Page 58 of Forbidden War (Forbidden 2)
“Here. Look.” Armani opens his laptop, sets it on the table, and starts playing the footage.
We gather around to watch. What we see is mostly mundane, normal stuff. But one of the back cameras caught footage of the van in question—and the moment a man rushed toward the van, his hand over Karina’s mouth as he half dragged, half carried her along.
“No,” Frankie moans, her hands going over her face.
Armani rewinds the video and plays it again. The room is dead silent as the horror unfolds on the screen. It feels like a slow-motion movie. I can’t look away and I can’t fully process what I’m seeing. I know it ends badly, but I can’t look away.
That man took my wife.
My fists clench as I watch the van door open from inside, Karina getting tossed in, the man climbing in after her. Then the door sliding shut and the van pulling away, careful not to draw attention by speeding like the criminals they are.
“Play it again,” Dante says. “Clayton, come look at this.”
He waves our brother-in-law over from where he stands guard at the door. They watch the laptop screen closely. My vision blurs and I close my eyes. Red flashes behind my lids.
“He works for Bruno.” Clayton points to the man holding my wife. “I’ve crossed paths with him many times.”
It feels bitter to have my fears confirmed. “Nothing we didn’t already know,” I seethe, aiming my glare at Armani for doubting what I’d been telling him all along.
“He’s a pay-for-hire,” Clayton goes on, “but Bruno is his number one boss. He hides deep in between jobs, only crawling out when the Brunos need him. He’ll deposit Karina and vanish.”
My body trembles. All I feel clearly is rage. Pure, white-hot rage.
“Do you have any idea how to find him?” Armani asks.
Clayton thinks for a second, then shrugs. “No, but I can talk to people who might. Give me a couple of hours.”
“Fuck! We don’t have hours. We need to move!” I shout.
I can’t do this. I just told Karina that I love her. I finally told her. And now she’s gone.
Dante grabs my shoulders steadily and holds my body between his hands. I want to twist away, but after a moment, I realize that I’m breathing in time with my brother, that I’m focusing on his face and that some of the tornado inside me has calmed. He nods at me, and I nod back.
He steps back, his hands dropping. “Clayton, go. See what you can find out.”
Clayton claps a hand on my shoulder and leaves. I’m numb inside somehow. The rage is still there, but it burns less, and I can’t feel anything else. Just a dull, aching anger.
“We should talk to Livvie,” Frankie says softly. “Maybe she heard or saw something that could be useful.”
“She was held at an out of the way hideout, guarded by idiots too busy eating sandwiches to realize they were getting raided. What could she have possibly learned from them?” I say.
Armani cuts in, “I think it’s a good idea. She might remember something.” He heads toward the door. “Keep me posted. I’m going to make some calls. Get boots on the ground.”
Dante follows him out. Frankie moves to leave and I hurry to go, too.
We find Livvie in the living room of the main house, watching a reality show on the big screen. Frankie sits with her and turns off the television.
“What’s the matter?” Livvie looks at each of us in turn. “Was the memorial okay?”
“It was fine.” Taking a deep breath, Frankie reaches for her sister’s hand and says, “But at some point today, Karina was taken. We think by the same people who took you.”
Livvie’s face pales. “Okay,” she whispers, her eyes darting to me. “What do we do?”
“I need you to think about the things you overheard while those men had you. Phone conversations, in-person. Anything you might have witnessed that can help us find her.”
Livvie bites her lip, thinking, and then shakes her head. “I don’t know. They didn’t talk to me. The guys didn’t really talk to each other around me, either. I’m sorry.”
It sounds like the same thing Karina said over and over, until she did remember something—the very thing that helped save Livvie’s life. Maybe Livvie knows more than she realizes. Maybe there’s some clue hiding in her brain that she’ll suddenly think of later.
I just hope it won’t be too late.
She speaks to Frankie for a while, their voices intimate so the conversation stays between them. I find Dante in the dining room surrounded by phones and laptops and security, a pot of coffee at his elbow. Sinking into the chair across from him, I drop my head into my hands.
“We’ll find her,” Dante tells me, his voice reassuring. “We know who has her. They aren’t going to hurt their playing card.”
I don’t believe that. Sergio Bruno is capable of anything.
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s all they have to bargain with right now. Plus, she’s their blood.”
“That won’t stop him from hurting her and you damn well know it.”
Dante doesn’t falter. “I don’t think so, Marco. They could have just executed her, but they didn’t. They took her somewhere else.”
“That seems ten times worse,” I say. “Who knows what her uncle will do to her?”
Before Dante can try to talk me down again, Frankie joins us.
“Anything from Livvie?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not yet. I’ll keep checking with her in case anything comes up.”
Armani walks in now, jacket and tie gone, his shirt unbuttoned at the top. “I’ve got eyes around town looking out for anything related to Branson Floral with instructions to take down anyone they find associated.”
“It was a front. I’m sure that van has gone up in flames by now,” I point out. “Another fucking dead end.”
Brushing past my brothers, I don’t stop when Armani snags my sleeve. I need to get into my car and drive. I’ll look for the fucking florist’s van myself, and I’ll do it by making a long, slow loop around the Bruno compound. They’ll see me coming. They’ll probably have sights on me, but at least they’ll know that I know.
I know what they did, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to back down.
Dante tries to stop me on my way to the garage. “Where are you going? Don’t make yourself a target.”
“Let him go,” Armani says, and it’s the last thing I hear before the garage door hums open and I slam into my car.
The interior is cool and dim, the feel of the leather-wrapped steering wheel immediately calming as I press my palms to it. I race to the highway, flooring the gas until my surroundings become a blur. But I know there won’t be any speeding my panic away. No amount of adrenaline is going to replace the fear that right now, something terrible is happening to my wife.
Where the fuck is she?
Taking the exit into town, I run a mental map of all the places that criminals might stash a van. I’ll check every corner of this city until there’s nowhere else to look.
I’m going to find her.
I won’t stop until she’s in my arms again.
