Page 213 of Stalking Ginevra

He stares up at me, sweat streaming down his soot-streaked face. “Victor isn’t one man. He also isn’t a Bellavista. They’re distant cousins on my mother’s side,” he says, his voice hoarse. “The one still running about is Valentino. Valentino. Bossanova.”

I freeze, my mind racing, blood pounding in my ears. That leather-faced lothario I hired to seduce Ginevra’s mother?

“Bullshit,” I growl.

Trembling, Salvatore shakes his head, his entire bulk sagging with defeat. “There are two of them. Gianni and Valentino—parasites who marry women, insure their lives, and murder them for a payout. Twenty-two years ago, Gianni was facing life in prison and didn’t have money to pay for an attorney.”

Fury pounds through my veins at the thought of having had that man in my grasp. I beat the shit out of him and set him free. If I had just killed him, Ginevra would no longer be in peril.

“They found out I’d had a daughter out of wedlock, and they took her.” Voice cracking, he doubles over with tears. “They’ve held her hostage for years, using the girl to keep me in line. Every time I tried to resist, they’d send a new photo of her. I couldn’t risk her life.”

I glare down at him, my grip tightening on the jerry can. Questions assault my mind in quick succession: Why didn’t Salvatore hire assassins or a private detective? And is her mother the woman who murdered Larry Zambino over the slot machines then nearly died in an explosion?

None of that matters when Ginevra’s life still hangs in the balance.

Rage roils in my gut, violent and raw. Every ounce of pain Ginevra’s endured, every second she’s spent in captivity, all traces back to a man I dismissed as harmless.

“Where can I find him?”

Salvatore shakes his head. “He has a penthouse overlooking the park, but he wouldn’t keep her somewhere so obvious. I’ve told you whatever you want. Just please, spare my family.”

“If you hadn’t withheld this information, I would have stopped him before he took my wife.” I reach into my pocket, extract my gun, and shoot him between the eyes.

He falls to the ground, and the old woman howls. I turn my attention away from them to lock gazes with my brother.

“Cesare,” I say.

He cocks his head.

“Talk me through that harebrained scheme you had to break Roman out of prison.”

“Why,” he asks.

“Because we’re about to abduct Gianni Bossanova from Death Row.”

NINETY-SEVEN

GINEVRA

I wake up in a world of pain. Pain in my head, pain across the welts in my skin, pain in my heart. My limbs bend into an awkward fetal position, and the hard surface beneath me rumbles as if I’m crammed into the trunk of a car.

It feels like a whole day has passed since I tried to escape. The aches from falling into that pit have faded, replaced by painful welts from the whipping. The skin on my wrists burn from where Bossanova tied them too tight, but it’s barely a distraction from the replay of Carla’s murder. Her eyes, wide and pleading, stare out at me through the dark, begging me to do something—anything to save her life.

All I could do was scream.

Shit. I need to focus, but I can’t breathe with pressure pushing down on my lungs. I exhale a choked sob at how Carla looked so pale and terrified, at the way she thrashed as the whip tightened around her neck.

Stop.

Pressing my forehead against the trunk’s cold metal wall, I fumble around for a lever, a latch, a lock. Carla is gone and thereisn’t a thing I can do to bring her back. He strangled her like she wasn’t his own flesh and blood, but lower than nothing. All because I tried to escape.

The car jerks over a pothole, jostling me against the sides of the trunk. My stomach lurches, bringing up a bellyful of bile. My lungs seize in tight bursts, the confined space constricting every ragged breath. At this rate, Valentino won’t need to wrap the tail of a whip around my throat. I’ll have already choked to death.

Fuck... I really need to focus on breaking free.

I turn my ear to the trunk’s lid, straining to hear anything beyond the rumble of the engine. Bossanova’s muffled voice seeps through the noise. I can’t tell if he’s talking to himself or has found an accomplice, but I try to make sense of his muttering.

He’s cursing, screaming obscenities, and by the time I hear the name, Montesano, the car screeches to a halt. My body slams into the wall of the trunk, sending a fresh wave of pain down my side. I bite down on my lip, hard enough to taste blood.

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