Ricci stared at his desk like all his answers lay on top of it. Who? Why?
The ransom was in cryptocurrency, and he didn't have any enemies in web3.
His accountant came in, looking flummoxed. Strain carved his eyebrows. Ricci could see the fright in his every step. He was definitely not bringing good news.
"What is it?" he snapped as soon as he stopped in front of his desk. He swirled his glass of wine noncommittally. He was tense…and his hands needed something to do.
"The account is a fake. The crypto account. Our money bounced back."
Ricci leaned forward in his chair, fingers curved under his chin in an A position. "What does that mean?"
"It could mean that they do not want to release her anytime soon, else why would they send a wrong wallet?"
Ricci stood and stepped around the desk. "Or…they want to show me that money doesn't solve everything…they just waived off 50 million…cannot be a mistake."
The accountant fiddled with the file in front of him. Ricci might appear really calm, but underneath he was a cannonball of emotions. He might decide to reach out and punch his chin off his muscle wall in utter frustration. So he wasn't at all okay with their very close proximity.
He dismissed him noncommittally, and the accountant turned, heaving a huge sigh of relief.
Ricci paced the width of his small office. This was one position he hated most in his life—being vulnerable, and not knowing. And all these would have never happened if not for that son of a bitch.
He didn't even ask for much.
He didn't train his daughter to want too much—private trips, extravagant lifestyle, maids at her beck and call, ambition. "You have a father that provides and that's enough, and I'll get you a man that provides."
That's why her event planning was more freelance than an established business.
"Keep her safe." Was the only sentence he told Major on their wedding day. A clenched grip on his shoulder, tight eyes, and those three words. The only thing he asked of that bastard.
He knew how many people would come for his daughter to get to him. And so he thought she'd be safe with Major. He was wrong. Very wrong. And if Sienna came back with a single scratch on her body, he'll pay with his flesh.
He received a call from his Head of Security.
The Head of Security's voice was low too. Bad news. "Sir, as instructed we closed down ports, air travel, border roadways. Nothing."
"Have you backtracked road cams from the day she was kidnapped?"
"Yes, sir. It was well planned. We have over 300 black vans registered with that ID on the state records."
Ricci leaned slowly back in the chair, eyes fixed on nothing. A long, shaky breath escaped him. His chest felt too tight to breathe. This feeling was all too familiar. His legs felt strained underneath the table and he had to pace, to let his blood regulate as the Head of Security gave him details about the situation. Finally, he stopped in front of his floor-to-ceiling windows, watching Venice race beneath his feet. His fists shook at his side. How dare the world go by when his daughter was under torture in the hands of an unknown criminal? How could they be alive living their lives peacefully when he was in so much inner turmoil?
Every single person should feel the weight of his pain too.
"Maybe we should stop looking too far. We don't want what happened the last time to happen again."
"What happened last time?" Ricci was breathless.
"Your wife." His Head of Security whispered underneath his breath. Ricci clenched his eyes shut. His bones shook, hot blood pumping through his veins as he recalled all that he went through the last time, only for her to come back dead.
They had taken her, just very young in their marriage, then his daughter was just two years old. He could remember Sienna's cries for her those mornings, at war with the screaming in his head, as she cried for her to come back. Checked in with his informants, nothing. Watched borders for every sign of her, nothing. Every morning in front of his laptop, tracking and tracking, almost left the cartel to chaos. Searched Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg—nothing. Almost ran out of his mind. Until they called. Guessing they were done with their mental torment. He could finally hear her voice after 110 days.
Parched. Hoarse. Broken. They'd raped her, cut her, abused her. Reduced her to nothing, and gave him the pieces to fix back, but with an exorbitant price. The next morning, he paid. That same morning, he'd told Sienna, "She's coming back."
"Today?" her squeaky voice squealed with excitement. He couldn't help the smile that splashed across his face. He was a cold man. He hardly smiled. Even at his wife. But from today all that was going to change.
"Yes, today, and she's never going to leave us again. I'll make sure of that."
"Okay, Daddy." She acknowledged the firmness in his voice.
