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“How can you know for sure?”
“Because I spent the past year working with Viktor and I know him. He has a sort of honor code. He wouldn’t just kidnap two women for his gain. He just wouldn’t, especially if one was pregnant. Trust me on that.”
His eyes flash. “How can I? You’ve made it hard to trust you.”
“I know. But I know this wasn’t Viktor. This was Sal. I feel it in my bones. If we want to save Elena and Aria, we need to go now. He hurt Aria, Aiden. He cut her. Tortured her. He’ll do the same to Elena. I know it. He killed a newborn baby.”
“I remember when I first met him, I thought he was crazy but I only met him the once. I never knew what he was capable of.”
“He’s capable of a lot of depravity. Even things I’m not capable of. I wouldn’t kill a baby and I definitely wouldn’t kill a pregnant woman. No matter how evil you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’re evil,” he grumbles.
“Good. Now, do you want to get your wife back?”
“Of course.”
“Then we need to go find them and we need to work together. Dante and Erik cannot know about this. They will try to kill me if they think I had any part in this.”
“I know.”
“We always worked better together,” I tell him. “You know this. If we’re together, we can kill Sal. He won’t be able to stop us.”
Aiden slowly nods. “We did use to work good as a team.”
“Exactly. Let’s do it again.”
“This isn’t permanent, Finn. I’m not going to promise that things are going back to how they were before I met Elena. You have to know that. We work together to get them back and that’s it.”
I push aside the sting inside my chest. “I know things can never be the way they used to. But I wouldn’t want them to anyway. I have my own wife now. I care about her. I want her back just as much as you want Elena back. For just today, let’s go back to how we used to be. Just to save our wives.”
Slowly, Aiden nods. “Agreed. I won’t tell anyone. We’ll handle this on our own. I don’t want to spook Sal into running.”
“So, we have a deal? We don’t kill each other. We work together to get our wives back.” I hold out my hand.
Aiden looks down at it for a long moment. I wish I knew what he was thinking. Probably thinking what a fucker I am but that he needs me.
“Come on,” our mom says. “Put aside your differences just for today.”
That does it for Aiden.
He takes my hand and gives it a firm shake. “Just for today.”
I have the brother back I remember. I know it won’t last forever but I’m going to savor it.
And I’m going to get my wife back.
Chapter Nineteen
Aria
The only advantage that Elena and I have over Sal is that there’s two of us. But I can’t ask Elena to put herself in harm’s way when she’s pregnant. So it’s going to have to be up to me to get the jump on Sal.
“Stay there,” I tell her as I hide behind the wall so when Sal comes down, I can try attacking him. Elena remains in the middle of the room.
“What if this doesn’t work?” she asks.
“It’s our only play. Sal is evil. He hurt me once before. He’ll do it again. So we have to be ready for him.”