Code of Silence

by Tessier, Shantel

  I run my hands through mine. “If he knows I got help, he may kill her. I can’t take that chance.”

  She places both hands on my shoulders. “There’s a chance she’s already dead. You can’t take that chance.”

  I pull away and shake my head, unable to believe that scenario. “He wants me. Luca. He won’t hurt her.”

  “You don’t know that!” she shouts. “You’re in this position because she went to Luca. What if he knows that?”

  “Keep your voice down.” I look around quickly to make sure Nite is still in the bathroom.

  Her eyes narrow on me. “He’s going to use you as bait. Make Luca go to him.”

  I know. Fucking bastard.

  “All three of you will be dead,” she snaps.

  “Either you help me, or I do this on my own. Either way, I’m doing as he says.”

  She lets out a long breath. “Fine. But for the record, I’m against this.”

  “Noted.”

  _______________

  An hour later, I’m walking out of Kingdom with one of Luca’s baseball caps and a hoodie on. I look like an idiot, considering it’s summer in Nevada, but I don’t want my face being recognized on one of the cameras just in case. I know the Kings are on Luca’s side and that Titan does a damn good job with security. The casino is covered in them—interior and exterior—so I gotta cover all my bases.

  Walking down the steps, stretched limos and cabs come and go through the circular valet drive. I shove my hands in the pocket of the hoodie and grip my phone. I have it on silent in case I get a phone call, so they won’t hear it go off. I need to keep it on me at all times.

  A hand grips my right upper arm. “Excuse me …?”

  “He’s waiting around the corner for you,” the male explains.

  My stomach drops. Does he mean the driver or Rossi? I didn’t think he would come himself. I go to look up at the man, but he snaps at me. “Keep your head down.”

  I drop it and take in a shaky breath. All I can do is pray that Jasmine has already called Luca, and he’s got Titan checking the surveillance now and they’re tracking the app I installed on my phone for her. I tried to think of every possibility for them to find me before I end up dead.

  We walk down the sidewalk and sweat drips down my back from the heat of the sun and nervousness. Rounding the corner, I see a black stretch limo looking out of place at the back of an alley. My sweaty hand grips my phone tighter. I wonder if Luca’s calling me right now. I put it on silent for a reason. I didn’t want to have the urge to answer it once he finds out what I’ve done. He’s going to be so pissed at me. If Rossi doesn’t kill me, he probably will.

  We come up to the limo, and the guy opens the back door. I just stand there. “Get in,” he orders.

  “I want to see my mother first,” I demand.

  He lets out a frustrated growl and shoves me inside.

  I slide across the back bench.

  “Haven.”

  I straighten and turn to see Rossi sitting across from me on the other bench with his back to the partition. He has his arms stretched across the top. A large duffel bag sits at his feet. I pray he doesn’t plan on stuffing it with my body. My mother sits beside him. Her hands are wrapped in duct tape in front of her and another piece is over her mouth. She’s alive, and there’s no blood or bruises. I let out a long breath. “Let her go,” I order.

  He just laughs but doesn’t open a door to let her out. My chest tightens at what he plans on doing with her.

  My eyes dart around the large space. It’s just the three of us until the guy that had my arm crawls in beside me. I scoot to the far side, pressing my back into the door.

  The guy goes to reach for me, but Rossi raises his hand. “Let her be.”

  I let out a shaky breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  He lifts his right hand and raps his knuckles on the tinted partition. “Drive.”

  I swallow. “Where are we going?” If he just wanted to talk to me, we could do that right here. He wouldn’t need to take me anywhere. Maybe he plans on just going around the block.

  His dark eyes look me up and down, and I feel my skin crawl. I hate how much I look like him. How my eyes are the same color and shape. I have his lips and cheekbones. I never saw it before. Of course, I never thought he would be my father. But now that I know, I couldn’t deny it even if I wanted to. He told me I looked like my mother, but he was lying. He knows we hold very little resemblance.

  “Get undressed.”

