Chapter 19 - She's... Not Here
1793 Words
The s**t was about to hit the fan…
Alexa was missing.
So were both the Romano brothers, along with Alexa’s friend, Willow.
Nicola was furious as he had his men do a full sweep of the castle and grounds, searching tirelessly for their boss’ missing girlfriend and the others.
But there was no sign of any of them.
Something was clearly very wrong.
Thinking quickly, he sent a text message to both Roberto and Matteo’s phones, asking where the hell they were and if they knew where the missing women were.
Of course, he made it sound rather urgent, that Dante was looking for them and that they get back to him asap.
Not that it helped.
But now, Nicola was worried about how his boss would react to this unfortunate news. He knew that the longer he left Dante in the dark, the angrier he would become.
He needed to tell him.
Now.
With a heavy sigh, he lifted his phone up and pressed the button, making the call.
It rang for a while before he heard Dante’s voice on the other end of the line. He sounded impatient to say the least.
“What the f**k’s taking you so long?” he demanded up front.
“Boss… we’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Nicola tried to sugar coat the situation, but it was beyond saving right now.
“What are you talking about?” Dante queried.
“Nicola, bring her down here, right now!”
“That’s the problem…” he paused, forcing the words to leave his mouth and enter the receiver.
“She’s… not here.”
The phone suddenly went silent on the other end, as if Dante had either stopped breathing or he had muffled the phone. But there was no noise whatsoever.
Giving it a moment, Nicola decided to check in.
“Boss? You there?”
When Dante spoke next, his voice sounded like that of the Devil himself.
The tone had not only deepened to an inhuman level, but each individual word he spoke aloud was filled with deadly venom as he fought to control his burning rage at this sudden discovery.
“What?”
“She’s… she’s not here, capo.” Nicola repeated, nervously.
“I’ve had my men search the entire castle estate and surrounding grounds. There’s just no sign of her, or ther others.”
“Others?” Dante quickly cut in.
“Her friend Willow is also missing… along with both of your brothers.”
Once again, the line went deathly silent on the other end. Nicola closed his eyes, waiting for a raging Don to begin shouting commands and profanities back at him through the line, but it didn’t happen.
The silence was more frightening than being shouted at.
Who would have thought a man the size of Nicola Russo could be nervous of anything or anyone else? But he was, very nervous of his boss right now.
When Dante Romano got into these kinds of moods, it was best to just stay right out of his way and keep your head down and mouth shut.
Finally, Dante’s terrifying voice spoke once again.
Nicola could hear that his Don was gritting his teeth together as he spoke each word while holding back immense anger.
“I’ll contact my i***t brothers. You, Nicola… find… her… now!”
“I’m on it.”
‘Click…’
Dante had ended the call and Nicola lowered his phone, letting out a long hard sigh.
“Shit.” he muttered softly to himself.
Suddenly, he had an idea and lifted his phone back up, pressing an assortment of buttons to activate a GPS tracking system that he as head of security had access to.
The GPS tracker could locate any of the phones they had distributed to staff working for them, including the one that Dante had given to Alexa.
The same phone that she was using right now.
His eyes lit up and a smile formed on his face as he watched the blinking red light on the screen. That same red light showed the exact position of Alexa’s phone right now.
It appeared she was somewhere in the middle of the city.
Narrowing in on the exact location, he discovered it was a place called “Blubay” and noted down the club’s location on his GPS to head there and retrieve her.
He had completed his first task and managed to find her.
“Bingo.” he whispered to himself in satisfaction.
Now he had to try and get to her before anything happened.
-
Alexa had never been so nervous in her entire life.
She could feel as her heart hit against the insides of her ribcage repeatedly, in a desperate effort to free itself.
Trying to keep her breathing as calm as possible, so as not to faint a second time, she licked her dry red lips and watched as Willow reached into her purse.
Slowly, she pulled out her phone to retrieve the photo she had saved of the pregnancy test.
They were standing at the large mirror, lit up by an insanely bright fluorescent light.
“Remember, whatever the result, I’m with you on this. Right?” Willow reassured her friend one last time.
But Alexa couldn’t wait another moment longer.
