Page 100 of I Would Beg For You
“What the fuck happened?” I ask my capo.
Pesci lowers his head. “We didn’t see them coming, boss. They tasered us all. By the time I recovered enough to call Marco, they’d already taken off.”
“Fuck!” I kick an armchair, allowing some of my rage out. “They got me on trumped charges.”
The lawyer, who followed me in, apparently, lays it out for my men like he did in the car.
“Diversion,” Victor says when Boyle is done explaining, and we all freeze.
“What?” Luciano asks, recovering first.
“Target was Naomi,” Victor adds, his face hardening like granite.
It had indeed seemed too easy, me getting out of the station earlier. The stakes had been set up to crumble like pieces of straw at the first gust blown by a big bad wolf, aka a lawyer.
But what this also did was make time pass. The first hours after any abduction are crucial. We’re almost half a day late.
Frustration is boiling over inside me, and I want to crawl out of my skin. Hit something. Kill something. Preferably the ones who got their hands on Naomi. My fists pound away at the same armchair I kicked, a roar of pure rage pouring out of me.
What the hell do they want?
A hand settles on my shoulder. I throw my arm back, in a move designed to chuck right into the person’s chin and destabilize them. Instead, my elbow hits something solid, and I’m left smarting with pain.
“Damn it, Victor! What did they feed you at that monastery? Rocks?”
“Focus,” my baby brother tells me.
I glare at him; he remains unfazed.
He’s right, though. I need to think, not turn into a raving cockhead driven by his base instincts to maim and kill.
Forcing a deep breath, I turn to the men in the room.
“Okay, what do we know so far?”
“They knew where you’d be,” Luciano says.
“And what your protection detail would be like,” Marco adds.
Pesci lifts his hand to speak. “It looked like a police raid, but there was no damage inside aside from your room. They knew exactly where to look.”
“They could have someone inside who sold them information,” Antonio concurs. “I’ll get a crew on it.”
“Get the CCTV footage while you’re at it,” I say. “Actually, wait.”
That might take hours. I know someone who can get us in much faster. He’ll need to be apprised, too. I pull out my phone and send a text. Less than a minute later, he calls.
“Reeves.” We’ve ditched the secure server and all the roundabout way of getting in touch once the Joel Smith operation was over.
“Someone took Naomi?”
My nostrils flare. “Looks like it.”
“How can I help?”
“Your guy who knows the systems…” We’re not on a secure line, so I leave this vague. He’ll know I’m referring to the hacker who got us in and out of Pineridge.
“Yes?”
