Chapter 7 Chapter 7
Enzo
The war room felt too small, too hot, too crowded.
Too loud, even in complete fucking silence.
Enzo stood over the table, hands braced on either side of the monitor like he might break the steel through will alone. The green line on the screen moved steadily, mockingly steady, each pulse an even beat; normal, controlled, predictable.
And he hated it.
“Two days,” he said, voice low enough to vibrate the floor. “Two fucking days of nothing.”
Jake swallowed hard. “Boss, her vitals are stable; no spikes, no drops, no distress markers. It could mean—”
“It doesn’t mean she’s safe,” Enzo snapped. “It means I can’t see what they’re doing to her.”
His heart hammered once, hard, then hollow.
Lola never had a steady baseline before. Not in the Academy. Not with torture. Not with the shocks. Her every heartbeat had been a message, a scream, an I’m-here, pay attention, keep moving.
Then two days ago… flat calm, too calm.
Dom and Gino stood on either side of him like guard towers. Even they looked uneasy. Rafael hovered near the far wall, arms crossed, jaw tight, tension radiating off him in sharp waves.
“You said she wanted to wait thirty days,” Gino said carefully, like picking up a bomb with bare hands.
“She did.” Enzo’s throat tightened. “She asked for thirty.”
“And you agreed,” Dom added. “She had a plan. She knew what she was—”
“She didn’t know,” Enzo snapped, the words tearing out of him before he could stop them. He dragged a hand through his hair, breath sharp, uneven. “She didn’t know anything. She walked in there without a plan, without telling anyone—without telling me—and now I’m supposed to sit here and guess what they’re doing to my wife.”
He jabbed a finger toward the screen, the steady green line mocking him.
“Two days,” he said, voice dropping, shaking. “Two days of nothing. And that scares me more than the spikes ever did.”
He raked a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice, stopping only when Rafael cleared his throat.
“I have something,” Rafael said.
Enzo’s gaze snapped to him.
Rafael held his ground, barely.
“My team on the West Coast got eyes on new movement around the Academy perimeter,” he said. “Increased guard rotations. Shift changes at strange hours. Supply trucks rerouted to a secondary entry that was dormant for years.” He tapped a satellite map on the screen. “This one.”
Jake zoomed in.
A mountain facility carved like a temple into the rock—massive columns, archways, high windows, exterior walkways glinting like the ribs of some old god buried in stone; Lucian’s pride on full display.
Enzo’s vision narrowed, “How close can we get?” he asked.
“Close enough,” Rafael said. “But we need a route.”
Jake switched screens, a web of roads appeared—some paved, some dirt, some that looked barely carved at all.
“This one,” Rafael pointed, “is the primary access road. Too obvious. They’ll expect heat from the front.”
“This,” he pointed again, “dead-ends into a forestry trail that drops behind the west wing. It’s not meant for vehicles, but it gets you within half a mile of a blind spot.”
Dom nodded. “Good for foot infiltration. Bad for quick exit.”
“Not if we carve a second exit,” Rafael said.
Enzo didn’t look at any of them. His eyes stayed on the map. On the schematic of the Academy carved into the mountain like a throne. On the faint line that represented Lola’s heartbeat; steady, quiet, unreadable.
Twenty days.
He had promised her thirty.
He had intended to wait.
He wasn’t waiting anymore.
“I can’t feel her,” he whispered, not meant for anyone, but the room heard.
Dom’s jaw tightened. Gino looked away. Jake kept staring at the graph like he could force it into telling the truth.
“She’s not dead,” Gino said finally. “You’d know.”
“I’d know,” Enzo repeated, voice barely holding together. “But she’s not fighting anymore, either. She’s not resisting. She’s just… quiet.”
He pressed two fingers to the glass over her heartbeat, “She’s never quiet.” His chest burned with rage, fear, love, all molten and violent.
“They broke her routine,” Enzo said softly. “Or they broke her.”
The words tasted like poison.
He felt the room wait, he inhaled once, sharply.
Then:
“We go.”
Jake blinked. “Boss—”
“We go,” Enzo repeated, louder. “Tonight.”
