Page 17 of Enzo (Redcars #1)

SEVENTEEN

Robbie

I woke up in Enzo’s arms, and he hugged me before letting me go, then waited outside the bathroom door as I showered and dressed before shadowing me downstairs. I was mortified and exhausted, every muscle tight, my skin prickling with the sense something—or someone—was out of view. And then last night…

Maybe it wasn’t him?

A face in the window. Just a glimpse. Half-lit. Half-shadow. Gone in a blink, but it had been there. Then another face, or had I imagined that?

The brick through the window.

The other face, grinning, pointing…

Jamie and Logan were already tearing into the security system as if it had insulted them. We were in the garage office, the air heavy with stale coffee, solder smoke, and the thrum of tension. Jamie was checking every wire, every junction box, muttering as he traced the network as if it were a map to something buried.

“Two,” I murmured to Enzo.

“Sorry, sweetheart?”

Sweetheart?

The endearment gave me strength. “There was someone else out there with John.”

“One of the other men?” he asked gently I wanted to cry again.

“No… it looked like… he…I don’t know”

“They hacked the wires to pieces,” Jamie called in, crouched outside the back door. “Cut the feed at the junction behind the breaker.” He pulled a laptop closer and tapped a few keys.

“How do you know this shit?” Rio asked.

“I know computers and I know wires,” Jamie said, and huffed in disgust. “but our system wasn’t killed pretty, it was hacked with a fucking machete. The only usable footage we have is this.” He turned the laptop, showed us something grainy, timestamped. “Backup camera,” he added. It showed the far edge of the yard where the chain-link met the alley wall. Two figures slipped through the gap—hoods up, shoulders hunched, faces hidden. One of them moved as if they belonged there, the other was clumsy, hesitant.

“That’s the only frame where we catch them,” Jamie said, voice flat. “Everything else is dark.”

I stared at the screen, pointing at the taller of the two. “John,” I said on a breath, my heart pounding. The image was nothing more than shadow and suggestion, but the chill crawling over my skin was real. That was the same silhouette I’d seen at the window. Same height. Same tilt of the head. John had been trying to get to me—at me. “And that… it’s the man with the car.”

“Who?”

“Vinnie.” I remembered his name, his face, and the fact he’d scared me.

Rio cursed.

“Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

You’re sure no one got in?” My voice cracked, and I hated that it did.

Jamie stared at me, his blue gaze steady but grim. “They didn’t get inside.”

Enzo tightened his hold briefly, “Sweetheart, do you remember anything about where this John guy held you?”

I shook my head. Everything was a haze, broken, tiny pieces of nothing at all. “Dark, a warehouse, cold, one room. When I ran, I crossed the freeway, but I didn’t see outside.”

Enzo hugged me, “I want that man dead,” he said in a dead tone.

I clung to Enzo, but I couldn’t hold onto him all day, and finally I had to step away and pretend I hadn’t lost my shit. Whenever he was near, I was hyperaware of him, and I wanted to sit with him, and kiss him, and then regretted feeling that, and I was caught in this endless loop of questioning what the hell I was doing.

Jamie was glued to his laptop, Rio fixed the window, welding bars across the space, Logan paced and talked to his ex on the phone about not visiting with Cassidy at the weekend, citing work—lying to her.

Me being here was fucking everything up.

Even Tudor visited, limping, leaning on his cane, exchanging clipped words with Logan before walking straight over to me. I winced, bracing for the inevitable—this was it. The part where he told me to leave. That I was too much risk. That I was endangering the people at Redcars.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he found Enzo, eyes sharp and filled with a fury I didn’t expect from someone who was so frail and recovering from an accident.

“Enzo,” he said, voice low and controlled, but lethal. “Find whoever did this to Robbie. Find who scared him. And finish it. You don’t stop. You don’t sleep. None of you let this lie.”

Enzo nodded, jaw clenched, silent and deadly. I saw Rio nod as well, but Jamie was still tapping away.

