Page 71 of I Would Beg For You
I force myself to breathe. “Someone’s got her phone. Tried to text me to meet her.”
She hisses in a breath. “You sure it’s not her?”
“Positive,” I bite out.
“Okay, let me look into this. And don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”
This woman! She makes me want to wring her neck sometimes. “We need to tell—”
“I’m on it. Leave it to me.”
She cuts the call, and I can’t do anything but wait. An hour passes, then another. I’m going out of my mind wondering what’s happened to Naomi.
Then Anya calls.
“Yes?”
“Not here. Meet me in Tribeca.”
I don’t wait for Carlito. Instead, I pour myself into my Ferrari and power out onto the road to New York.
I’m punching the code to move the elevator up just under an hour later, emerging into the apartment like a caged bull finally let free.
“Where is she?” I yell.
I frown when I notice a man sitting on the couch. Dark hair slicked back, wire-frame glasses on his long nose, pinstripe suit not an inch askew on his thin frame. What the hell is Carson Felix doing here?
Anya comes out from the bedroom, and I beeline to her with long strides eating up the distance.
“Where is she?” I ask again.
“Valentino, Naomi’s been taken.”
Chapter 23 Valentino
My legs are falteringunder me, but I catch myself in time and straighten.
“What do you mean, taken?”
Everything inside me is rushing forward, pulling back, surging forth again, crashing, erupting… What’s happened to her? Is she okay?
No, she can’t be okay.
“What did he do to her?” I bite out.
Anya places a hand on my sleeve. “Valentino, focus!”
I want to brush her off then grab her shoulders and shake her like a rag doll until she’ll tell me what happened. But there’s an echo of reason in her tone, and there’s a piece of my brain that’s hearing it. And heeding it, too.
This is what my Uncle Gennaro always got on to me about. I have a temper, apparently. Well, all of us Andretti men do. Courtesy of our dad. And my mother’s side of the family? Cool as the vermouth their region is known for.
That’s the side I need to channel now. I force in a deep breath, tense my whole body, then relax as I let out the exhale.
“What. Happened?” I ask, voice cold and dry as ice.
“We know where she is.”
I turn toward the couch, where the words came from.
