Psychotic Love (a mafia love story)

Chapter 43

LUCA'S POV

Azeris's coordinates lead us to a small cabin in the woods. She didn't lie to me about her father being there. He was, but left before we could reach him. I'm at another dead end and I don't know where to go from here. We've tried using Azeris as leverage, but it seems that Petrov doesn't care about her enough. We haven't gotten a single response from him.

I blamed Dario for Echo running away but I always knew it was my fault. I just couldn't admit that I was at fault for making the love of my life run away from me. She couldn't fucking stand me. My lies, my manipulation, just me overall. It's my fault that she's missing.

I can't sleep at night. I can only think of her. She's probably dead. My heart sinks at the thought. Even if she is I will never stop looking for her. I can't live the rest of my life wondering what happened to her.

The people with ties to the mafia are ruthless. I imagine her being tortured and abused. I imagine her screams, they haunt me. There's no doubt in my mind that she's suffering right now. Whoever has her is surely making her life hell because of who she is to me.

I don't even know who took her to that damn auction, if it wasn't Arturo, who else could it possibly be. Is Petrov the one who took her from that gas station? I don't know, I've never been so clueless in my life. I've never been so...helpless.

I hear a knock on my office door. Every time I do, I imagine Echo walking in. I imagine her somehow being perfectly fine, not a single scratch on her body. I imagine holding her and fixing everything that I've broken. I imagine telling her I love her, and her saying it back. Even though she said she never would.

Instead of Echo, Dario walks through the door before I can give him permission to. We're not fighting so much these days, though I still want to put another scar on his face. Not that it was me who did it the first time.

"I arranged a sit down with Arturo. It will be held today at noon. His place."

I nod my head. I need to talk some things out with Arturo. We will not ally, but boundaries need to be set. I've been taking a lot of time off, looking for Echo, and he seems to have run wild. I've spotted his men in my territory making deals and I don't know if he thought because his father died that meant the deal was off.

I can say that my men have roamed his territory also but that's over now, we need to establish order before things get messy. This will not be a fight or a war between our mafias. This sit down will simply allow us to come up with some agreements, set boundaries. If those boundaries are crossed, then there will be war, but I don't think Arturo wants that.

"And uhh, I found something," Dario says.

My eyes shoot up at him. He tosses his find onto my desk.

"A pen?"

I try and be patient with him. He wouldn't just give me a pen for no reason.

"It's FBI issued."

I scoff. "How the fuck would you know that?"

"I figured there was something we might have missed, so I went back. This chip, I found it inside the pen. I found the pen on the side of the road, where Echo was taken."

Dario gives me the chip. It's small and white. FBI is printed in tiny letters on the back of it.

"For a while, I didn't think it had anything to do with Echo but I was just fiddling with it one day. I took it apart and yeah, you know..."

One day? How long has he had this chip?

"When did you find this?" I say, putting it into my computer. Probably not the best idea, but I don't care. If this gets me a step closer to finding Echo, it's worth it.

"Just yesterday is when I found the chip. Found the pen a week ago. I was going to tell you sooner but you were being an asshole so I decided to be one too."

I look up to see his stupid smiling face. Does he understand that by being spiteful he's taken time away from me finding Echo? Every second counts, does he know that? I'm so close to ripping his face from his skull when I look down at my computer to see tons of files popping up.

The name Grace Fuller reads across nearly all of them. I inwardly drop my jaw.

"This is Fuller's chip? She took Echo?"

"What? Fuller, as in Grace Fuller, the detective?" Dario runs behind my desk to get a look at my screen.

The FBI. The last people I would have thought to look into. I know they've been up my trail but I didn't think they'd pull an innocent girl into it all. Fucking Grace Fuller, I should have known. Why didn't her name pop into my head?

There's nothing left to do but kill her. I have no questions for her. She took Echo, put her in that auction and now I have no idea where she is. I'm going to rip that bitch's heart out of her fucking body. I slam my computer shut, as the thought of what I will do to her runs through my head.

"What now?"

"For now, I need to get to this sit-down. I can't keep putting the mafia on the back burner, but as soon as it's done, we look for Fuller."

Dario nods his head before leaving my office.

I know that Fuller took Echo, but technically this won't bring me any closer to finding her. Not unless Fuller knows who she was sold to. I highly doubt that. Fuck Fuller, I need to find Ivan Petrov. That doesn't mean I'm not going to tear this bitch apart, though.