Page 49 of Entwined Lies (Entwined #1)

Luca

Nina, Chrissy, and Reid were huddled at the table, their conversation grinding to an abrupt halt the moment Enzo and I stepped in.

The entire room shifted, the low hum of the ventilation the only sound cutting through the dead silence.

Every eye locked onto me—not just curiosity but expectation, nerves, and maybe a touch of fear.

They were watching me. Measuring. Trying to see how close I was to snapping.

Before I could say anything, Nina stood. Her face was pale, but her eyes locked on mine with the determination of someone who is about to go toe-to-toe with the devil.

“Luca, I need to tell you something… but before you do anything, please—please listen.”

Her voice was trembling, thin and tight.

Then came the heat—rage, raw and bright, snapping through me like a match to dry grass. My hand moved before I even thought about it. Toward the gun. Toward the only thing that ever made sense when everything else fell apart.

“One minute, Nina. If this is crap, you’ll wish you kept your damn mouth shut.”

She glanced at Enzo, quick and panicked, like she expected him to step in. As if.

“Isabelle… she was cornered by the Russians after you married her. Th ey threatened her the afternoon before George’s party. Said they’d kill you and Jake if she didn’t cooperate. Had it all mapped out—a sniper on the rooftop, ready to blow your brains out if she didn’t play their game.”

That one hit like a punch to the gut. Hard, fast, and brutal.

But I kept my face cold, refusing to let her see just how deep that knife twisted.

Isabelle, scared out of her mind this whole damn time, and I’d been too wrapped up in my own bullshit to notice.

But even knowing that, the fury inside me flared hotter.

She could’ve come to me. She should have come to me.

Instead, she went and played hero without letting me in on the game plan.

All the memories of that night at the restaurant came rushing back in vivid detail—the way her eyes had flicked up to the rooftops, that tight smile she wore like armor, how she couldn’t sit still for more than a second.

I’d chalked it up to nerves, figured she was just stressed, like the rest of us.

Turns out, she was watching for the bullet with my name on it.

Protecting me. Protecting Jake. But not trusting me enough to share the damn truth?

“She played along,” Nina continued, finding her stride. “Gave them enough crumbs to keep them off her back, but never anything that could sink us. When they demanded more, that’s when she came to me. We cooked up a plan to flip the script on them, but it was risky. She couldn’t do it alone.”

I turned toward Chrissy. She wouldn’t stop moving—nervous, like she expected me to come at her. And honestly, I almost did.

Nina paused, probably trying to see if I was about to snap or if there was any piece of me left that wouldn’t tear her head off. Hell, did she even know how close I was to losing it right there?

I gave her a look that told her to spit it out already, and she took the hint .

She explained how the Russians had handed Isabelle jammers, thinking they’d nailed us. But Isabelle, Chrissy, and she turned the tables. After Ivanov arrived at the gala, Isabelle met with Nina. They pulled it off—Isabelle planted a bug in Ivanov’s car while Nina kept the driver busy.

My blood boiled, but beneath the anger, something else clawed its way to the surface—doubt. Was it possible I’d been wrong about her all along? Could it be that she hadn’t been playing me the way I thought?

“We did it because we had no other choice, Luca,” Nina pressed on.

“Isabelle didn’t say anything to you because…

well, we didn’t know if the plan would even work.

She thought if it fell apart, you’d come after us, maybe even kill us.

She gambled, but she did it for you. For Jake.

For your family.” Nina took a breath, her eyes searching mine.

“And the thing is… the bug worked. We’ve already got conversations between Ivanov and Parker. This could be the advantage we need.”

“Why didn’t she just tell me?” I muttered, mostly to myself. It wasn’t even a question—just the thing I couldn’t let go of, the thing that kept bleeding under everything else.

Nina shook her head slowly, a faint, broken smile curling at the corners of her mouth. “Because she was terrified. Terrified of what you’d do if you found out too early. She thought she was protecting you, even if it meant putting herself in the line of fire.”

“You better pray those recordings pay off. Because if they don’t? This little act of heroism’s going to blow up in all our faces,” I told her and clenched my fists so tight, my nails were biting into my palms. But it was better than wrapping them around someone’s throat.

The anger was still there, burning hot, but underneath it, something else twisted—a grudging understanding, a flicker of clarity.

Isabelle had played a dangerous game, a gamble that could’ve destroyed everything.

But she’d done it for me. For Jake. For us.

I wanted to pretend it didn’t matter. But it did.

“And Isabelle?” Enzo’s voice was quiet, careful.

“She’s still in deep shit. She should’ve come to me from the start. Now it’s too late for second chances,” I said, though the certainty wasn’t there anymore.

Nina set her notebook down on the table, flipping it open, and every damn eye in the room stayed pinned on me, waiting to see if I’d explode or keep it together.

I could hear the bets going on in their heads— Luca flips his shit in five seconds, ten tops.

But I wasn’t about to give them that show. Not yet, anyway.

Her fingers moved with a kind of precision that made me wonder if she’d done this before—stood in front of someone about to lose their mind while calmly delivering the final blow.

And then a man’s voice crackled through the speakers. That thick, arrogant Russian accent I’d grown to hate over the years. “It went smoothly, just as planned. The woman, the boy, and the old lady—no issues. They’re all secured.”

