Page 81 of Blood on Ice

We didn’t find anything out of place at Vito’s apartment. It didn’t look like he’d been taken from there.

“Let’s go look for his SUV,” Joe suggested.

We found it parked in his assigned spot. I hurried over to the car, hoping to find something, anything to give us a clue where he’d gone before Benito had taken him.

I shivered as I peered into the vehicle’s windows. It had gotten a hell of a lot colder than it was when I left for the game. Suddenly, I remembered. “My jacket.”

“What about it,” Joe asked, “What difference does that make right now?”

“I left it in the SUV, but it’s gone. What if he took it with him?”

“Why would that matter?”

“There’s a tracker in the pocket. He put it in there when he was stalking me. He probably thinks I took it out, but I never did.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Joe said. “He’s as bad as Devil.”

Peter snorted. “That’s saying a lot.”

“Vito is a fucking hot mess,” Liam said.

“And he could die if we don’t find him.”

Liam laid a hand on my arm. “We love him no matter how crazy he is, and we’re going to find him.”

“Damn right we are. Joe, if you could get access to the tracker somehow, we might be able to find him if he took it with him.”

Joe nodded. “We’ll do our best. Everyone back to my car.”

“Aren’t we going to keep looking for Vito?”

“Yes, but it’s bad enough that I brought all of you here. Lucien, Val, and Vito will all murder me—maybe one at a time with somebody bringing me back to life in between—if anything happens to you. We’re going to Dom’s house.”

I could tell from Joe’s tone that it wasn’t going to help to argue, but I still tried. “We need to move as fast as we can. We don’t know how long Benito will keep him alive.”

“He said we had until midnight, so we’ve got several hours at least unless….”

Unless he’s already dead. I prayed that wasn’t true. How could I have found something so wonderful and lost it so fast?

29

VITO

When I came to, I slowly opened my eyes. Wherever I was now was pitch black. Was I still in Benito’s basement?

As I became more aware, I realized that my body hurt everywhere. I remembered the fall down the stairs to the concrete floor. Shit, how badly was I hurt? Was anything broken? I tried to move my arms and bit down on my lip to keep from crying out in agony. They were tied behind me, and I was pretty sure one of my wrists was broken. It was at least badly sprained. So much for being able to untie myself, I was going to have to get really fucking creative.

I realized there was also tape over my mouth and ropes around my waist. When I tried to move to see how tight the ropes were, I gasped. Apparently, I had some badly bruised ribs. Hopefully they weren’t cracked. My legs seemed to fare better than the rest of me, but one of my knees was damn sore. Walking was going to hurt like hell, but if I could just get loose, I could do it. I could do anything I had to do.

Was my family looking for me? Were they looking for Benito? Where was he? What if he’d gone after Zeke? I needed to know, but I was sure Marshall would have taken my phone, and I couldn’t reach it even if it was still in my pocket.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized there was a tiny window high up on the wall. It was letting it a little bit of light, but not enough to really make out anything. Most likely I was still in the basement, but I hadn’t had a chance to notice what else was down here after my fall.

Whatever his immediate plan was, I was sure that Benito was not going to let me live. He was using me for bait right now, but I doubted his plan included me walking out of here.

I needed to find a way out. I needed to get to Zeke, and I’d never wanted to see Val as much as I did right then. Tears burned my eyes. I tried to fight them, but several ran down my cheeks. I’d been such a fucking idiot. I hadn’t trusted in my family. I hadn’t been able to wait.

I’d done every stupid thing they would’ve expected me to do. They’d trusted me. They thought I would keep it together and do this by the book—or by the mafia code anyway.

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