I sigh, remove a few tangled strands of hair from her face, and lean my back to the wall. We can wait five more minutes.
Sisi arrives just as I’m finishing Lena’s “many braids” hairstyle. Lena runs to grab her backpack and heads toward the door, but then she turns and hurries back to me.
“Bianca, Bianca.” She leans in and kisses me on the cheek, then runs to join Sisi, waving. “See you later, Mommy.”
As I watch her leave, a feeling of warmth spreads inside my chest.
*
I just finished showering when my phone rings somewhere. I tense. No one calls me, ever. No point in calling someone over the phone when they can’t speak. I run out from the bathroom, rush to the living room, and start looking for my phone. Just as I find it under the throw pillow on the couch, it stops ringing so I check the missed calls and see Allegra’s number. Something must have happened if she was calling me. I return the call as I walk back into the bedroom to put some clothes on.
“Bianca,” she says the moment the call connects. “I need you to come here right away. Hurry. It’s Milene.”
The line goes dead, and a feeling of dread collects in my stomach. What happened to Milene? Why didn’t she tell me anything?
I try calling her again, but she doesn’t answer, so I throw on the first clothes I find, take my phone and purse, and run out of the apartment. When I get to the street, I start looking around for a taxi, too distracted by all the possibilities of what could have happened to Milene to notice the car that stops right in front of me.
“Bianca!” I hear my father’s voice coming from the car. “Let’s go.”
He opens the passenger’s door, and without thinking it over, I get inside the car. The sound of doors locking makes my head snap up to glare at my father, who is regarding me with malice in his eyes.
“Cara mia,” he sneers, and backhands me with such force that I black out.
I’m just parking my car in front of Roman’s house when my phone pings with an incoming message. Thinking it must be Bianca, I open the message and my blood goes ice cold. It’s an image of Bianca sitting in an old recliner, hands tied behind her back. She’s looking up, probably at the person who took the photo, her face a mask of anger. A big red bruise covers most of her cheek, her lip is split, and a thin line of blood trails down from the corner of her mouth.
The phone in my hand rings, showing Bruno Scardoni’s number.
“I’m going to kill you, Bruno,” I say the moment I take the call. “I’ll make sure it’s slow and painful.”
“I’ll send you the address. You come alone or I’m going to hurt her.”
The message with an address somewhere in the suburbs arrives after he cuts the call. I drop the car into reverse and floor the gas pedal.
It takes me almost an hour to reach the run-down house on the outskirts of Chicago. It’s a crumbling structure surrounded by overgrown grass and weeds. Two cars are parked next to it, just in front of the door that hangs on its hinges. Two men stand on either side of the door, and another beside one of the cars.
I send a quick message to Denis, instructing him to get here right away, then take my gun from under my seat and head toward the house.
I watch my father as he leans back on the torn couch across from me, holding a gun in his hand. He won’t kill me, I know that much. Bruno might be a bastard, but he wouldn’t kill his own daughter, would he? I have no idea what’s going on, but it’s evident that something happened. Something big because I have never seen my father in this state. The suit he wears is in shambles. His usually carefully slicked-back hair is in disarray, and even though his posture is relaxed, the hand on his knee is trembling slightly as his thumb taps his leg in a fast pattern. I know his tells. He’s angry, but based on the look in his eyes, he’s also scared.
Not good.
“I had everything planned. It was perfect,” he says, looking at the wall behind me. “Every single detail. It was brilliant! Pull the Bratva into a war with the Albanians, and then take over their business. The wedding shooter cost me fifty grand, and the thugs who should have killed the son of a bitch husband of yours, a hundred and fifty more. Stupid idiots.”
I just stare at him in shock. Our whole family was at that wedding reception! And I was in the same car with Mikhail when those guys started chasing us, they could have killed both of us. Did he even care?
“I was so confident that everything would go as planned until your husband blew up my shipment last night. Fifteen million. Gone. The don probably knows already. I’m fucked.”