Angelo Vitali was the full embodiment of everything Willow had ever wanted to be when she grew up. She thought she had made a jolly good showing, though. He had been thoroughly taken off guard by her appearance, and she had not given even an inch of ground even when she beat her rather hasty retreat.
She parked in the interior garage of her small home, which sat on the outskirts of the city, being very unassuming. It was a far cry from the manor she had grown up in, but needs must.
"Did you get it!? Did you do it!?"
Gemma came bouncing down the hall and threw the door between the garage and the house open, her blonde curls performing an interpretative dance of glee. She was only a year younger than Willow, but she had the energy of a teenager.
Gemma had two speeds: awake and asleep. The entire time she was conscious she was a constant bundle of energy and enthusiasm, sometimes difficult to wrangle but always useful.
The two women could not have been any more different. Willow was classical in her tastes. Gemma was wearing a bright pink hooded sweatshirt which was long enough on her to act like a dress, matching nail polish, and sneakers.
"Of course I did." Willow's confident facade returned the moment there was an observer.
Gemma clasped her hands to her mouth and squinted and squealed with pure glee. "Oh my god. So perfect. I waited until you got back to even try to hook in so you could be here."
"So you potentially missed an hour of surveillance?"
"I suppose? Anyway. Let's not waste any more time!"
Gemma raced to the small bank of computers tastefully set up in what had once been the conservatory, hmmed and haaaed with some settings, then brought up a video screen. The view came from the point of view of the underside of a chaise lounge. There were two sets of male legs nearby.
"I can only assume you wanted a beating," Angelo Vitali's purr came through the speakers, almost as if they were in the same room.
Gemma's head whipped around to Willow. "Oh my gosh! He sounds terribly scary, doesn't he? Was he awfully horrible in person?"
"He was a gentleman," Willow replied, her lips curling slightly at Gemma's enthusiasm.
"Uh. No." Bobby's voice replied, full of attitude. "I wanted to… I don't fucking know."
"It sounds like he's in trouble," Gemma gasped. "I wonder what he did?"
"He probably talked over surveillance footage so the person who commissioned it couldn't hear a word of what was being said," Willow replied, narrowing her eyes ever so slightly at Gemma. The micro-expression was enough to make the younger woman gulp and seal her lips.
"Enough about me. What are we going to do with Digby? We're not keeping him, are we? He's no Mark."
"Nobody is, boy," Angelo purred in reply.
"We've been torturing him for weeks and weeks. It's starting to get boring. Maybe we should give him back. Maybe we can ransom him. Does he have any exchange value?"
"Boy, be assured I have considered all options. I know precisely what I am doing."
"What is he precisely doing?" Gemma hissed the words in a falsetto whisper.
"Not telling Bobby," Willow sighed. "The problem with bugging someone's house is it doesn't precisely work if they share as much as your average brick wall."
"Yes. It must be terrible to be in a relationship with someone who constantly has their own secret agenda."
Willow cut her eyes at Gemma, whose little smirk was spreading by the second.
"It's only been two minutes. This is the beginning of a process that may take days or weeks."
"Well, this will record non-stop. I've got terabytes of storage. And the spy guys will help review it."
"That is the plan."
Gemma swung around on her chair and reached out for Willow's hand. She took it between both of hers and placed a sweet kiss on the back of it. "You're not worried about your little brother?"
"Digby? No. Digby is the most devious and deviant of us all. If anybody is capable of surviving Angelo Vitali, he is."
WHACK!
Gemma jumped in her seat as the speakers suddenly vibrated with distant sound.
"What the fuck was that?"
"It would seem that Angelo is punishing Bobby." Willow's eyes glittered with what might have been amusement.
"What did he do?"
"Angelo finally found out about the blog."
They had been reading Bobby's blog from the moment it first went online three months earlier. They'd combed every word of it for clues as to the whereabouts of Matilda Braybrooke, a young woman who had married Angelo Vitali after the death of her father.
No clues had emerged, but a fascinating portrayal of the dynamic between a violent older criminal and an even younger violent criminal saddled with one of the most vigorous causes of Stockholm syndrome Willow had ever encountered had been revealed.
"Oh, the blog. Wow. He's really not going to like the Tik Tok then, is he?"