Riccardo
The place is too dark and too quiet. Even as I pull my car off the road to park, I’m already scanning the surroundings-and I can’t say that I like them. The boat rental looks completely empty, but the question is whether it actually is empty.
Could the guy have lied to us?
I glance at Elena as we both linger by the car. Her blond hair stands out even when there’s no light except for the stars in the sky. She would look ethereal if not for the smudge of Edgar’s blood on her collar and the grim and concentrated frown on her face. Elena has the look of a killer in her eyes, and when I move closer to her she only glances at me quickly.
“It’s strange,” she says in a low voice as her gaze darts all over the place. Elena is tense all over, barely keeping herself from rushing inside right away-but even her instincts tell her to stay back. Damn it. Isn’t this exactly why I told her to wait for more people?
I nod and open my mouth to tell Elena to stay in the car when, all of a sudden, she starts toward the docks with the same damn determination I saw before. She really can’t think logically, huh? But it is her son we’re here for, so I can’t really expect her to be coolheaded. I only huff under my breath, watching the pale outline of her figure, before following Elena into the darkness.
There is a gun tucked under my shirt, and I reach for it instinctively even before we reach the uneven rows of boats. There’s a rickety wooden shed, half absorbed by the moonlight and shadows, standing a dozen feet away from us. Its door is wide open to the rusty boats thrown over one another on the shore, but the doorway is too dark to see what’s hidden inside.
Without a word of agreement, Elena and I direct our steps to the shed and all the while my gaze keeps darting over the boats. They’re a perfect shelter for anyone who would want to attack us out of nowhere, and I grip my gun tighter whenever I catch movement from the corner of my eyes. Of course, it turns out to be dried seaweed or a plastic cover fluttering in the wind every time, but that makes me all the more aggravated.
My ears are tuned into every noise around us, but the rustle of waves and the occasional rattle of boat chains muffle everything else. It really is too good of a place to lay a trap, and the closer we get to the shed, the clearer I feel a sense of danger in my chest. Shit. I shouldn’t have let Elena come here at all.
“Wait,” I finally say when we’re just a few feet away from the door, and I catch her elbow. “I think-”
But I don’t get to finish the sentence because, at the same time, my ears catch a new noise. It sounds like a scratch of something against wood followed by a squeak of the panels under someone’s feet. The shadows inside the shed start moving, and I barely have enough time to pull Elena behind me before we hear a sniffle.
“Mom?”
I hear Elena’s gasp, and I have to use all my strength to keep her from pushing past me to the door. My own heart jumps up with a rush of relief when I hear Max’s voice, but I can’t let her run to him, not yet. Because it’s not only her son who appears in the doorway.
Holding on to Max’s shoulder and slightly limping in his step, a man walks out onto the front porch of the shed and stops there, visibly holding Max from getting out of his grip. The man is old, short, and clearly of Mexican descent. He looks relaxed and almost rejoiced to see us. The look of his dark eyes is calm as he eyes us for a moment, and the smirk on his lips only grows wider when I finally meet his gaze.
“Don Riccardo.” He tilts his head in fake respect. “It was a pleasure to know your father.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, I can feel my blood boil. My grip on my gun tightens, and I have to take a deeper breath to stall myself. How dare this bastard speak of my father? As if he himself didn’t give the order to kill Cassio Messina.
Of course, I recognize the Mexican before us right away-even though it is the first time I get to meet him in person. It’s hard to confuse the father of the Mexican gang with someone else.
Nicolas Escarra has always kept himself away from our eyes, trusting his sons and nephews to carry the violence in their hands, but Matteo did manage to get a few blurry photos of him. He has never looked intimidating to me-just an old man who knows how to do business better than the rest of his family.
But now, Nicolas does look menacing. I don’t know if it’s the relaxed posture or the smirk on his lips, but his confidence is blaring in a way that makes me uncomfortable. It’s impossible for him to be here on his own, isn’t it?
My gaze automatically darts to Max, and something in my chest tightens when I notice just how tight Nicolas’ grip is. In the night shadows, it’s hard to see if the boy has any bruises or other injuries-but it is clear that he’s scared to death. Max is panting and trembling, weakly leaning into Nicolas’ side, and his eyes are fixed on Elena with the look of a lamb in the claws of a lion.
“Let me go,” Elena hisses behind me, trying to tug her arm out of my grip. She’s too reckless to be left to her own devices, so I open my mouth to tell her to be quiet when soft laughter interrupts me.
“Don Riccardo, show some mercy. The mother and son should be together.” Nicolas demonstratively pats Max’s shoulder and grins at Elena. It makes her shiver, I can feel it under my palm. “You can come and take him, Signora.”
Despite my protests and her own obvious fear, Elena pries herself out of my grip and forces herself past me. Shit. I clench my jaw as I watch her every move. Does she have at least an ounce of common sense? I guess it wakes up in her mind when Elena lingers at the base of the porch with a wary glance Nicolas’ way-but Max holds out his arm toward her, and she immediately rushes to him.
“Mom! It was so scary-” Max buries himself in Elena’s embrace, and even I can hear a cry of relief as she wraps her arms around him.
“I know, baby, I know, I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t know-where were you?”
“I’m sorry, Max, I promise, it will never happen again.” Elena catches his face in her hands, wiping tears off his cheeks-but I don’t hear the rest of their whispers. Because there’s something way more important for me to focus on.
Even with Elena at arm’s reach, Nicolas doesn’t move and only watches the scene before him with a small smile-and for a second, I stupidly allow myself to believe that it’s not a trap. A muffled scratch of a rusty surface quickly pulls me back to reality. I immediately look around, and I see the shadows all around us coming to life.
Shit.
I fix my grip on my gun as I watch more and more people appear from behind the boats and out of the darkness of the shed. There are a dozen of them at least, and I don’t have to look at their faces to know that they’re Mexicans. I don’t have to see their eyes to know who they’re looking at.
It is a trap-but not for Elena.
She notices the gang members a second later and sharply turns to me, holding Max to her chest, and I want to tell her to get closer-but I swallow the words before they leave my mouth. Nicolas doesn’t even budge in her direction. The grudge is between his family and mine. They won’t touch her and Max, and I want to keep her out of the reach of their bullets.
“You look caught off guard, Don Riccardo. Is it so hard to accept your defeat?” Nicolas says with a calm note of politeness, and I straighten up and look him right in the eyes.
“Do you think I am going to surrender?” I chuckle mockingly, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on him.
Nicolas shrugs. “I think it would be a wise thing to do. After all, you can’t count on your family to help you.”
“I can always count-“