The door dinged. He rushed towards it. Their instructions were to not let any security be in sight. They wanted to make sure he was unarmed. It was tricky, hiding the sniper that was three buildings away, because they had searched the air and land, but he did it.
He stepped out of the door clad in bulletproof vests because they could try to shoot him down. What he saw in front of him was definitely not what he expected—his wife, gagged maybe, badly bruised, looking dirty and smelling. No.
What he saw in front of him was a box, heavily stained with red. His heart crashed in his chest. Fast tears fell as he scratched the bag open. Her pieces. Her chopped-up pieces. Mutilated, violated, hacked body parts. They had made her go through every pain imaginable and they killed her at the end of it.
The microphone hidden at the back of his ear crackled to life. "Sir, I have eyes on the target. Should I shoot them down?"
"Do your damn job," he spat back, every negative emotion he felt charged into those four words. "And if my intel tells me that anyone of them survived, your family members will go for it."
"She was in the basement." His Head of Security continued in his ear. "We looked for her in far-fetched Albania, Latvia, Bosnia, but she was right under your nose, in your basement. So for Sienna, I recommend that you thoroughly search Venice in and out before broadening your search to other parts of Europe."
Ricci chuckled. "Something you don't know, Manuel, is that nothing goes on in Venice without my say-so. If she was here—anywhere—information would have reached me in minutes. I suspect that she has been taken into the human trafficking ring."
"And it is a ring you know so well…" his Head of Security interjected. Human trafficking was still a sub-part of drug trafficking, because you needed humans to traffic the drugs, and it was a chain that Ricci heavily dabbled in. "But still, I'd like to maintain my stand that it could be a rival that you know so well."
"None of them are that stupid to want to double-cross me, especially now that territorial clashes are prevalent. It would be a waste of firearms and men, and like I said, if it was here, word would have reached me in minutes. I have spies in every cartel."
He wasn't even bragging. It was the raw truth.
~~~~~~~~~~
Major stepped down from the car and slammed the door closed. He grunted involuntarily. Now wasn't the time or place for this, but he had to please his parents and besides, he hadn't seen them in a really long while, and they would also have some questions to ask about the situation—questions he did not have an answer to.
Yesterday, he had to check in with his publicist to ensure that news of Sienna's disappearance wouldn't leak to the media, and if it did, it would be contained within Venice. But somehow, just somehow, his parents got to hear about it, and that greatly scared him because, for one, they were not tied to the Ricci's by connection or by cartel ties, so how in the heck would they have known or heard about it?
Sure, when he stepped into the mansion, it was not a welcoming air that greeted him. His parents and sibling sat with a morose look on their faces. Gosh, how he hated family dinners so much.
"Volevamo che tu venissi con il tuo amico," his mother frowned at him as soon as he walked in through the door. Oh. She was asking about his friend, Reese. This was the fifth time that Reese was absent from their family dinners. It was odd. He had personally promised his mom that he would get him to come this time, but he forgot. In fact, he hadn't talked to Reese since the night of Sienna's kidnap. He and Reese grew up together under his parents, met him in grade school, and was there with him when he lost his parents at a tender age to a fire accident. He begged his own parents to take custody of him. They obliged. At 18, when he finally was up to the age to inherit his parents' wealth, he'd left them to create Carbone Industries.
Reese never missed family dinners. Until a year back, after his own wedding.
"And your wife is absent too," his sister spoke up. He decided not to reply to them while their eyes traced him as he moved his sculpted body along the hall.
The doorman helped him remove his suit and cloak. And he stepped forward into the house to where they were sitting. Scents of delicious meals from the table they were sitting on wafted up and hit him in the face. His stomach groaned. He missed her food. Dear God, how he missed her food. He had warned her not to cook for him, but Sienna hadn't stopped, thinking that he would not know. But the best of all was that she did her research, made sure that he didn't eat the same kind of meals twice. It was always something new, something fresh, something delicious.
.
He sat down with bloodshot eyes, tension like steel in his jaw as he picked up the fork. His family watched him like a hawk. Seated amongst them was his artist cousin and his father; Major's uncle
"What are the leads?" Major's father asked, cutting to the chase.
Major painfully swallowed his Bolognese down. He was quiet as he laid down his fork. "none."