Rafael straightened. “I can call my team. We can have the vans ready, gear prepped, routes locked.”
Dom stepped forward. “We’ll need bodies. Quiet ones. Long-range and short.”
“I’ll take point,” Gino said immediately.
Enzo shook his head. “No. I take point.”
No one argued. Not when he looked like that. Not when he sounded like that. Not when he was a man who had already buried a brother and was not fucking losing a wife. “Jake,” Enzo said, “keep the feed running. If anything changes—anything—you call me, Dom, and Gino. All three.”
Jake nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Bellandi.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re with me. You started this. You help finish it.”
Rafael swallowed. “Gladly.”
“The Academy wants to hide in the mountains,” Enzo said, grabbing his jacket, sliding his gun into the holster, his entire presence shifting into something cold and terrifying. “Fine.”
He turned back to the monitor one final time, to her heartbeat, to the woman who had walked into hell so he wouldn’t bleed in her place.
“I’m coming, gattina.”
He touched the screen; a vow, a warning. “Hold on,” he whispered. “I’m not giving you another day.”
Enzo hadn’t stepped into the bedroom since the night Lola vanished.
He pushed the door open now, and the darkness inside felt heavier than the war room, heavier than the academy intel, heavier than the last twenty days combined. Her pillow was still dented from the last night she slept here. Her hoodie still draped over the chair. Her mug still on the nightstand—tea half-finished.
He stood in the doorway like the room might break if he entered too fast.
Dottie waited behind him, silent, patient.
Finally he walked in.
His hands hovered above the bedspread, fingertips brushing the crease where she used to curl into him. The faint scent of her shampoo still clung to the sheets. It punched him straight through the ribs.
“Vincenzo,” Dottie said softly.
He didn’t turn. “I shouldn’t be in here.”
“That is nonsense,” she replied. “This is where she loved you.”
His jaw locked. “And now she’s gone.”
Dottie stepped inside, cane tapping softly across the hardwood. “She is not gone. She is clearing the board.”
He took a sharp breath, shoulders tight. “Two days,” he said. “Two days of steady vitals. After eighteen days of chaos. I hate the silence more than the spikes.”
“That silence could be rest,” Dottie said.
“It doesn’t feel like rest.”
He ran a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice, then stopping at the foot of the bed as though anchored there. “I don’t know what I’m feeling,” he admitted, voice low. “I just—something feels off. Wrong. Like something changed in her.”
“That is fear talking,” Dottie answered.
“Is it?” He turned, eyes tired and burning. “I can’t explain it. I just have this feeling—this… pressure I can’t name.”
Dottie tilted her head. “You haven’t slept properly in nearly three weeks.”
“That’s not it.”
“You’ve barely eaten.”
“Not that either.”
“You’re in love with a woman who is being tortured, Vincenzo. Everything feels wrong.”
He opened his mouth… then shut it again, breath shaking.
Dottie watched him for a long moment, gaze sharp and steady. “You are not psychic,” she said, raising a brow. “Whatever ‘shift’ you think you feel? That could simply be the way grief bends time. Or the way fear hollows everything around you.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Or exhaustion convincing you of ghosts in your chest.”
He exhaled sharply, leaning back against the bedframe like he needed it to hold him up. “But what if she—” His throat closed around the words. “What if they broke something in her? What if she doesn’t come back the same?”
Dottie walked to him, put a hand on his arm—not gentle, but grounding. “Everyone comes back changed from pain,” she said. “But changed does not mean ruined. You, of all people, should know that.”
His jaw tightened. “I just need her back,” he whispered. “Any version of her. I don’t care how hurt, how angry, how different—just… back.”
Dottie nodded once. “And you will get her back.” She tapped her cane once against the floor—decisive, absolute. “But standing in this room and drowning in what-ifs will not bring her home.”
Enzo looked down at their bed again.
At the hoodie she left.
At the pillow she slept on.
At the life they built in between chaos.
