My Mafia Madness 4

Chapter 5 - Heartfelt Gratitude

After having evacuated from the villa with his men, Dante was at that minute traveling with his entourage towards their dockside warehouse to regroup and come up with another plan to locate their enemy.

He was not planning on quitting his search for Alexa until he found her safe and sound.

As the group of cars were parked just outside of the large industrial warehouse, they were each emptied of the two dozen or so men traveling inside them.

Smoking a cigarette to help calm himself, the Reaper himself led his men inside of the warehouse, followed along closely by Nicola, Luca, Cecilio, Bruno, Max, Carmen and several dozen others.

As soon as they entered Dante marched on up the staircase towards the office where he would begin going back over everything that they had to find some sort of a clue.

He was not giving up so easily.

In Dante’s mind, Vincenzo hadn’t won just yet.

Nicola on the other hand, held grave concerns for Alexa’s wellbeing now as unfortunately for her, she was still Don Moroni’s captive and they had failed to retrieve her from him.

And what’s worse, no doubt Vincenzo would go completely off grid now, making any chances of them finding him a second time next to impossible!

In truth, Nicola feared that Dante might never see Alexa alive again. Not that he would ever divulge such a fear to his close friend and Don.

The last thing that Dante needed right now was negativity.

Instead, he needed new ideas.

Several of the men headed to the infirmary to be treated for minimal wounds and injuries after the attack, leaving only Dante alone with Nicola, Luca and Cecilio up in the office.

Bruno, Max and Carmen had volunteered to assist those who had been injured downstairs.

As Dante began shuffling through several pages frantically, Cecilio and Luca both shared a knowing look with one another as Nicola stood nearby for his boss in his time of need.

No doubt Dante was incredibly angry with himself for failing Alexa.

Not that he had failed her.

Dante had done everything within his power to help try and save her. They were all there to vouch for that. But to him, this simply wasn’t the case.

The heightened tension held thick in the air surrounding the frantic Don. Nicola chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment while he stood by watching Dante come undone.

Nicola knew Dante very well.

Any minute now he would erupt. Take it out on himself and destroy anything in his path.

Anger was always Dante’s go-to emotion when he felt helpless and vulnerable.

But Nicola was there for him, and he fully intended on supporting Dante through this unfortunate hiccup that they had endured here this evening.

And just as predicted, Dante suddenly stopped gathering up various pieces of paper and stood in silence, scrunching up the papers in either of his hand as he leaned his weight down onto the clenched fists, now both full of documents.

His head was hung low and his eyes were closed.

Deciding it might be better for Dante if there wasn’t so much of a crowd in attendance with them right now, Nicola turned to face Luca and Cecilio as he spoke his next command calmly.

“Boys, go and make us some coffee, hmm?”

Knowingly, Luca looked from his Don to Nicola before he nodded his head and turned to leave.

Cecilio remained silent as he too turned and exited along with Luca, the two closing the door softly behind them and leaving Dante and Nicola alone.

As soon as the door shut, Dante spoke.

But his voice sounded unlike it usually had. Normally he came across as powerful, dominant and full of confidence.

But not now... no. Now he sounded small, weak and in pain.

“I was so close…”

He all but whispered his words in sudden and overpowering despair.

“She was there, and I was so f*****g close.” he winced, shaking his head.

Nicola was very smart.

He knew Dante well and the Don wasn’t the kind of guy you would go up to and wrap your arms around for a hug.

Do something like that to the Reaper and you’d probably get shot in the foot rather than a reciprocated hug!

But Nicola needed to show that he was there for his friend and boss, somehow.

Closing the space between them, Nicola moved to come and stand beside Dante, but the Don suddenly stopped him by raising his hand up into the air as a gesture of needing space.

“Don’t.” Dante warned Nicola simply.

“You can’t do this to yourself, capo.”

Nicola spoke up front now, not seeming to care about the repercussions that would come afterwards.

“You may think that you’ve failed her, but you haven’t. We will find her, it’s only a matter of time.”

Dante gave a surprising scoff, shaking his head slowly for a moment as he began to speak his distorted mind aloud to one of the only people in the entire world he could trust.

“I never thought that a man like me would ever deserve something as pure as love…” he began, opening his darkened emerald-green eyes and lifting his head upwards.

As Dante went on, he was leaning down over his desk on both his clenched fists.

“From a young age, my father taught me that marriage had nothing to do with love. Instead, you married to further yourself in life. Whether it be for increased wealth or power, a marriage was merely a contract that suited both sides beneficially…”

Nicola let out a sigh as he started walking across the office towards the waiting minibar.

He immediately got to work making his Don’s favourite drink, as well as one for himself as Dante went on.

