Page 73 of Savage Little Secret

Dmitri

Luca arrives at my penthouse right on time.

I wave him inside before shutting the door. “Do you have the list?”

“Yes,” Luca replies as he pulls a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and slaps it down on my kitchen island. His scribbled handwriting in black ink fills the page. “All these people hate my guts so much that they may be willing to come after you just for talking to me. They’d probably shoot the barista taking my coffee order if it wasn’t too big of a mess to clean up.”

“I don’t recognize any of these,” I murmur as I strain my eyes to read the first several names. “Your handwriting is shit.”

“Don’t worry, my hand is very steady with a gun in it,” Luca assures me before walking over to my coffee pot to help himself.

The farther down the list I go, the more frustrated that I become. “I don’t know any of these people. Maybe we’re⁠—”

I freeze at the sight of Enrico Ferro’s name at the bottom. I know that son of a bitch.

Luca looks over his shoulder at me as he stirs some sugar into his coffee. “See someone you recognize?”

“Enrico Ferro,” I tell him. “I captured him and tortured him not long ago.”

Luca loses his grip on the spoon in his hand, making it clatter on the floor at his feet. “Enrico? Are you sure about that?”

I nod. “I thought he was behind a shooting that almost left me dead. Cara could’ve been killed too. So, I…questioned him.”

“You probably beat him half to death. He’s probably as pissed at you as he is at me!” Luca says, looking and sounding more serious than usual as he walks toward the island.

“How well do you know him?” I ask.

Luca frowns. “His uncle is the don of the Italian mafia in Vegas. I was supposed to marry his sister and well…I think she’s dead.”

My eyes widen. “Dead? What the hell happened?”

Luca throws his hands up. “I don’t know! She disappeared. I thought my family had something to do with it. After all that mess, I came to Vegas to start my life over and move on. I knew Enrico was here, but he hasn’t had the balls to confront me face-to-face.”

I run my palm over my face, uneasiness creeping up my spine. “He must be behind all of this. He has the most motive. He not only hates you, but he hates me too. That’s more than enough reason to kidnap Cara and make me trade you for her.”

Luca gives me a wary look. “You’re not going to hand me over, right?”

“No, I need your help,” I reply. “We need to find every property that Enrico or his uncle own around here. She can’t be that far away.”

Luca nods. “I might have a little mouse in my family who feeds me information every once in a while. She could probably get me that information.”

“Contact her now. I need to let the others know so that we’re ready to go. We’re running out of time,” I tell him.

“The others? Who all are you working with?” Luca asks me.

“A Bratva friend and his men and Sean O’Malley,” I reply, seeing Luca’s face contort in shock.

“You’re working with the Irish?” he questions me.

“Right. You’ve missed a lot.” I sigh before telling him. “Cara is Sean’s daughter. He ordered her to be a spy and infiltrate my life to convince me to call off my marriage to Annika Suyunov so that the Russian families would fight among each other.”

Luca blinks at me in shock. “And you…fell in love with her?”

The side of my mouth turns up a little. “I did. Now, we’re going to rescue her.”

As I walk away from Luca, I hear him let out a slow, long exhale. I’m sure that’s one of the craziest things he’s ever heard, but he can marvel at our story later. Right now, the clock is ticking, and we have a lot of work to do.

After a few hours of pinpointing every property that Enrico’s uncle owns and gathering everyone who is willing to fight for this cause, we’re finally ready to go.