Luca

“How long has that camera been down?” I turned to Marco for the answer, he didn’t do bull shit and I needed quick answers.

“It hasn’t. It was working fine when we did security checks earlier in the evening.”

“So someone broke it. They didn’t want us to see what happened.” I could see where all this was heading and I didn’t like it one little bit,

“So who would want to cause trouble like this?” I asked, my mouth was going dry and my body was on automatic pilot.

“Who wouldn’t want to cause trouble would be an easier question to answer.” Leo replied then thought better of his response judging from the redness creeping up his neck into his face.

“Well don’t just stand around here with your dicks in your hands, get back out there and get answers for me. I need to know where he is and what we’re up against. I need to decide what we do next.” I glared at each and every one of them so they’d know how deadly serious I was.

“Sure thing boss.” Vinnie said and patted Marco on the back as they turned to the others and started to agree a plan of who would go where.

My phone started to vibrate across the desk to announce an incoming call from Gina.

“Hey.” I answered with a raw throat and feeling ready to burst into tears, but desperately fighting it down in front of the male audience I had in front of me.

“Chloe one of my girls said she had a punter in earlier, South American or Mexican she wasn’t sure. Anyway he got kinda chatty and mentioned something about a boss of his being in town to tie up some loose ends. She made pointless chat with him as we do and he mentioned a long standing business deal that had been fucked up by a local down here that they were in town to ‘put it to bed’ as you might say. She didn’t mention it before because she just thought it was some guy sprouting pointless shit, but it sounds fishy to me. I think this guy could be linked to Luca going missing.”

/>

“Can we speak to her now? Will she talk to me or Freddie?” I looked over to Freddie to let him know he needed to stay with me and he nodded in acknowledgement.

“Yeah, I don’t see why not but I’ll bring her over to you. Don’t want more people than is really necessary being involved in all this if that’s okay. My girls are easily spooked.”

“Of course, head over now.”

Gina agreed and I hung up the phone. Luca’s men headed off to do their thing and Freddie stayed behind with me. Being alone with Freddie I could let my walls down.

“Why is this happening Fred? Why me? Why us?”

He shrugged and gave me a sympathetic smile.

“I don’t know Chloe, it doesn’t seem fair.”

“It’s not, it’s so unfair. We’ve only just found our way back to each other and now someone’s stepped right back in to fuck things up for us yet again. I can’t lose him Freddie.” The tears silently rolled down my cheeks as I spoke. “I can’t let this be the end. We deserved more than this. I swear to God I’m not letting this be the way it all ends for us.”

“It won’t.” He said, but he knew as well as I did what the world Luca lived in was like. Hell I’d only had a small taste of it and it was brutal, nasty, violent and unforgiving. You got your name on someone’s shit list in his life and it didn’t end well for you. These guys didn’t carry guns just because it made them look good. It was a necessity, part of the job.

“Let’s try and get a better hold on things, find out what the score is before we jump to conclusions. For all we know it’s someone just trying to scare Luca, scare us all.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do.” I sighed but neither one of us had the energy to think about the alternatives now. We had to focus on formulating a plan of action. Anything to keep our minds from wandering to all the other more realistic alternative outcomes to what had happened to Luca tonight.

Chapter 43

Gina’s girl couldn’t tell us much more than Gina had already told us. Some guy who couldn’t keep his mouth shut had bragged about being in town to sort someone out for fucking up a long standing business deal. The only useful information she added was that he had a tattoo of a snake on his left hand, not a cobra but a gun metal grey snake with an inky black mouth. She thought nothing of the dull colours until she saw his chest was an array of bright colourful tattoos and thought it was odd that the one on his hand was so dull.

I heard Freddie take a deep breath but before he could convey his reaction to this information his phone lit up with an incoming call.

“Yep give it to me.” He shot down the line as he listened intently and nodded.

“I already know, it’s the black mambas…I know but we should have seen this coming really, we were naïve to think the buck stopped with Sanchez.”

I gasped at that name, what the hell was going on and who was black mamba?

Freddie gave a few more orders then threw his phone down onto the desk and looked over at me.

“What’s going on Fred and don’t sugar coat this shit. How is Sanchez linked to this and who the hell is black mamba?”