Page 5 of Savage Claim

It was the last thought in my head as things went black. I just didn’t know who I was trying to apologize to.

CHAPTER 4

Lorenzo

The Audi was parked outside of Isabella’s apartment, right in front of the building. She probably left it there and took the subway or a cab to wherever she went next, but it was the only lead we had at the moment. I parked behind the Audi. The red-hot rage that I’d experienced at home had bled into white-noise. I felt cold, and I embraced it. I would need it to find her.

Damian followed me out of the car, and he kept watch while I snapped the flimsy door lock that was meant to keep people out of the building’s lobby. That’s what the landlord got for not hiring a doorman or any kind of security.

Isabella’s apartment was on the second floor, and when I stepped out of the stairwell, I could see that the door was ajar. I looked at Damian and nodded, and he drew a gun from the holster on his shoulder. He went first and kicked the door open. I followed after him. While he cleared the apartment—it wasn’t a big space, it took less than thirty seconds for him to realize there wasn’t anyone else here—I looked around more carefully.

I found the key fob for the Audi dropped inside the door, along with the phone I had given her. I picked up both and shoved them into my pocket. All signs pointed to a hasty retreat, but I checked for any clues she might have left behind to indicate where she planned to go next.

I stalked into her small bedroom: the bed was still neatly made, and there was a layer of dust on everything. The closet door was shut; the dresser hadn’t been touched as far as I could tell.

I opened her closet door. Clothes were hung up in a neat row, but the shoes on the bottom had been kicked in carelessly, like she’d done it at the end of a long day. I caught the smile that tried to form on my face. She had run away from me. Shedaredto think that she could leave me. I was going to lose that cold, calm again soon. I could feel anger building in my chest.

She hadn’t taken anything from here. That was abundantly clear. I didn’t bother looking to see if she had emptied any of the drawers. Backtracking into the living room, I examined everything closely, only to find more dust.

“She wasn’t here for long. She didn’t take anything with her,” I said to Damian, who was standing in the kitchen with a frown on his face. “What is it?”

When I rounded the counter, I paused. A singular drawer had been ripped out. The knives that had been in it were scattered across the floor. When I looked closer, I could see blood on the cabinets and the floor. “This isn’t staged,” Damian said, as if he could read my mind. “The blood is real.”

“Someone must have been waiting for her,” I said, thinking of the fob and phone that I’d picked up.

“She fought,” Damian pointed out. “There’s not enough blood here for a mortal wound.”

My gut burned. Someone had taken what was mine, and I was going to tear them to fucking pieces.

Even as the thought entered my head, the phone in my pocket began to vibrate. I dug it out: it was an unlisted number. I answered it. “You found her phone,” the man said by way of greeting. “I was worried that you might not.” Santino.

I wasn’t surprised in the least that it was Isabella’s father on the other end of the line. “Where is she?”

“Is that really the question you want to ask, Don Vitali?”

I ground my teeth together. “No, I’d rather ask: do you want an open casket or a closed one?”

Santino laughed, and the sound had bile driving its way up my throat. “Like you would give me a choice.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. When I got my hands on the fuckingstronzo, I was going to rip him apart. I wouldn’t stop until he was nothing more than a smear on the pavement. “I’m done with this conversation. Where is Isabella? If she’s dead, you still owe me the one point one million, or I could just take sweet Gemma for myself.”

Santino made a sound like a hiss. “You need to watch your tone.” The teasing, charming lilt of his voice was gone, replaced by someone who was calm and in control of himself. I was speaking with the real Santino Rossi now, the man who had been a shark of a lawyer before his addictions had gotten the better of him. “You’re not in a position to make demands of me.”

“What did you call for, Santino?”

“Artem wants to talk,” he said, confirming what I had already guessed. “If you want to find Isabella whole and in one piece, you’ll do exactly what I tell you.” She wasn’t dead. Something tight in my chest relaxed. Santino rattled off an address; it was well within Russian territory, not neutral ground. This wasn’t a prisoner exchange; Artem wanted me isolated. “You’ll come alone without weapons,” he added. “If you call in back-up or the police, she’ll be dead before you lay eyes on her.”

I had a blade out in the car that I could hide fairly well. Out of the corner of my eye, Damian was already texting, gathering the troops. “I’ll come,” I told him. “But if you’re lying, I’m not going to waste a bullet on you, do you understand? I’ll make you watch as I dismantle everything that you care about first.” I hung up the phone before he could respond.

“Where am I telling them to meet us?” Damian asked, holding up his phone.

I didn’t need to know which men he had contacted. Instead, I gave him the address. “Tell them thirty minutes. We’re ending this bullshit tonight.”

CHAPTER 5

Lorenzo

True to his word, by the time we reached the address that Santino gave me, Elio, Renaldo, and Samuel were waiting. The two older men looked less than happy about being pulled out of bedagain, but I wasn’t going to question Damian’s choices when time was of the essence. “I didn’t expect you to leave Amalia alone.”

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