SWNOVELS Devil’s Lily: Chapter 35
I tap my foot on the floor, my agitation growing with each passing second as the elevator slides up to my penthouse. My hands ache from being clenched so tight and the metallic taste of blood fills my mouth—I’ve been biting the inside of my cheek raw without realizing it.
“You need to remain calm, Maximo,” Dante murmurs beside me and immediately takes a step away from me when I direct my glare at him.
“Calm?” The word comes out as a serpentine hiss. “My wife was stolen from under our fucking noses, inside my own home—where she should be the safest. This is as fucking calm as I’m going to get, Dante.”
While we wait for Michael’s intel on the scrambled feeds, I’ve decided to come back home. Though home feels like a mockery now, violated and empty.
The elevator doors slide open, and I storm out, Dante and Perro trailing behind me. My men are all lined up in the hallway, heads bowed in shame. They should be fucking ashamed. Fucking incompetent fools.
“Maximo, I–” Marco steps forward, but I don’t let him finish. My fist connects with his face before I even register moving. A satisfying crunch of cartilage is followed by a spray of blood as he grunts and staggers backwards.
The Glock materializes in my hand, trained between his eyes. The collective intake of breath from my men is almost musical. But Dante’s there, his hand closing over mine. “Maximo.” He shakes his head slowly.
I wrench away from his grip, holstering the weapon. “Pray,” I spit at Marco, “that not a single fucking hair on her head is harmed.” The threat hangs in the air as I shoulder past him into the penthouse.
I swallow around the lump in my throat when I walk into the kitchen and see the ingredients littered on the countertop. She was just cooking, damn it. Who the hell would do this?
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Michael. I answer instantly. “What did you find?”
He’s silent for a moment, then he says thickly, “I’ve sent you the footage I recovered from the cameras. Check your email.” He sounds shaken, but I don’t have the time to worry about what might be going on with him.
I end the call and quickly scroll to my inbox. Two video files. My heart pounds as I hit download.
The first video shows the hallway outside the front door. I frown as I watch my men suddenly scramble for the elevator, likely when the fire alarm was tripped. Moments later, the emergency stairwell door swings open just as Marco walks out of the front door.
He glances down both sides of the hallway and does a double take when he notices the stairwell door ajar. As he starts walking towards it, I squint at the screen, catching movement above him. Pausing the video, I zoom in. One of the ceiling panels has been shifted, leaving a gaping hole.
When I press play again, someone dressed in all black silently drops down behind Marco and whips their gun at the back of his head, sending him sprawling to the floor, knocked out. The person tucks their gun into the small of their back and turns around, facing the camera.
I inhale sharply. Emilia.
What the fuck? How the hell did she get to my penthouse from the airstrip so quickly?
The video ends as she walks through the front door. Dread coils in my gut as I swipe to the second video.
In this one, I watch Elira closing the refrigerator after putting a bowl of salad inside and then jumps back when she sees Emilia standing right there. They exchange words, but I can’t hear them. I had purposely disabled audio in my system to prevent sensitive information from being captured in case anyone hacked the feed.
My wife shifts back and raises her fists, ready to defend herself. She’s brave, but no match against Emily’s speed and expertise. My frown deepens as I analyze Emily’s quick movements. She’s good, too good. This isn’t some random skill. She’s been professionally trained.
She presses a pink cloth against Elira’s nose, knocking her out, then slings her over her shoulder like she weighs nothing.
The camera pans to the hallway where Emily exits into the stairwell. She closes the door behind her just as the elevator doors slide open and my men pour out. They notice Marco’s sprawled figure on the floor and rush to him, frantically trying to wake him up.
I close the video, fingers clenched tightly around my phone as I hit Michael’s number again.
“I got into the camera on the eastern side of your building where that stairwell leads and was able to trace the path Emily’s car took,” Michael starts before I can say anything. “Sending you a picture of the car, plates, and the route now. I’ll meet you there.”
“Thank you, Michael,” I tell him as I spin towards the living room where my men are waiting for me. They straighten the second they catch my expression, and for a moment, I imagine grabbing them by the collars and shaking some damn sense into them.
But I push past them, ignoring the insistent voice in my head saying even if we end up tracing Emily’s location, it would be too late. She’s too skilled for this to be her first time doing something like this.
“I—I had to tell the other guys about this new development, Maximo. Romero and his men are also coming to back us up.”
“Good.” I end the call and storm out of the house towards the garage, my men behind me.
Dante slides into the driver’s side of my SUV, and I take the passenger seat, needing to be at the front of things. Around us, engines roar to life, and I tap my foot impatiently—a habit I didn’t even realize I had—as the cars crawl out of the garage in a slow procession.
After the fifth car exits, Dante pulls out too, more vehicles following in line as we trace the route Michael sent us.
I study my map, frowning when I realize where Emily has taken Elira. An old industrial area, riddled with abandoned warehouses left to rot for who knows what reason.
I open the tracker app again and stare at it blankly, willing the tracker to come to life but no such luck. Whatever device Emily’s using to hide their location is too damn good. My phone’s screen dims and goes dark, and with a frustrated sigh, I drop it on my lap, glancing out the window impatiently.
“Can’t we go any faster? Reach out to the lead car and tell them to floor it.”
Dante nods and radios Perro. As the convoy picks up speed, my phone rings, and I frown at it. It’s Rafael. “What?”
“Michael filled me in on what’s going on. I’m sending some of my men to the location now. We’ll find your wife, fratello.”
My chest tightens, a lump forming in my fucking throat as fierce emotion hits me. We are going to find her. We have to. “Thanks, brother.”
“When you do, do not touch her.”
I don’t need to ask who the ‘her’ refers to. It’s obviously not Elira, leaving only one other person—the woman I once considered a sister. “This is out of your jurisdiction, Rafael. It happened on my territory. She took my fucking wife.”
There’s a line you don’t cross, and she fucking crossed it without a second thought. All bets are off.
“I know. And she will be punished. I’ll make sure of that. But do not fucking touch her, Maximo. She’s mine.”
My jaw works furiously, but in the end, I just cut the call and slam my elbow against the window next to me, embracing the stinging pain that fills my being. Fuck Rafael. I decide what to do with the little shit. Little traitor.
Rafael might be the king of New York, but Queens is my fucking territory, and in this situation, my authority supersedes his.
Emily fucked around, and I’ll make sure she fucking finds out. Family ties be damned.