Page 29 of Diary from an Inked Throne

He’d called within twenty-four hours to say it was done.

It hadn’t absolved Luca of his guilt, and I’d watched it eat away at him until he’d picked up a phone and called his lawyer to have him arrange payments to be made to each of the women who’d been saved.

Even then, we’d both known it hadn’t been enough.

Maybe it never would be.

But because I loved him, I hoped for it. Because otherwise, he was on a very dangerous path to self-destruction. I’d watched it, him endlessly hunting down leads by day, drinking and smoking himself into an early grave by night. He didn’t sleep much, just obsessively scrolled the internet, searching for any mention of Enzo. We fucked when he could get out of his head long enough, but as time passed and we were no closer to finding his uncle and the baby, the times I could distract him into feeling something other than pain grew further and further apart.

I didn’t want to go home to Nyah empty-handed either. The thought left me cold inside, imagining seeing her face again and having to tell her we’d failed.

But Luca needed more than I could give him.

He and I alone had never worked.

We needed her too.

And so, I got Luca so drunk he didn’t even notice when I put him in the passenger seat of his SUV and drove us back to Saint View.

8

NYAH

Dear Diary,

“I’ll always wait for you” might be the truest thing I’ve ever said.

I’d avoided the Slayers’ clubhouse like the plague. It should have been the place I ran back to for safety, but one thing had stopped me.

All the baby items Bliss and Violet and the other women had gifted me before I’d left. They still sat piled up in the corner of the room I’d slept in.

Violet had come to the Guerra mansion almost every day since everything had happened, apart from the few days she’d been in the hospital over Christmas to have her own baby.

A baby nobody had taken from her and who was still safe in her arms.

I could have asked her at any time to put the clothes and baby blankets and the crib away.

And yet, I hadn’t. Because asking her to do that felt a lot like me giving up on ever bringing my baby home.

And that just wasn’t an option.

Ever.

But every day Luca and Lynx didn’t return with my son, my heart ached. For every day he didn’t have a name, it felt like my memory of him grew weaker.

I needed to be able to call him by his name when I talked about him. I needed everyone here, all our family and friends to say it with me.

Dax found me holding a knitted blue-and-cream blanket, and he touched it gently. “So soft.”

I nodded. I hadn’t forgotten for a second he’d lost his child too. For the past six weeks, we’d leaned on each other, drawn strength and comfort in someone else feeling the same way.

I was sure it was the only way we’d survived.

That and knowing that Luca and Lynx hadn’t given up. We’d called the police chief daily, but as weeks rolled by with no progress, it became clear to me a Mafia baby snatch while I was married to the kidnapper wasn’t something they were willing to touch. I found it interesting that they knew I was married to Enzo without me giving that information. To me, it proved what I already suspected.

That Enzo had the police in his pocket and without something else forcing them to search for my child, they weren’t going to. They’d given us all the pitying looks while they shuffled papers, but nothing more.

My parents had untactfully brought up that maybe we should try to move on.