She reached out and snatched the phone from her friend’s hand, opening her photo gallery and scrolling through until she found the photo Willow had taken of the pregnancy test.
In the photo, the room was very dark, and it appeared that Willow had perhaps taken the photo at an angle which made it harder to see the result window of the test.
Her eyes narrowed into slits as she stared desperately at the result window at such an awkward angle.
It was hard to see it clearly enough, and even when she zoomed in on it the image appeared to blur, which didn’t help either.
“I… I think it’s… negative.” she announced softly, as if she were for some reason disappointed.
She blinked a few times as she lifted her eyes up to meet those of Willow.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Willow asked.
Alexa shrugged her shoulders, handing Willow back her phone as she replied dryly.
“I guess.”
Letting out a huff, Willow pocketed her phone and then grabbed her friend by both shoulders, forcing her to face her as she began her pep talk.
“Look, forget this whole pregnancy s**t… let’s just go out there and have one hell of a night with the boys huh? Come on, what do you say?”
Smiling, Alexa nodded her head.
“We are in Italy…” Alexa announced, causing Willow to squeeze her shoulders in excitement.
“That’s right, we’re in f*****g Italy!” Willow squealed.
“Let’s get totally wasted!” Alexa confidently cried out in reply, pumping her fist up into the air.
“That’s my girl! Let’s get f*****g wasted!” Willow cried out even louder as the two linked arm in arm and began heading out of the bathroom to go and find the boys again.
A negative test result meant that she was free to endanger herself with toxic levels of liquor while enjoying the electronic atmosphere of the thumping music and sweaty bodies surrounding them on the dance floor.
And Alexa intended on making this one hell of a night!
After all, who knows how long it would be until she got to do something like this again?
Especially after Dante eventually found out.
-
Roberto let out a sigh of relief as both Willow and Alexa came back through the crowd of dancing clubbers, both women with big smiles on their faces.
Releasing her hold on her bestie’s hand, Willow walked into Roberto’s open arms and embraced him with a big squeeze.
Alexa in the meantime came to stand on the other side of the table where Matteo had been waiting with an entire tray of tequila shots ready for their consumption.
“Holy s**t! That’s a lot of tequila!” Willow yelled into Roberto’s ear, in a desperate attempt to have her voice heard by him.
Roberto shook his head, leaning in to reply into her ear.
“He’s playing a dangerous game here. I need to keep both eyes on these two tonight.”
Willow frowned, looking between both Matteo and Alexa as the two smiled at one another.
She couldn’t understand what Roberto was talking about. Why he would think that something might happen between these two…
Alexa was in love with Dante.
Pushing the thought aside, she leaned in and took one of the shots off the table, raising it and waiting for the others to do the same.
When all four of them each held a shot between their fingers, they all shouted out together.
“Cheers!”
With that, all four downed their shots simultaneously, slamming the empty shot glasses down onto the oak table in front of them.
“Whoa, that’s god tequila!” Alexa shouted out, squinting her eyes a little.
“And our night’s just getting started.” Matteo mused, handing her another.
Taking it from him, Alexa couldn’t help but smile as she downed the second one as well.
-
Nicola and his retrieval team were now prepared and about to head off when he was surprised by none other than Dante himself standing down at their team of parked SUV’s, waiting just outside of the castle’s main entrance.
Dante looked pissed.
He was smoking a cigarette when he noticed them descending the staircase leading down towards where he stood on the driveway.
He threw the cigarette to the floor and stamped on it right as Nicola came to stand in front of him.
The Mafia Boss had somehow found the time to quickly change into one of his trademark expensive suits and his dark hair looked wild and untamed, which was unusual for him.
“Capo, what are you-” Nicola began to question.
“-I’m coming with you.” Dante cut in sternly, moving around towards the back seat of one of the SUV’s.
“Let’s move out!”
He wasn’t taking no for an answer.
One of his men opened the car door for him and Dante slid into the car in silence.
Focusing on the task at hand and not on what might happen to poor Alexa when Dante got his hands on her, Nicola signalled to his men to all enter the SUV’s.
“You heard your Capo!” Nicola commanded.
“Roll out!”
Soon after they were all inside, the three SUV’s each pulled away in unison, riding one behind the next in perfect formation.
- Writer