“That day… it changed everything for me, Nicola. It changed my entire outlook on what life meant… on what the possibilities could be for someone like me. And it all happened the moment I met her. She had something that drew me to her, like a moth to a flame. Something about her enthralled me to a point where I could think of nothing else.”

“Sounds like Alexa had you from the get-go then, huh? Hook, line and sinker.”

Nicola spoke over his shoulder as he poured the aged scotch in over the cubes of ice waiting at the bottom of the crystal glasses.

“Actually, you don’t know about this yet but… Alexa and I already ran into one another before the day you two met at Romano Enterprises.”

Nicola then paused, screwing the cap back onto the scotch bottle before taking both glasses, one in either of his large hands and turning around to face Dante.

Of course, Dante looked puzzled by this news.

“Wait, what? When?”

Nicola let out a long sigh as he started making his way over to the couches with both glasses.

And just as he had hoped, his enticing bait successfully managed to lure Dante out from where he was brooding in behind his desk.

The Don rounded his desk and walked over to join Nicola sitting on the sofa.

Handing Dante his freshly-made scotch on the rocks, the two both sat down beside one another with their drink in hand as Nicola continued his story.

“Yeah, it’s kind of a long story but I could give you the shortened version, I guess. You see, the boys and I were doing the usual rounds out late one night when we noticed some Cobra creeps were causing waves in Reaper territory. It looked like they were busy attacking someone when we first arrived, so we moved in to get a better look at the situation.”

“And?” Dante urged, clearly intrigued by the story his underboss was now telling him.

“And… the woman they were attacking... was Alexa.”

Dante’s eyes widened in outrage as he sat upright with a newly formed frown on his handsome face.

“What!”

“Hey, at least let me finish, yeah?” Nicola suggested, lifting his left brow at the Don.

Rolling his eyes, Dante slumped himself back down on the sofa before gesturing with his hand for Nicola to continue on with the story.

“Anyway… so me and the boys, we… talked with the Cobra thugs and things got pretty messy. Alexa fainted and I didn’t feel right about leaving her there all on her own like that…”

Pausing, Nicola hunched over forwards, leaning both his elbows against the top of both knees as he seemed hesitant about going on suddenly.

And Dante quickly noticed.

“So, what happened then?” he urged.

“I uh… might have… taken her back to her apartment.” Nicola admitted shyly before taking a long gulp of the exquisitely aged scotch.

“You… took her back home? You?”

Dante appeared taken aback now.

“Nicola Russo, you giant teddy bear. I’m surprised.”

Closing his eyes in embarrassment, Nicola nodded his head to silently answer.

“I called you and the others that night… you were late to arrive, as I recall.” Dante continued with a playful smirk.

“And now I know why.”

“You think I might have gone soft, boss?” Nicola queried with a frown, as if it was truly concerning him.

But Dante surprised him with his response.

It was nothing like he had expected!

Placing his glass down on the table in front of him, Dante suddenly stood up from the sofa.

Of course, Nicola quickly did the same out of respect for his Don, though he had no idea of what would happen next.

Stepping forwards and closing the gap between them, Dante shocked Nicola as he suddenly wrapped both his arms around the larger man and embraced him in a thankful hug!

Dante Romano was actually HUGGING him!

Frozen in place by such an extreme show of affection, and coming from such a powerful authority figure, Nicola wasn’t sure how he should react.

Strangely enough, it only took a matter of seconds for him to do exactly that as his instincts kicked in and he too wrapped both arms around his Don.

As they stood there, hugging for a moment in silence Dante whispered something to Nicola.

Something that caused the underboss’ heart to melt.

“Thank you, Nicola… thank you.”

But just as their special moment had occurred, the unmistakable sound of Dante’s phone ringing from where he had it tucked away in his jacket pocket caused both men to pull apart and look at one another with confusion.

Who would be calling his direct line at this time in the evening?

Hardly anyone had his direct number.

Intrigued, Dante reached into his jacket and pulled out his ringing phone, glancing at the name on the screen.

It came up as anonymous.

A payphone, maybe...

'Did those things still even exist?' Dante wondered to himself.

Unsure, Dante’s finger hovered over the green ‘answer’ button for a moment before he looked to Nicola.

And of course, the underboss gave his Don a nod to proceed.

Sliding his finger across the green ‘answer’ button and opening the new phone call, Dante lifted the phone up to rest against his ear just in time to hear the sound of a voice speaking to him.

But it wasn’t just any old voice, this one was very familiar.

And as soon as Dante heard her speaking to him on the other end of the line, his emerald eyes widened. His heart began to soar with excitement.

“Dante? Dante, are you there?” Alexa spoke with a somewhat frantic tone to her voice.

That sweet, angelic voice that caused Dante’s heart to race…

As his mouth opened, the Don could only reply with a single word as his shock had him in a state of sheer disbelief.

“Bella?”