of the guilt for any of his other actions, but even so…
She had spent the drive over here discussing Leon’s rescue with Padraic. Apparently, Leon had already put in place a plan of action for his own and Natalia’s extra security during this visit to London. That plan involved, because Matteo was now on his honeymoon, their recent alliance with the London Russian bratva. Padraic had put a call through to them on the drive here and spoken to a man called Nikolai Volkov, who had promised to make some enquiries regarding Leon’s location and then meet them at the warehouse with his men.
Carla was just filling in a time before Volkov and those men arrived.
“Actually, Benny,” she continued scornfully. “I’m more than capable of taking care of myself, and I also think it’s far too late for you to act the gentleman where I’m concerned.” She gave him a sweetly insincere smile before turning back to Sebastian Russo. “And I really don’t like being told to fuck off, in any language.” She straightened before slapping him hard across one of his bloated cheeks. Fresh blood instantly gushed from his nose.
Russo swore. “Puttana.” Whore.
Carla didn’t hesitate to retaliate. “Stronzo.” Arsehole.
A reluctant admiration entered Don Sebastian’s eyes. “You are una degna donna.”
Carla wasn’t sure what this elderly Italian thought she was a “worthy woman” of, nor did she require compliments from a man who had ordered an unarmed man be gunned down in cold blood. The unarmed man Carla loved.
Carla wanted to kill Russo herself for even daring to attack Leon.
But before she could think of a suitable reply, she turned toward the sound of more people entering the building. A dozen or so men, and at the front of them was a tall and harsh-faced, blond-haired man, with eyes an even paler gray than Leon’s.
Carla recognized him as the Russian, Nikolai Volkov.
He and his bratva boss, Gregori Markovic, had been at the wedding on Saturday accompanied by their wives, but Carla hadn’t actually been introduced to any of them. At the time, she hadn’t believed there would ever be a reason for her to see any of them again.
Nikolai now strode confidently across the warehouse until he stood in front of her. “Miss Andretti.” He gave her a formal bow. “I am here to offer our help in the recovery of our good friend Leon.”
Carla had no idea why Nikolai was showing such deference to her or why he bowed to her with such respect, but it was enough to crack the shell of single-minded determination she’d wrapped around herself ever since she learned of Leon’s disappearance.
To her complete embarrassment, that crack in her armor developed into a hole and then a crater, and seconds later, she found herself wrapped up in Nikolai Volkov’s arms sobbing as if her heart was breaking.
Because if they didn’t recover Leon alive that’s exactly what was going to happen.