“What now?” I fished my phone from my shorts pocket and scrolled through the messages. “Oh, fuck.”
“Yeah,” Luca growled. “Oh, fuck is right. You picked one hell of a day to go sailing.”
“What’s going on?” Alex asked, her eyes darting between us.
“Get in the car,” Luca ordered.
Alex
Sonny stayed at the marina to deal with his boat, while I got into the car with Luca. My stomach twisted into a mess of nerves until I spotted Marcello behind us in his Maserati, keeping a steady pace. My back molded to the leather seat as we raced through Devil’s Creek. Luca drove like a psycho, whipping around turns like we were on the highway.
I gripped the door handle, fear shaking through me. “What the hell is going on, Luca? You have to stop keeping secrets from me.”
Luca kept his eyes on the road and ignored me, gripping the steering wheel with his jaw clenched. Lately, he was losing his edge. It seemed as if Luca were unraveling. Did care more about me than he let on? He was so closed off, a mystery even after all these years. And I was sick of being kept in the dark.
“Tell me why you ambushed our trip and are driving like a lunatic.”
He glanced over at me, his knuckles white from wrapping them so tightly around the steering wheel. “Okay, fine. You want the truth?”
I leaned closer to him and muttered, “Yes.”
“This shit with the Albanians started close to two months ago. I went to Berat to meet with the Kurti crime family.” He shook his head, lips pursed as he stared at the road. “My father sent me to make a new alliance for our European counterparts. Everything was going according to plan. We had drinks, we made deals, and then I woke up the next morning in my hotel room without my cell phone.”
I rested my elbow on the armrest and looked over at him. “What did they take?”
“They tried to steal encrypted files. Thankfully, Drake’s software was on my phone, and they didn’t gain access to the Salvatore Global files. But they got something else. Naked pictures and videos of you. Of us.”
My jaw unhinged at his confession. “They have pictures of me?”
He nodded. “And sex tapes.”
I covered my face with my hands and sighed. “I can’t believe this.”
“I’m sorry, baby.” He reached over and squeezed my thigh. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I kept you away from Devil’s Creek because I wanted to keep you safe.”
“Why do they want me?”
“They borrowed fifty million dollars from the Knights and refused to pay the loan.” He swerved around a woman driving at a snail’s pace, his movements effortless. “So I took Marcus Kurti’s wife as collateral.”
“You killed her,” I whispered.
The day of the shooting, Luca taunted the men with the possibility of the crime boss’s wife being alive and used it to get me away from them.
“He left me no choice. That motherfucker wasn’t paying us back, no matter what I held over his head. He’s in too deep with the psychopaths tied to Il Circo.”
My grandfather had insisted I take Italian lessons after I met Luca. He thought it might help me uncover information about the Salvatores. In Italian, Il Circo meant The Circus, which only piqued my interest more.
I moved my hand to his thigh as he raced up the hill. “What’s Il Circo?”
“A club where anything goes.” He flew past the guard gate with Marcello behind us in the Maserati. “It’s by invitation only. They hold monthly auctions on the Dark Web. Men from the depths of the criminal underworld will bet on anything from women to the outcomes of death matches.”
My stomach churned at his confession, and I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to know the truth about our situation. I turned in my chair, so I could see his face. “Have you ever placed a bet?”
He shook his head. “I have a lot of vices, but there are some lines I don’t cross.”
“Who is trying to kidnap me? The Albanians?”
“If they get their way and list you for sale at the Il Circo auction at the end of this month, we will have a lot more men to handle. And given the Knights current predicament, we don’t have the manpower to fight a war on our own.”
“That’s why you need me to become your queen?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I’ve been doing everything in my power to stop the bleeding. Drake is monitoring the Dark Web for suspicious traffic that links back to you or the Knights. But it’s only a matter of time. The Kurtis have a long-standing relationship with the men at Il Circo. If they want you added to the action, it will happen eventually.”
My heart slammed into my chest, my pulse pounding so hard my ears rang. “What happens if they succeed?”