  I blink. “Excuse me?”

  “I said get undressed,” Rossi repeats.

  My mother begins mumbling something behind her tape, but he ignores her.

  I stare at him. My heart beating wildly as I’m hoping I misunderstood him both times. I look at the guy next to me. He looks to be around Luca’s age, but I don’t recognize him. “I … I don’t understand.”

  Rossi leans forward and unzips the duffel bag, pulling out a white dress. “Luca wants a bride. I’m going to give him one.”

  My stomach sinks, and tears immediately burn my eyes. I look from my mother to him. “Please …” I cringe at the sound of my own voice. I’ve never heard someone sound so desperate.

  “I know how much he loves you,” he says with disgust. “And I also know how much you love him.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut up!” he shouts. “You think I don’t know that the explosion wasn’t an accident? You went to him.”

  “I didn’t!”

  The guy who sits next to me backhands me across the face. I cry out, and my mother’s muffled scream follows. The force knocks me to the floor of the limo, and my phone falls out of my pocket. I scramble to get it, but Rossi is faster.

  He looks down at it and frowns. “I thought you’d be smarter than this.” Reaching over, he cracks the window and throws it out.

  The first tear runs down my face. That was the only lifeline I had.

  “Don’t worry, Haven. He’ll know exactly where you are when I’m ready for him to know.” With that, he looks at the younger guy. “Help her get undressed.”

  LUCA

  I sit up in my office at Glass when my cell rings. I don’t recognize the number, but hit answer. “Hello?”

  “Luca. It’s Jasmine …” she rushes out.

  I jump to my feet. “Everything okay?”

  “It’s Haven. She went to meet Rossi …”

  “What?” I shout, grabbing my jacket and rushing out the door.

  “He called her.”

  “When?” I run down the stairs outside of the building.

  “A little over an hour ago. He had her mom.”

  Shit!

  “He wanted her to meet him outside of Kingdom. He was sending a driver. I downloaded a locating app on her phone for you to track her.”

  I come to a stop. “Wait. Are you saying you two planned for this to happen?” I demand. My chest almost heaving with my breathing.

  “I tried to talk her out of it.”

  “Jasmine …”

  “She wouldn’t even listen to me,” she rushes out. I can hear her panting across the line. Her nervousness giving her away.

  Fuck! He’ll kill her. After what I did and said today to the reporters, he’s on to us. He knows. And she’s going to pay for it. “Where the fuck is Nite?” He was supposed to stay with her. He had orders.

  “Well …”

  “What did you do, Jasmine?” I start my car and throw it in reverse.

  “He’s fine. Just asleep.”

  I shake my head. “Where the fuck are you?”

  “Still at Kingdom. In your suite.”

  “Where is he headed with her?” My car turns sideways in the street as I pull into the traffic.

  “That’s the problem. It’s stopped. He must have found it and threw it out.”

  I hang up on her and call Bones.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  HAVEN

  “HELP HER OUT,” Rossi orders the young ma
n.

  He grabs my upper arm and yanks me out of the limo and shoves me forward. I look around the area, and fresh tears sting my eyes. The lights of Vegas are miles away. He’s brought us to the desert. And that only means one thing. He confirms it a second later.

  Opening the trunk, Rossi pulls out a shovel. “Start digging,” he orders and throws it at me.

  I catch it before letting it drop to my feet. Pulling my shoulders back, I lift my chin. “I won’t dig his grave.” I refuse to do it.

  He gives me a cruel smile as he takes a step closer. “Cute.” He grips my chin roughly and jerks my head back. I bite my tongue to keep from crying out at the pain. “This is for you, Haven. I won’t let a Rossi be a disgrace to this family.”

  Is he going to bury me alive? “I’m not a Rossi,” I grind out. “I’m a Knowles, you sorry son of a bitch.”

  He throws his head back, laughing as if I just told a joke. “You are just like me.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I spit out.

