Chapter 11
Domenic led Salvatore and Anthony inside.
Matteo Vieri was seated in the back room.
Older than Salvatore expected. Scar across the left jaw exactly where Adelaide remembered it. One leg heavily braced, one hand wrapped.
He stood anyway.
Salvatore did not greet him.
“Where is Elena?”
Matteo looked toward Domenic.
“Safe.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.”
Matteo’s eyes returned to Salvatore.
“It is the answer I promised her I would give until you heard the rest.”
Salvatore’s anger rose.
Anthony quietly placed one hand near his arm.
Not stopping him.
Reminding him.
Elena had spent eight months surrounded by men making decisions about her.
Salvatore forced himself to sit.
Matteo noticed.
That earned something close to respect.
“Hattie and Nolan took both of us,” he began. “They needed Elena alive because they believed she had copied the old faction records. They needed me alive because I knew which old captains still remembered August Carbone’s network.”
“Why didn’t they kill you?”
“Because Hattie doesn’t destroy tools until she knows she has replacements.”
Matteo explained the car.
Adelaide had been right. Nolan forced Elena inside. Matteo had already been beaten and restrained in the back seat.
He was not the stranger who stole her.
He was another prisoner.
Three weeks earlier, Matteo finally escaped his chain. He carried Elena from the cellar because her ankle had been badly injured during an earlier escape attempt.
They reached Domenic.
“Then why didn’t you bring her home?”
Matteo’s expression changed.
“Because Elena knew there was still a traitor beside you.”
Salvatore thought of Nolan’s warning.
“Who?”
Matteo shook his head.
“She didn’t know.”
Domenic spoke from the doorway.
“But she knew the traitor had access to Ella.”
Salvatore’s entire body went still.
Elena had stayed hidden after escaping imprisonment because returning openly could have led the remaining conspirator straight to their daughter.
Not abandonment.
Not fear of Salvatore.
Protection.
Then a small voice came from the hallway behind Domenic.
“Sal?”
May you like
Salvatore stopped breathing.
Elena stepped into the doorway.