Then Tudor pushed himself upright with a soft grunt and made his way to the couch where I sat like something broken. He lowered himself next to me, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and pulled me gently to his side.

“We’ve got you, Robbie,” he said, his voice gentler now but no less fierce. “You’re our family, and we’ve got you.”

That broke something in me. The tears welled again, not just from fear, but from the unbearable weight of being cared for. Every part of me wanted to pull away, to disappear into the shame and the self-hate. But I didn’t. I let myself lean in. Just a little. Because something in me, something small and bruised and still alive, wanted to believe him.

Maybe they really did have me.

Maybe, this time, I wasn’t alone.

He left then, stopping one last time to talk to Enzo. I heard the name Killian—that was the lawyer guy who’d helped Logan, which meant nothing. I didn’t need a lawyer, I needed to be safe.

“Fucking asshole,” Jamie snapped, his mouth a tight line, as he tipped his laptop screen so everyone could see.

Enzo stiffened. His hands curled into fists at his sides, trembling.

“Vinnie,” he snapped.

“Didn’t know about the bakery cameras. Rookie mistake,” Jamie said.

“So we can’t find this John guy, then we track Vinnie down,” Enzo said. “And get him to talk.”

“People like that deserve what’s coming to them,” Rio said, cold as winter steel. “We find him, and I swear to God, I’ll skin him.”

I blinked.

“I’ll drag him into the alley behind Carters,” Rio went on, calm and brutal. “Take his goddamn kneecaps out one at a time, and when he’s screaming, I’ll ask him what the fuck he was doing sniffing around Redcars and where this John guy is. Then I’ll bury him in a pothole so deep they’ll build a Starbucks on his grave and never know.”

“That’s enough, Rio—” Logan began. He glanced behind him as if he expected someone to be there—maybe Gray, who’d been hanging around a lot.

“He threatened Robbie, Logan,” Rio’s mouth twisted. “He came into our house, and I know that fucker. Slimy, out for the money, and he’s affiliated.”

“Affiliated to who?” Logan asked, stiffening.

Rio glanced at Enzo, lips thin, regret in his expression as if he’d said something he shouldn’t.

“Stone Cross,” Enzo murmured.

Logan shot him a glance. “Your old crew?”

“Yeah.”

I swallowed hard. Vinnie wasn’t one of the three who’d hurt me, well, not then, but what if he was now? Who was Stone Cross? Were they connected to John? I felt sick.

Jamie’s expression didn’t change, but he stepped closer to Rio as if he were bracing for something in case Rio snapped in the other direction. “We’ll find Vinnie. We’ll fix this,” he said.

“I want Vinnie gone,” Rio said, so quiet I almost missed it. “Not scared. Not warned off. I want to get the information from him, and away from my family.” He shot me a glance. “I want him off the face of the earth.”

Enzo looked up. His voice cracked like stone against stone. “Then we find him, we do this clean. No cops. No trail. We find him, and we end it.”

I didn’t need to ask what “end it” meant..

All I knew was that these men—these hard, broken, beautiful men—had somehow claimed me as their family. And if Vinnie came back, if that tattoo on his wrist meant what they said it did, if he’d come sniffing around for reasons none of us could name yet, some connection to John, he’d regret it. Then they’d find John.

And they would kill for me.

Enzo would protect me, kill for me.

That truth hit somewhere low in my gut, sharp and overwhelming. No one had ever chosen me, protected me, threatened violence for me. Not like this. Not with the full weight of history and fury behind it. It made something unravel inside me, something cold and tight I hadn’t even known was still coiled there. I was used to running, hiding, surviving. But this? This was war in my name. This was love wrapped in blood and vengeance.

It terrified me.

It made me feel safe.

As for Jamie and Rio?

They’d make it hurt first.

There was something terrifying and comforting in that too. In the way they closed ranks around me without question. Like I was worth it. Like I belonged here, at the heart of all that rage and loyalty. I wasn’t just some broken thing they’d taken pity on. I was family. I was theirs.

And maybe—for the first time in forever—I wanted to be.