Page 46 of Sacred Vow

And there it was, things getting worse. I thought back to the past several weeks with my wife, looking for signs that she was a betrayer and working for my enemy. She was smart and tenacious, but could she be part of something of this magnitude?

Possibly. She always fought against being bartered into marriage. Maybe my mistake was in believing that she’d been raised to be a mafia queen and had accepted her fate. Still, had she been so disgruntled, would her body have responded to me as it did? Would she have told me she loved me? I replayed that moment when I saw something hidden behind her wall, a girl with a secret.

“She is my wife,” I said. “She will be treated as a victim until I have proof otherwise.”

Massimo didn’t respond, which was fine with me. I needed to think and strategize the best way to get my wife and brother back, preferably unscathed. What I had been holding back on was what they may be doing to them right now. If Vittoria was in on the scheme, which I didn’t believe, not yet, then she would be celebrating the temporary win, but if she wasn’t… who knew what type of fucked up mind games he could be playing with her. My knuckles whitened around the armrests. I would destroy anyone who hurt her. No matter what, I believed Vittoria was mine and that she knew in her heart I would come for her.

I was sure that Vinny had allowed himself to be captured on purpose. He would run interference and keep the attention on himself for as long as he could. No one could be as sneaky as our youngest brother. Even when he was two years old, the toddler could hide from us all day long. He was smart, wily, and a good actor, and could play both sides.

Massimo’s phone dinged with a message alert.

“It’s from Simon. The last person Vittoria spoke with was her girlfriend, Gia. How would you like to handle her interrogation?”

“I’ll let you handle her. I’m in no mood for games, and if she gets mouthy, I may forget she’s useful.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Massimo chuckled. “She truly is a brat, but I understand that woman. I’ll get what I need from her.”

The timing wasn’t appropriate, but I couldn’t help sparing a moment to consider the slightly adoring look in his eyes when Simo spoke of Gia. Did he like her? Mama Mia!

We pulled through the gates of the family compound. Soldiers were everywhere, turning home into a war zone. The moment we stopped, Tony opened my door and hustled me into the house beneath the protection of six armed soldiers, with Massimo close behind.

“Is Gia here?” Massimo asked.

Tony didn’t even look at him. ‘Yeah, in your office, as requested.”

Massimo took a different passage and would hopefully learn the nature of Gia and Vittoria’s conversation. I followed Tony into the war room where we joined Massimo’s number one, Dante, Simon, our head of security who was holding an ice pack on his head, Fausto, Gio, Tano and myself. Beyond the soundproof walls sat our prisoner, trussed up and waiting to die.

“Tony, you’ve been on the ground here. Bring us up to speed.”

“I thought we’d start with the footage that Simon was able to recover.” Tony nodded at Simon, who brought up the feed. The massive screen flickered to life, showing Carlo stalking toward my suite. From another hallway came Leo.

With no cameras in my suite, the image was held on Leo in the hallway, while Carlo brought out a series of pictures. The image quality was good enough for me to recognize the photographs immediately. They were real enough, but years old, but Vittoria wouldn’t know that.

A tear slid down Vittoria’s cheek, but she handed them back and shook her head. Leo said something more, trying to convince her, but she turned around to go back inside, and when she did, Carlo swiftly placed a cloth over her nose and mouth. She fought, but she was no match for him and he held her until she passed out.

“Chloroform. Sporco bastardo!” Tano spit out.

“Dirty bastards. But it proves that Vittoria had nothing to do with this. Even if she thought I had betrayed her, she wouldn’t go with them.”

“There’s more, Romeo.”

From the same hallway Carlo took, now came eight men in vests and masks. Leo said something and they moved off in groups of four down each wing.

The camera angle changed. The attackers split into pairs, knocking out Tony, and several of our staff before anyone knew what was going down. Vinny, who was in the kitchen with our mother, stepped in front of her. He put up a good fight, but when two more soldiers rushed in, Vinny held up his hands in surrender. There was no audio, but I knew exactly what Vinny said.

Take me. Apparently, the soldiers couldn’t resist a willing victim, so they bound and blindfolded him, but they oddly balked at taking my mother prisoner as well. Instead, they almost seemed to show her a kind of curt respect, seating her in a chair and tying her to it. One of them even straightened her skirt to cover her legs before they moved out the front of the house, shooting a few soldiers that weren’t knocked out, along the way.

Their job completed, the soldiers regrouped in the driveway, entered two separate nondescript blacked-out vehicles and drove away.

“Do we know where they took them?”

“I started with Leo and Julius, but you got to understand, they knew our vehicles were in the system, so there’s nothing there but what they logged. And they brought their own vehicles for the big job, obviously. That leaves only the tracker apps on their phones.” was Simon’s response.

“Obviously, not Julius and Leo’s.” I responded in frustration.

“Vinny still has it,” Simon continued, “I don’t know where he could have hidden it, that they missed it when they were tying him up, but it’s still on. And they may have left Vittoria’s phone behind, but she’s still got the chip in her wedding ring. Here.”

Simon brought up a map on the big screen with a few flashing red lights on the overlay in the general shape of an inverted V. “Here’s Vinny’s ping-trail, with time-stamps. Looks like they got out of the city, drove another half-hour and stopped somewhere around here.” He sketched an unnecessary circle around the top dot. “That’s the cell tower, of course, not the cell phone, but the phone had to be close. The signal didn’t move for a good twenty minutes, then it went this way and eventually ended up at the east docks.