A gasp rippled across the table. "What?"
Major tucked the sides of his mouth with a napkin, feeling the heat of their stares on his skin. He had lost his appetite. He felt so incompetent
"Everything so far has led to a dead end."
"And how is her father taking it? His cousin asked. Everyone knew that mafia lord Ricci was an unpredictable kingpin, with an unstable urge for bloodlust. It was a wonder why the underworld was not shaken yet, with his hitmen going after everybody he thought responsible and shooting them down. Well what could he say
Everybody was tensed as he kept his fork on the table, eagerly awaiting his answer. "He has being unreasonably calm. But I know that with time, he would start to threaten me to provide his daughter or I will face dire consequences. And you know the ways of Ricci, if i don't bring her back, I am not the only one who dies, but i will be the first."
His cousin frowned, looking at his mother and siblings, a look of anger etched on his face. "This is why i wanted nothing to do with your wedding. I told you that marrying one of us into that bloodline is dangerous. And I can bet my next trust fund, that this has nothing to do with the Bacuzzi's and everything to do with Ricci."
"But of course, we take the blame." His sister pinched the bridge of her nose.
"And even worst, it happened at my gala night." His cousin's forehead was creased with worry.
His mother's hands snaked across the dining table and enveloped his own. She gave him a gentle squeeze. He held onto it like it was his lifeline. "Stai bene?" she whispered amongst the hushed conversation from everyone on the table. She was asking if he was okay. He managed a tight-lipped smile, not enough to convince her but it was at least something. He hadn't slept for the two-days interval and when Ricci called him to say that the abductors contacted him, he had being more than relieved. His relief crashed when he heard that the money bounced back and the wallet nor the senders couldn't be traced.
His father chimed a raised champagne flute with his fork to hush the dining table. "Why I called for this emergency family meeting is so that we can address the issue at hand, we have to pull resources ad connections together so that we can find the missing daughter of Ricci."
Major smiled quietly to himself. Missing daughter of Ricci. Up till now, his family had refused to see her as a Bacuzzi. Not that they even cared that she was missing, they only dreaded the consequences of missing a Ricci.
While he? He felt empty, and he felt the same sinking, blood-curdling dread. Infact movie shoots of the blockbuster Game of Thrones had to be halted because of him. He was playing the main character, and he had to declare absence for two weeks
"...we have 48 hours to pull out any information, any lead that could be of help," his father continued. "I suggest you call Reese," he nodded to Major. "Have him extend the search to the territories that he owns. Something like this cannot happen under our nose and we would have no idea about it."
The dinner was over quicker than it started. With the foreboding chills int he air, there was no much appetite to eat. Standing outside the car, Major started to unravel. What if it was his family that was behind it? How the news got to them when he had payed handsomely to contain it was beyond him, and that it happened at his cousins event.
His breath shuddered as he opened his car door. He couldn't understand this indescribable feeling of sadness. I don't need to love her. I just need to find her breathing. He shunned his thoughts as he slammed the door close.
Afar off, a figure watched his car slink away into the darkness of the night. From the glass windows of the mansion, he brought his phone to take a photo of the retreating car. "He looks defeated and humbled…"He spoke into the phone a while later. "Everything should be done with trepidation…I know, you don't have to tell me…I will be considered a traitor and they will be repercussions for my behavior." he closed the tall velvet-red curtains of the windows and walked closer to where the family was mingling with wine and laughter.
As Major drove down the dark streets, his mind preoccupied. His phone chimed. He was not in the mod to take phone calls right now, or to look at messages so he disregarded it. It could be her abductors a thought flashed through his mind and he hastily picked up his phone. A text from Ricci demanding that they see the next day. He grunted inwardly. The one thing he was trying to avoid since the whole saga. A face-to-face confrontation with that man.
One from Aria. He swiped it away. He was not in the mood for any of that.
Then an unknown number. A single text. I know where she is. Attached was a blurry shot of Sienna taken, where she was gagged, tears and snot streaming down her face. He tried to study the surroundings. Nothing was a giveaway. She was probably locked up in an underground cell or container.
With shaking hands, he proceeded to call the number.