“Okay, I’ll get your favourite.” He said then in a slightly lower tone he added. “I love you.”
The warm and fuzzy came earlier than I thought.
“I love you too.”
I warmed the plates ready, then created a comfy nest on the sofa and made a start on a bottle of Chablis that was chilling in the wine fridge. One glass turned into two then three. By the end of the bottle I was starting to get antsy, it’d been over three hours since I’d spoken to Luca and he still wasn’t home. Oh well, maybe things got busy and he’d been held up at the club. I didn’t give it a second thought and settled back into the mountain of cushions.
I woke up on a jolt in complete darkness on the sofa. The blue light of the clock on the TV told me it was 4:21am but the house felt eerily empty. I ran upstairs to double check and then outside, but the car Luca had used this morning wasn’t there and he was nowhere to be seen. I checked the phones but no missed calls or messages, something definitely felt off.
I pressed Luca’s number on my speed dial but it just went straight to voicemail; it had been switched off. I tried Freddie’s next and he answered my call straight away.
“Hey sis, what’s up? Can’t sleep?”
I could hear music and voices behind him and it sounded like he was still at the club or some club anyway.
“Is Luca with you?” I snapped, cutting through the polite chit chat to get to the point.
“Big bro headed home hours ago. Is everything okay?”
I could hear him start panting as he moved away from the noise and into somewhere quieter to talk. My patience and tension was growing by the second, my nerves slowly fraying as he huffed and puffed his way to a less busy area.
“Freddie he hasn’t come home yet.”
I closed my eyes and prayed that he’d remember some last minute urgent appointment Luca had that he’d forgot to tell me about, or he’d spot Luca across the bar. The line went muffled and I could hear men’s voices then Freddie came back on the line.
“Marco’s going to check the car park see if his car is still here.”
“Great, can you ring me back Freddie I’m starting to freak out here.”
That was an understatement, I’d bypassed freak out and was heading into full meltdown territory.
“Sure, it’ll be okay Chloe, I think Luca is big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself. He’s probably bumped into an old friend and lost track of time. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
With that Freddie hung up and my stomach went into knots of barbed wire. Luca didn’t do chats with old friends, he never wasted a minute of his time on anything unless he really had to. No this was all wrong and I started to pace the living area holding my tummy to stop the nausea bubbling up inside me like an active volcano about to erupt.
I decided to try Gina and see if she knew where he might have gone to. Three minutes later I was putting the phone down feeling even more clueless and extremely nervous, she had no idea either and agreed it was totally out of character for him to be missing for so long.
The minute I hung up on Gina the lights on my phone flashed Freddie’s name and I pressed accept.
“Chloe his car is still here. We’re gonna check the CCTV inside and outside the club to see if we can find out what’s going on.”
“Bring the CCTV here I want to see it.”
I wasn’t being left in the dark over anything. If something was going down I wanted to know every detail.
“It’ll take us another twenty minutes to get to you. We need to get on top of this now.”
“I don’t care how long it takes, you bring it here or I come there. Okay?”
“Fine, see you in fifteen.” Freddie hung up and I headed into Luca’s office to fire up his computers ready and pour myself a whisky to settle my nerves. Now was not the time to let that meltdown mode take over. I needed to stay focused and get to the bottom of this. I needed to get Luca home. I tried ringing Luca’s phone repeatedly whilst I waited for Freddie, but every time it clicked straight onto his damn voicemail.
Minutes later Freddie and a group of Luca’s men strode purposely into his office and gathered around the desk where I sat anxiously waiting biting my nails and twisting my hair around my fingers.
“Have you seen it yet? The footage?” I asked looking between all the men in front of me.
“No. Let’s get it all fired up.” Marco said reaching over me to set it all up.
We sat and watched the black and white footage and saw Luca leave the club and head towards his car, we saw a blacked SUV drive out of the car park moments later, but the cameras that would give us the information we needed as to what exactly happened between the moment Luca walked through that exit and the van speeding off was out of action. It didn’t take a genius to guess that Luca was inside that SUV when it left the car park though.