Wounded Redemption by Brook Wilder
Chapter 16
Nico
I paced the living room floor, glancing every so often at my son, who was tracking my every movement with his eyes. Rory had only been gone three hours, but already the anxiousness of letting her go was starting to eat away at me. She had been right last night; someone needed to protect Anthony, but now I wished I had entrusted him to my sister or her best friend and accompanied her myself.
Now all I could do was wait for word that they were on their way back from the city.
My cell rang, and I answered it immediately. “Yeah.”
“Angelica is secure,” Vincent replied, heaviness in his voice. “She didn’t say anything on the ride over. No issues.”
“Good,” I stated, clenching my jaw. I didn’t know what made her go off her rocker like that, but it could have been a number of things, really. We had moved her out of what she had come to know as a safe place, but after what I saw this morning, I couldn’t trust her to be near the boys. I didn’t know what her mental state was presently, and she could decide to end not only her life but that of her son or mine.
I couldn’t take the chance, and the safest thing to do was to separate her from the group until we could figure it out. Hell, I didn’t know what I would do with her after this was all over and if we all survived. Rory had let me listen to her tape, and I had felt the sweet hell she had, transporting me back to that night that had changed my life forever.
Angelica had gotten the raw end of the deal, but she didn’t blame me. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I was just as guilty as the rest. I should have fought hard to protect her, pushed my father until he had given up on doing what he had done to her, and afterward, tried to find her, knowing he wasn’t one to just kill a pawn before it suffered.
I should have done all those things and more, yet I hadn’t, and for that, I would never forgive myself.
Now we had her and Lorenzo to worry about, to figure out what to do with them for the future. “How many guards did you leave?”
“Three,” Vincent replied. “Three of what I have left anyway. I can stay.”
“No,” I growled. “I need you here.” When Rory got back, we were going to move again. I didn’t trust that my father couldn’t find me, and the attack on the penthouse had been far worse than I had let on to Rory. She thought that only a few guards had been killed, but I had actually lost six fucking men, good ones at that, picked off like they had been sleeping on the job. My father was sending me a message that he was coming for my family, and I couldn’t let that happen.
Which was why I shouldn’t have let Rory go today. Something was gnawing at my insides, my concern for my wife and her safety starting to take over any rational thought. If it weren’t for the fact that Vincent wasn’t here to protect my son, I would already be speeding toward the city myself.
But I had made a promise to my wife, and I wasn’t going to go back on my promise. “I’ll be there soon,” Vincent said before ending the call.
I threw the phone on the table and thrust a hand through my hair roughly. The guards had checked in thirty minutes ago, and everything was fine. Rory had been in her office, and there was no sign of a threat.
I had to believe that.
What I couldn’t fucking believe was that my wife was the owner of a fucking paper. I was so proud of her, and while I knew she would rather have Harper back from the dead than be the owner, it spoke volumes as to what he had thought about Rory for him to gift her his pride and joy. While we hadn’t talked about the future and whether she was going to continue on, I wanted her to. She loved to write. It was her passion, and like my sister had told me once, Rory was damn good at it. I wasn’t a man to hold her back, unless, of course, her life was in fucking danger.
I didn’t think that Rory understood me last night when I had told her that she was my soul. I was acutely aware of everything about her, from the way she held her lips when she was thinking about something to the laugh that told me she was actually enjoying herself. I heard every breath she took when she slept, and last night, I had held her as tightly as I could without her freaking out about it, scared to death that it was going to be one of the last times I did so. This war was coming to a head, and soon I would have to fight my father myself. He wasn’t going to stop unless I killed him, and if this article shit fell through, I would have to go after him.
There was a good chance I wouldn’t make it, but it would be a cold day in hell that he would.
Anthony made a noise and I walked over, picking him up out of the playpen. God, he looked like me, but there were signs of Rory in him as well. I never thought I wanted to be a father, but holding my son like this was a feeling I couldn’t describe.
I had almost missed it. I had been so wrapped up in what my father had been doing, how I wanted to destroy him, that I had nearly given up my entire life to the rage.
Rory had saved me. That chance encounter at the party, her smile on mine, that was what had saved me, and I would live for that smile every single fucking day of my life. I didn’t give a shit about the Mafia or the fact that if my father died, I would be in charge. I never wanted to be. I wanted it to all go away, and now I had more of a reason than ever to ensure that the D’Agostino Mafia didn’t rise out of the ashes once we were able to put my father away.
When I was able to do so. “Where is your momma, huh?” I asked my son, pressing my lips to his temple and praying that I would get a call soon. Anthony was the best part of me, but Rory was what I lived for. She was more than my wife. I had treated her like shit the first few months of our marriage because I didn’t know what I had before me, but now, now I knew that she was everything in my life. Rory calmed the monster inside me, and if wasn’t for the fact that I was in the midst of a war with my father, I would put my guns down forever.
Sure, they would call me names, tell me I was a coward, but there were more important things in my life, namely one that I held in my arms. I didn’t want my son to grow up like I did, though he wouldn’t, given who his mom was. Anthony was going to know that I loved him and that anything he did, I would support. My father had one thing in mind when I was born, and when he realized I was nothing like him, he had cast me aside, hoping for a stronger son that he could mold into a monster.
There had been no more children for him, not legitimately, and he knew that the Mafia wouldn’t accept just anyone.
