Page 38

PSYCHO

My mother gets into my SUV, and my brothers drive separately. I don’t know how long they’ll be, but Bones didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. When my mom urged that we had to go, and go now, his dry reply was, ‘Where’s the fire?’

She sits in the passenger seat, tapping her foot anxiously.

I reach over, and grab her hand while I drive, to attempt to calm her. She looks over at me with a teary gaze.

“When your father told me how her life had been, the sadness consumed me. I begged to see her then, but she declined.”

With her free hand, she wipes a tear that falls down her cheek.

“How does she look? Is she healthy?”

I nod slowly as I turn onto the highway.

“She’s fucking beautiful, Mama. I don’t think her life has been easy, and she probably refused to see you, because she thought Padre murdered her father.”

Squeezing my hand, she laughs under her breath.

“All she had to do was ask, and I could’ve told her he didn’t. Alejandro was his friend. Her mother must think the same. After he died, your father offered to pay for the funeral, and provide for them. He wanted to pay for her college, everything. You know how he was. It was all refused.”

I nod.

“I know, Mama. Instead, she chose to raise her daughter in poverty.”

I can’t contain the bite in my tone, because it’s fucking ridiculous. And somehow Carlo, who will fucking die, convinced her that her mother was right. We do a lot of bad shit, but we don’t go after our own men unless there’s no choice. If we’re faced with that, we don’t make a goddamn show of it.

Pulling up to my house, I throw my SUV into park, and climb out, as my heart drops to my fucking feet. My guards are dead, laying just past the gates, and my house is on fucking fire. My brothers pull up, and I yell to Bones to watch my mother, who stands horrified, looking at the flames. As I run toward my house, I hear my brother bark orders at me.

“Psycho, no! Massimo, I said no!”

Kage comes up behind me, and grabs my shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing? Wait for the fire department.”

I turn to him with a glare and shove him off me.

“If she’s in there, I’m getting her out. Would you wait for the fucking fire department, if it was Raina locked inside a burning house?”

I don’t wait for an answer, because we both know what he would do. Exactly what I’m going to do. I rush up the steps to my open door, and prepare myself to find Hadley unconscious at best. I rub at my chest as I walk inside with Kage behind me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

He shrugs as I step over debris.

“We’re brothers. We do stupid shit together.”

Walking through my house, we enter the kitchen first, finding flames near the gas stove, which I don’t imagine is a good thing. I go through each room quickly, only looking for one thing.

Hadley.

Three firefighters appear behind us, as we begin to take the stairs.

“Mr. Bonetti, would it be okay if one of us goes in front of you?”

I move to the side and wave him through.

If I were anybody else they’d be dragging me out, kicking and screaming, but they know better. I’d hate to kill a man trying to do his job, but nothing, and fucking no one, is going to keep me from her.

Every room we go into, and don’t find her, the harder my heart pounds, as I begin to wonder if she’s here.

Kage echoes my sentiments as we stare into my bedroom, and again come up empty.

“Someone started that fire, Psycho. They probably took her, and the arson is to slow you down. Get your attention elsewhere.”

Bones appears when we get back downstairs, and he shakes his head.

“Nobody is in the basement.”

One of the firefighters comes up to us as smoke filters in.

“Sir. The fire is mostly contained on the other side of the house, but I have to suggest you get out. Fire is dangerous, but so is smoke inhalation.”

I nod and make my way to the door, the smoke stinging my eyes, and causing all of us to cough, as we walk through the threshold.

Standing outside, as the firefighters work to get the fire out, Bones gets right to work.

“Any idea what this bullshit is about?”

I swallow hard, a thick feeling in my throat before I speak, when Kage’s words about regret come back to me, and hit me far differently than when they were spoken.

“Regret is a poison like cancer. It kills slowly, painfully. It eats away at you, until there’s nothing left.”

Telling Bones the story of how I pulled Jimmy into our world, sounds worse to me than it did in my mind, when I made the call. And there it is.

Regret.

My brother rubs his temples, staring at me incredulously, and his voice reflects how I currently feel about myself.

“Jesus Christ, Psycho. You sold her?”

I shake my head.

“I told him the deal was off.”

Bones narrows his gaze at me, disdain written all over his face, and sounding in his voice.

“I’m going to guess Jimmy didn’t fucking agree, Massimo. You don’t dangle bloody meat in front of a rabid fucking dog, and think when you tell him no, he’ll tuck his tail between his legs, and go home. That is not how men like Jimmy Valentine work.”

My other brothers watch our standoff with worried glances, because they know I may not be welcome in the family business anymore, but I say the only thing that keeps circling my brain.

“I have to find her.”

Reaper holds my sobbing mother, and that’s another person I’ll have to deal with after this. The heartbreak in her gaze is heavy. I didn’t know she was Hadley at the time, but I think that will be little comfort to anyone.

Bones drags his hand down his face, the agitation with me nearly palpable. I did this. This was all me.

“I need to call Max Esposito. What you have dragged us all into, is something we don’t have experience in, but he does.”

I’ve heard of Max, and his team of vigilante assassins, but never met him. Rumor is, he started as a man that took jobs like any assassin, and when he found his long lost sister, everything changed. Finding her altered his business, and now they have a team that only goes after traffickers, and their buyers. I thought at some point, Bones said he was retired, but I don’t say anything, because I don’t have a fucking clue where Hadley is, and I’ll take anybody’s help.

The guilt gnaws at me as I rub my chest in circles, as if there’s any way to make the pain subside. I did this.

If he beats her.

I did it.

If he rapes her.

I did it.

If he tortures her.

I did it.

If he kills her.

I fucking did it.