  “You are. You’re just too stubborn to admit it.” He gets in my face. “Your mother was a coward. And Jimmy was a coward. Luca did me a favor by killing that spineless bastard.” He shoves me away.

  I rub my chin. “Why do you care who I marry?” I demand. “No one knows that I’m yours. Why should it matter about the Rossi name?”

  “The Bianchi family has been a pain in my ass for years,” he answers. “He stole from me. Embarrassed me. And you marrying his son is his last step at taking over Vegas!” he shouts.

  I almost laugh. I hate John Bianchi more than anything, and I refuse to die because of him. Not like this. Not now. “Well, I think you should have done more homework,” I say.

  “What does that mean?” His dark eyes narrow on me.

  “My father signed a contract.” I hate Jimmy just as much as Rossi does, but I’m going to rub it in his face. I place my left hand out, showing off my ring. “It was a marriage license. I’ve been a Bianchi for two weeks now. The ceremony was just going to be a formality.”

  I don’t even get to smile in satisfaction at the look of pure rage in his black eyes. He doesn’t even allow me a second to take in a breath. His fist hits my face so hard that my head snaps back, and the last thing I hear is him ordering the young guy to put me in the car before the darkness swallows me.

  LUCA

  “Anything?” I ask Bones as he enters my suite.

  He shakes his head. “He must have turned it off before he ditched it.”

  By the time I got back to Kingdom, Jasmine was in tears and crying on the couch in our hotel suite. The location was gone. And so was my wife.

  I run a hand through my hair and remove my suit jacket. It was too hot and the expensive fabric too constricting.

  “Thanks,” Titan says before hanging up his cell. “James said that he watched her on the monitor, and she got in a limo parked in the back of the alley. He followed it for as long as our cameras would reach, and he ditched the phone just a block down the street. Threw it out the window.”

  “How many men were in the limo?” I ask him.

  “A man was waiting for her outside of Kingdom and walked her to the waiting car. He got in with her. There could have been multiple men inside. The windows were too dark to see.”

  “Fuck!” I kick the end table by the couch, knocking it over. The glass filled with scotch hits the floor and shatters along with the lamp.

  “We’ll find her,” Grave assures me from behind the bar.

  I shake my head. “That’s not my fear.” Rossi will take me to her, that I know. What I’m afraid of is the condition I’ll find her in once he decides to call me.

  Jasmine rocks back and forth on the couch, hugging herself while she cries. Nite stands over in a corner trying to come out of whatever Jasmine fed him. I haven’t asked and don’t care about at this point. He will handle that once he fully comes around. Right now, I need to find Haven and save her before it’s too late.

  I look away from him, but then go back. My mind wanders. Running over to him, I grab his upper arm and pull him into the spare bedroom. “Where did they take you?” I ask him. We never spoke about what happened to him. Not in detail. I knew he was taken from his house and then dropped off at mine. He chose to take a vow of silence, and I honored it until now.

  He rubs the back of his neck. “The desert. They tied me up and threw me in a trunk. About an hour later, the car stopped, and they made me dig a grave …”

  “Fuck,” I hiss.

  “It took about thirty minutes. But once I was done, they told me that was where they would bury me if I didn’t give them the information they wanted.” He clears his throat. “I refused to say a word. That was when they changed their minds and decided to take my tongue instead.”

  But they were stupid. When they dumped him off at my doorstep, they left his tongue. I made a call and had a doctor meet him immediately to reattach it. They couldn’t guarantee full recovery, but Nite beat the odds.

  “Do you remember anything about the location?” I ask.

  “Not really,” he answers. “I was disoriented. They had beat on me pretty hard. It was dark …”

  “What about afterward?” I dig.

  He shakes his head. “They locked me back in the trunk.”

  “Maybe—” My cell ringing back in the living room interrupts me. I grab it off the coffee table to see it’s a blocked number. “It’s him. Stay quiet,” I order, then answer, placing it on speakerphone. “Where the fuck is she?”

  He laughs. “Well, hello to you too, Luca. Or should I call you son?”