Hence the farce with Lorenzo, in hopes that he would be viewed as being mine.
Now my father had nothing. I had both Lorenzo and Angelica. Elias was fucking dead, and Carmine couldn’t touch my family or me. I would die first.
I was starting to get to him, hence the reason he had attacked the penthouse. His move was like a toddler that had thrown his toy because he couldn’t get his way, and I knew that I was on the verge of ruining him.
I just had to hang on a little longer and keep my family safe in the process.
Drawing in a breath, I placed Anthony back in his playpen and picked up my cell, finding no notifications from the guard that had gone with my wife. We were all using burner phones for now, Rory having left without one so that her guard could do the check-ins.
Fuck me, this was torture, and I hated it. I wanted to know. I hated being in the dark about anything.
Vincent arrived shortly after, arching a brow. “Are you okay, boss?”
“Fuck, no,” I breathed, grabbing at my hair. “Shouldn’t they have checked in by now?”
Vincent frowned, looking at his watch. “You haven’t heard anything?”
I shook my head no, and he pulled out the burner phone he was carrying, looking for the number that Rory’s guard carried. Dialing the number, he held the phone up to his ear. I watched as he gave a thumbs-up when someone picked up the line. “Status?”
But his thumbs-up quickly was replaced with concern on his face. “Who the fuck is this?”
“What?” I asked, rising from the couch. “What is it?”
Vincent’s jaw clenched, and he held out the cell. “It’s—fuck, it’s your father.”
All the blood drained out of my face as I snatched the phone out of his hand. “Nicolas,” he greeted, sounding ominously cheery. “You ran from me.”
“What do you want?” I said instead, not falling for his tricks. If he had a burner phone, then there was something wrong, something I didn’t even want to consider, but deep down, I already knew.
My father tsked into the phone. “Here I am trying to carry on a conversation with my son, and all he wants is for me to get the point. Fine. I have your wife.”
I closed my eyes, my worst fears coming true. He had Rory.
“You know I tried to warn her,” he continued as I fell to fucking pieces on the inside. “I tried to tell her to keep her nose out of my shit, but she couldn’t.” He chuckled. “The funny thing is, I like her. She’s a hell of a woman, Nicolas.”
I swallowed the bile that rose in the back of my throat. “What do you want?” I asked hoarsely.
“Want?” he repeated. “I want you to come say goodbye to your wife, son. I’m going to do all the things I talked about back during our little visit. She crossed a line, and she must be punished.”
“Take me,” I said desperately. “You want me, don’t you? You want to kill me, right? Take me instead.” Vincent was crossing the room, his expression murderous, but I didn’t give a shit. Rory didn’t deserve to be in the crosshairs of my father’s rage. He had wanted me all along, and I had pulled her into this shit.
“You see,” my father replied. “I would take you up on that offer, but it seems that your wife means more to you than I had first thought. So no, Nicolas, I won’t trade Rory for you. However, I will let you say goodbye. I’m sure you would like to see Rory before I tear her apart.”
It wasn’t going to fucking happen. I wasn’t going to let my father have her. She wouldn’t survive him, no matter how strong she was. “Where?”
He rattled off an address of a warehouse near the Hudson River. “I know you are away from the city, so I will give you all the time you need to get here, but don’t push me too far, Nicolas. I’m being far too generous already.”
“Give me your word she won’t be hurt,” I demanded. “Your word.”
“Fine, fine,” he sighed. “You have it, but don’t delay me too long. I would hate to hurt them both.”
He clicked off before I could register his last word, throwing the phone to Vincent. “Check in with Angelica’s guards.”
“They were fine,” he began.
“I said check in,” I growled, cutting him off. My father always had a backup plan, and since the boys were with me, there would be only one other person that he would be interested in having in his grasp.
I watched as Vincent let the phone ring at least ten times. “They aren’t answering,” he said in a low voice.
“They aren’t going to,” I sighed. “He’s got Rory and Angelica.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
I rounded on him. “Fuck, yes, I do! He has my wife, and he’s going to kill her and Angelica both! He’s baiting me, getting me there so that he can tie up loose ends.”
Vincent’s jaw worked. “What is the plan?”
Hell, I didn’t know, but as I gazed at my sleeping son in the playpen, I knew I couldn’t watch his mother die at the hands of my father. She deserved better. “Round up the guards we have left. We are going to my father.” He still wanted me dead. I was 100 percent sure of that.
But I wasn’t going to let him take Angelica or Rory down with me. If he killed me on sight, then they were as good as dead, but if we could get the upper hand on the guards that I was sure would be surrounding the warehouse, we stood a chance. My father hated to be backed into a corner, to feel like he was losing control, and that was the very fucking thing I needed to make sure happened.
“We will get her out,” Vincent said softly as I leaned down and kissed Anthony’s forehead, in case I didn’t survive the end of this war. I had this happiness in my grasp, everything I thought I didn’t need right here, and it was about to be ripped away. Fuck. I had so many regrets with Rory, so many things I wanted to do with her, show her, provide for her and our son.
I doubted I would get the chance now.
Straightening, I forced myself to turn away and reach for my coat that was sitting on the back of the chair. “I want to leave in ten minutes.”
“Yes, don,” Vincent replied, moving from the room to make sure it happened. I drew in a breath, adjusting my cuffs as I thought about all the ways I wanted to kill my father.
One of us wasn’t making it out alive.
