Page 48 of Kidnapped By the Boss

Chapter Sixteen: Katya

The next few days were tense around the Costello estate. For one, Vincent and I were hardly speaking. I’d taken to sleeping in one of the guest rooms, and every time I thought I might be able to talk things out with him and go back to being happy newlyweds like we were supposed to be, I thought about the way things transpired between us and I got emotional all over again. I wasn’t dumb. I knew that I had played a role in things getting muddy between us, but the concern that had been baking in my belly since our big blowout and growing ever since then was that I was beginning to see Vincent’s true colors.

And my own.

What if the people we appeared to be right now were the people we actually were? What if he was a man incapable of truly trusting and putting his faith in me as his wife and business partner, and what if I was a woman who got so defensive every time my judgment was called into question that I did something chaotic like what I did with Lyn? The more I dwelled on what happened between Lyn and I, the more I realized that I shouldn’t have handled it that way, but I also don’t know how else I could have handled it. Clearly she was committed to continuing to pretend she was just some victim of the world around her—I had to break her somehow.

The most terrifying thing was not knowing if the version I’d gotten of Lyn a few days ago was even the right version. Or if there evenwasa right version. How calculating was Antonio? Calculating enough to prepare Lyn for the eventuality that we may figure out she was playing a card and teach her how to expertly deal another one? Was what she told me about what he was up to accurate, or was it just something else designed to move the pieces on Antonio’s massive chess board forward a square?

Everything felt so out of my control right now. I was the most scared I’d ever been, and I didn’t even have Vincent to weather through it with me. After so many years of being alone, finding Vincent felt like I was being saved, and now it felt like I was going back to being alone again.

Well… not entirely alone. I had a son now.

Whether it was to keep me out or keep Lyn in, Vincent pulled any lower-ranking soldiers off of the containment unit and had Taylor and Annie running alternating twelve-hour shifts to guard the outside. Whoever was watching over it at the time, the opposite person was responsible for collecting Lyn’s one meal a day and bringing it to her. Just dropping it off and leaving—they weren’t even allowed to talk to her. Annie told me she’d tried a couple of times with her, but Taylor said there had been not a single word exchanged between the two of them.

Vincent’s plans to root out The Wreckers were coming up short as well, although unfortunately for us, that had no bearing on how much of them we were seeing. They were staging attacks all over the city. Reckless, ruthless attacks with no apparent motive. Some of them seemed targeted at us, while others seemed totally random. They weren’t even stealing product or trying to siphon money—it was like the entire group was a two-year-old throwing a massive, citywide temper-tantrum. After two days of it, we met with Mitzy to see if the Organized Crime Unit he was a part of had any leads or any way of determining when the next attack may be, but they were just as stumped as we were.

It meant every single one of us was living each day on pins and needles.

No sooner than I thought about it, I heard a loud explosion in the distance. I was sitting in one of our main house’s lounge rooms trying to calm my nerves by reading, and the explosion sounded like it may have come from the front of the property. I jumped up and ran outside, just in time to see Vincent booking it out of his office. Our interactions had been short and not-so-sweet the last few days, but regardless of that, I ran up to him just as he was climbing into one of the golf-carts we kept near the front of the main part of our property to drive the long, winding road out to the gate.

I hopped in and asked, “Do you have another gun on you?” Without thinking twice, he reached into his waistband, pulled one out, and handed it over to me. “Thanks. Do you know what this is?”

“None, but I can’t reach security.” He took off driving up the path. “I hate this. I hate not knowing what’s going to happen next.”

“Me too,” I said. “I feel like I’m losing years off my life. I’m going to be a withering old lady before too long.”

“You’ll still be beautiful,” he replied quickly and my heart jumped up a little bit. This place we were in right now was breeding some strange emotions. If anything, it was reminding me just how much I really did love Vincent. I just wished things weren’t crashing the way they were.

“Thank you,” I said. “Hopefully you still think that when I’m actually old. You’re not allowed to trade me in for a younger model.”

He side-eyed me. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Part of me wanted to tell him just to pull over, but I resisted. I knew that we had more important things to be worried about right now.

We finally made our way to the gate at the front of the property where a big plume of smoke was wafting up off of the security booth. Mario was standing here already, but he didn’t seem to be actively panicking, which really only meant whatever had happened, Vincent and I missed it.

“Mario,” Vincent said as we climbed out of the golf cart.

I ran over to the security station and saw that the small booth that was there was completely destroyed. It looked more like fire damage than explosive damage, but in the corner where the woods surrounding our property met the gate, there was a generator that Vincent had installed to make sure the security station could always operate even if we lost power on the property for some reason, and the whole top was blown off. Massive flames licked up off of it.

“Mario said it sounds like they threw a Molotov cocktail at the generator, which then blew up and spread damage to the booth. No one was hurt.” I looked over and Vincent was standing just behind me, assessing the damage inside of the booth. “This has to stop.”

“I agree,” I replied.

“He’ll come to you if you leave here,” Vincent said quietly. “That’s what Lyn said, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’d stay close. Do you think you can lure him out?”

It was shocking to hear him actually asking me to do something related to work after avoiding it for so long. “Yeah. I can do it for sure.”

“Let’s go then,” he said. “I want this guy gone.”

We quickly climbed back into the golf cart and made our way back to the main part of the property where he and I each climbed into our own cars. As I was pulling out of the garage around Vincent, he gave me a look, and I could see all of the fear in his eyes, and him silently telling me to be careful. I mouthed, “I love you,” to him and he quickly nodded and mouthed it back. All of our issues aside, the love that existed between us was stronger than all of these forces working against us. It gave me hope that there wassomesort of path forward, if only we could stop being stubborn and get out of our own way.

I pulled out of the property, keeping my eyes on a swivel to look foranythingthat might be Antonio keeping an eye on me. Lyn said that he had our property marked, and even though I didn’t believe most of what she said, I knew it had to be true because Antonio continuously seemed to be able to find our staff whenever they left our property. Vincent had our security system replaced, and from that point on, it seemed like our staff weren’t being tracked as closely. But Antonio still managed to get on the tail of several people.