Page 122 of Red Retaliation

Oscar veers over to the side of the road and yanks on the handbrake. Craning my neck to see up and down the road, I jump from the van. Arianna won’t stand on the pavement on the off chance I turn up, but she’ll know I’m looking for her. She knows I won’t let her down.And I won’t. “Check the parked cars! Check everything!” I bark.

Hot on my tail, the others jump from the van as I sprint up the road, my eyes darting from left to right. Catching up with me, Del matches my frantic pace. “I’ll kill them. All of them,” I growl, sweat pouring down my brow. “Galvatores and Bristonis alike!”

“You won’t succeed in killing anyone in this state, mate!” Del says calmly. “Let’s just find the girl first.”

“I fully intend to,” I mutter, glancing inside another car at the side of the road.

If Arianna is concealed in a car boot, tied up or drugged, I won’t know because there won’t be anything to alert me to her presence.

“ARIANNA!” I bellow, garnering the curious stares of several passers-by. I’ll fucking kill them too if they impede me.

I scan the road. One side holds a towpath and the other, a line of terraced houses. Is she being held hostage in a house? Or...

My eyes move unwillingly in the direction of the canal behind the hedge.

“RED!” Cal yells. “There’s maximum signal here! But it’s stationary...”

Heart racing, I spin on my heels and double back to where Cal stands, his phone held up monitoring different angles. “Where exactly?”

I must calm down. I need to be methodical and do this logically. Butthere’s nothing in my mind right now that is methodicalorlogical. I just want the woman I love back, and don’t want to think too deeply about why the signal isn’t moving.

Oscar disappears into the thorny hedge lining the towpath. If Arianna is lying there, dead - thrown away like rubbish left to rot...

“IN HERE!”

Lurching forward, I barrel into the hedge after Oscar, ignoring the sharp thorns scratching my hands and face. Pushing my way out through the other side of the bushes, I brace myself for the worst, but there’s just Oscar.

And the phone: the screen is smashed, but it’sherphone. However, there is no sign of Arianna.

“Fuck!” I sink to my knees on the concrete path. Without her phone, there’s no way of locating her - she could be anywhere.

Except...

Aware my men are standing watching my very public meltdown, I take a deep breath and slowly raise my head. “We’ll go straight to the organ grinders,” I snarl, jumping to my feet. “The Bristonis first.”

I just hope I’m not too late.

CHAPTER

89

Red

ICOULD SHOOT the locks off this door, but even in this desperate state, I can’t risk the cops on my back. Despite my connections, it’s too big of an incident to play down, and nothing can slow my search.

Pounding my fist on the securely closed and deserted Bristoni headquarters, I turn around and stride back to the van, not bothering to stow my gun under the seat.

“The place is definitely empty. There are no lights on anywhere,” Oscar says, starting the van.

No, there wasn’t, which is a fucking rarity. The jewelry factory is Bristoni’s core base and has been since time immemorial. In all my years of knowing those slimy bastards, there hasn’t been one occasion when the place showed no sign of life. “We’ll go to his fucking house instead!”

It’s unlikely Edoardo Bristoni will be so stupid to hold his business partner’s daughter and ex daughter-in-law captive in his own property. That’s unless Galvatore himself is in on this latest stunt. Either way, I’ll torture Arianna’s true location out of him.

“There’s no point in going to Bristoni’s.”

“What?” Twisting around, I glare at Del. “Why the hell would you say that when you know I want my fucking wife back!”

To my horror, I realize I’m close to losing it. Tears of anger, frustration and screaming raw fear like never before swamp me.