  My teeth grind. He knows. Which puts her life in even more danger. “Cut the shit, Rossi. Where the fuck is she?”

  “She’s here with me.”

  I fist my hands. “Where? Let me talk to her.”

  “She’s unavailable at the moment.”

  “Goddammit—”

  “But there’s still time,” he interrupts me. “I’ll send you an address.”

  “Rossi …”

  He hangs up.

  “Fuck!” I go to throw my cell across the room, but Bones grabs my hand.

  “You’re going to need that.” He takes it from me. “Break this.” And hands me a glass sculpture that looks like the Eiffel Tower. “We’ll get her,” he says, nodding his head. “We’ll do whatever it takes to get her back. Understood?”

  I nod, trying to convince myself when my phone dings in his hand. He looks down at it, and his jaw tightens.

  “What is it?” I ask. My heart picking up with adrenaline.

  He looks up at me as he shows me the phone. “It’s the desert.”

  _______________

  I drive about forty-five minutes out of town. The sun has started to set, and I know that he did this on purpose. He’s had her and her mother for over five hours. He waited this late, knowing that we’d lose daylight. He wants the advantage of knowing the area. And who knows how many guys he has with him. He’s either cocky and has no one, or he has an army.

  I turn my GPS off. It shows I have a little over two hundred feet left, but I don’t need it. I can see the lights from the limo ahead. I take a deep breath as I remove the gun from my shoulder holster. He’ll assume I’m carrying, and I want to show him that I’m not armed. I just want her back safe. He can do whatever he wants with me.

  I come a stop and turn off my car, but leave my lights on, needing as much visibility as possible. We’ll lose light very soon.

  “Where is she?” I ask, slamming the door shut.

  He stands there with his arms crossed over his chest and legs spread wide. A guy I know by the name of Donatello stands next to him. I should have killed that fucker that night at the chapel. I take a quick look around. The limo is the only other car out here.

  “Pat him down,” Rossi orders his man.

  I yank on my shirt; the buttons go flying. I shove the shredded material off my shoulders and toss it to the dirt. Throwing up my hands, I turn in a circle so
he can see I’m not packing. When I turn back to face him, I demand, “Where the fuck is she?”

  He looks over at Donatello and nods.

  He walks over to the limo and opens the back door. He bends down reaching inside and pulls her out. My chest tightens when I see her. She’s wearing a fitted white lace dress that looks like a wedding dress. Her wrists are duct taped behind her back and a piece is over her mouth. Her face has bruises on it and blood runs from her nose, over the tape and onto the once white dress. It’s dirty as though she’s rolled around in the dirt since she put it on.

  “Haven …” I step toward her.

  Rossi pulls his gun out and holds it up at me.

  I stop and throw my hands up. “Let her go!” I shout.

  “You know, you two are like Romeo and Juliet.” He muses with laughter. “And we both know what happened to them.”

  “Let her go!” I scream at the top of my lungs.

  The smile drops off his face. All humor gone. He reaches over, grips her hair, and yanks her to him. She cries out behind the tape. He shoves her to her knees, yanking her head back, then places the gun to her temple.

  “Stop! Stop!” He’s going to kill her and make me watch. He’ll kill me last. He may even let me live a few days after he throws her in the grave that separates us just to make me suffer. “What do you want?” I find myself asking even though I know the answer. I just need to keep him talking while I wait for my backup. They’re not far behind me.

  “What I want is to shoot you dead, throw you in the grave, and then bury her alive with you!” he shouts. “What I want is for her to suffer for your family’s sins.”

  “What sins?” I demand.

  “You know, your father and I were friends once.”

  “What the fuck does that matter?” I want to run to her, but I’ll let him waste time venting about the past.

  “We worked together. Had plans to take over Las Vegas. But he took something from me. Something that could never be replaced.”

  “What?” I ask, taking a quick look at Haven. Her eyes are closed, and tears run down her bloody and dirty face.

  “She meant everything to me!” he shouts, getting angry all over again.