My heart stopped, then kicked back into gear, hammering against my ribs. Isabelle, Jake, her mom… They had them. They fucking had them, and I’d let it happen.

A chill sliced through me, cold and unforgiving.

Eight men—only eight—were stationed next door, as if this were some low-stakes neighborhood watch.

They were supposed to be my insurance policy, the ones who’d keep them safe, and now?

They were probably lying in a pool of their own blood, all because I thought splitting them up and four men in each house would be enough.

I’d thought the threat was under control.

How fucking arrogant could I be? And now, they were paying the price because I’d miscalculated, and there was no undoing that.

Ivanov’s voice cut through my thoughts, dripping with that casual cruelty he was so damn good at.“Make sure they’re kept in the usual place. I want them alive and unharmed until we finalize the deal with Parker. He’ll want them as leverage.”

Leverage. To him, that’s all they were.

My blood was on fire. Rage so hot it felt like my skin might split open.

The room went fuzzy around the edges. All I could see was Ivanov—on his knees, begging.

And me? I’d be the one to deny him that.

I’d peel the skin off his bones, make him feel every single ounce of pain he’d brought to my doorstep.

The only thing that kept me from losing it was Reid’s voice, cutting through the rage with just enough urgency to anchor me.“I’ll find them, just give me some time.”

Time. The one thing we didn’t have.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to stay in the moment, to focus. “How long?”

“I’ll know soon. I’m breaking into the city’s surveillance system now, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

Enzo stepped up beside me. “We’ve got your back. We’ll find them. And when we do? We’re gonna make sure they regret every damn second they messed with our family.”

Damn right we will.

“Get on the phone. I want every capo in this city moving. We’re taking the Russians down. I don’t care who gets hit in the process. I’ll burn this city to the ground if that’s what it takes to get them back.”

Enzo gave a tight nod, his hand already going to his phone. He knew exactly what needed to be done—strike fast, strike hard, with no hesitation.

? ? ?

The room buzzed with that sharp, electric tension that settles in just before the world goes to hell.

Reid had tracked them down, finally, but by the time he did, night had swallowed the city whole.

We were hitting multiple locations at once, but where they were keeping Isabelle, Jake, and her mom—there was no room for a full-scale assault. They were trapped in the middle of it.

No army. No overwhelming force. Just Nina, Enzo, me, and a handful of trusted men—men who knew how to handle this kind of situation.

Three ex-Navy SEALs sat at the table, studying the building’s layout, strategizing despite the fact that we had no goddamn clue what was waiting for us inside.

The old man never understood why I kept them on the payroll. Thought I was wasting money. Turns out, I had a sixth sense for this kind of shit.

Weapons were checked in silence, each click and snap a ticking of a countdown.

Nina loaded her gun, her eyes as cold and hard as steel.

Enzo was already geared up, his usual determined look locked in place, the kind that said, “We don’t stop until it’s over—one way or another.”

I pulled on my own gear, the weight of the vest pressing into my shoulders, forcing me to focus.

Nina broke the silence. “Luca… we’ll get them back. But you’ve gotta promise me something.”

I barely glanced her way, already too wound up to deal with anything but the job. “What?”

“When we get them back, don’t shut her out. Isabelle did this because she loves you. Don’t let it rip apart everything you’ve built.”

Her words cut deep—raw and jagged. But I couldn’t make that promise.

“I’ll do what I have to,” I said, my voice hard. It was the only thing I could offer her right now .

And just like that, we moved out into the night, toward whatever nightmare waited in the dark.

The grim thoughts I’d been trying to bury clawed their way to the surface as we tore through the city streets.

Because apparently, my brain decided now was the perfect time for a horror show.

No matter how hard I tried to shove them back, they kept coming—nasty, twisted thoughts that made me question whether I’d ever had a grip on my sanity in the first place.

The fear gnawing at me wasn’t just about losing Isabelle; it was about what could be happening to her right now.

The memory of what they did to Nico’s wife surfaced, brutal and clear as day.

The Russians hadn’t just killed her—they had destroyed her.

She was carrying Nico’s baby, but that hadn’t made them pause.

They took their time, made sure she felt every ounce of their cruelty while completing some twisted checklist: Rape.

Torture. Shatter her. Destroy the baby. End her.

There was no emotion in it, no loss of control—just cold, calculated brutality.

And once they were done, they didn’t even have the decency to put her out of her misery quickly.

No. They let her bleed, let her suffer before they finally ended it with a bullet to the head, like they were doing her a favor.

It was the kind of thing that doesn’t wash off, no matter how much blood you clean up afterward.

The thought of Isabelle going through that? It made me want to puke. I could see it—her screams echoing in some dark room, her body broken, discarded like she was nothing. That goddamn image—her in that hell—kept flashing in my head.

My hands locked around the steering wheel, bone-white and shaking. Yet, the only thing I felt was rage.

That wasn’t helping. I had to believe we’d get there in time, but fear had its claws in me, whispering that we were already too late. That Isabelle and Jake were already lost .

Enzo, sitting beside me, glanced over, his silence heavy. He didn’t need to say anything. We both knew what was at stake. Knew the price if we failed.