His gaze snagged on the small stuffed duck tucked against the headboard, crooked, soft and ridiculous. "Archie," he murmured, something he'd built for her once at a stupid little shop that smelled like cotton candy and bad decisions, choosing the stuffing himself because she'd said she liked them squishy. He picked it up without thinking, turned it once in his palm, "You're coming with me," he murmured, barley audible. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his coat and closed his hand over the fabric for a brief, grounding second, then let go.
Dottie’s voice softened—not pitying, but fierce. “Move, Vincenzo. She trusted you to come for her. Don’t make her wait.”
He inhaled slowly.
Steady.
Controlled.
And then he straightened, rolling his sleeves up, shoulders set with cold resolve. “Let’s finish the convoy plan.”
Dottie nodded, stepping back so he could leave the room.
Enzo took one last look at the bed.
Hold on for me, gattina.
I’m coming.
Then he walked out, shutting the door behind him.
The war room wasn’t quiet anymore, it thrummed like the inside of a tightening fist. Screens glowed. Radios buzzed. Chairs scraped. The kind of tension that announced war was breathing in the walls, but when Enzo walked in, everything stopped. Jake froze mid-sentence. Dom straightened. Rafael rose from his seat.
Enzo didn’t look at any of them.
He looked at her vitals.
Two days. Two days of clean, steady rhythm. Not a single spike. Not a tremor. Not the smallest echo of struggle.
And somehow that calm was worse than the chaos.
“She hasn’t deviated once?” Enzo asked, voice low.
Jake shook his head. “Steady as a metronome. It’s… unnerving.”
Enzo’s jaw flexed. “It’s not calm," he said, "it's wrong.”
Dom exhaled through his nose. “Then we move.”
Jake clicked to the recon feed. “Rafael’s people got visuals this morning. Perimeter routes, guard rotations, supply deliveries. Enough to plan an entry.”
Rafael slid a map across the table; ridgelines, switchback roads, a fortress carved into the mountain like an empire for the unhinged.
“This is your window,” Rafael said, tapping the east wing. “Least surveillance. Light guard presence. If you hit them hard and fast, you’re inside before they know what’s happening.”
“Inside is a labyrinth,” Jake warned. “Once we breach, we’ll need layered sweeps to find Lola fast.”
Enzo finally lifted his eyes from the heartbeat line, “We’re going.”
Dom nodded once, already rolling his shoulders like he could taste blood in the air. “SUVs are loaded. Weapons checked twice.”
Gino grinned, feral. “I brought party favors.”
Rafael cleared his throat. “My team is ten minutes out. When you call, they’ll shadow you up the mountain. No questions asked.”
Enzo didn’t thank him, he didn’t have gratitude left to give.
“Good,” he said. “Then we leave now.”
Jake blinked. “Now-now?”
“Yes,” Enzo snapped. “We’ve given them twenty days. They don’t get twenty-one.”
Dom slapped a magazine into his rifle. “Finally.”
Enzo moved around the table, gathering the map, the satellite prints, everything he needed, everything he’d studied a hundred times in the dark.
Dottie stepped into his path, not blocking him, grounding him. “You know what must be done, Vincenzo.”
He nodded once.
“I do.”
She held his gaze a beat longer, the unspoken trust punching deeper than any pep talk ever could, then she stepped aside. “Bring her home.”
He didn’t answer.
He was already turning.
Already hunting.
Already walking out of the war room like a man who had decided mercy was cancelled until further notice.
As he reached the doorway, he glanced at Lola’s heartbeat one last time; steady, quiet, maddening.
I’m coming, amore.
And if they had broken something in her?
He’d break the world in return.
“Dom,” he said. “Roll the convoy.”
The room exploded into motion.
The miles blurred.
Headlights stretched in a pale ribbon ahead of them, snow-capped mountains distant shadows on the horizon, and the steady growl of engines underlined every thought pounding through his skull.
Twenty days.
Too long, too quiet.
He should’ve been able to do this part in silence: plan, move, execute. It was what he was good at, but every time he tried to stay in the present, his mind kept yanking him backward; back to the stupidest, most important night of his life.
Back to a bedroom and a headache full of glitter.
He hadn’t woken up to gunfire, or restraints in some enemy bunker, or the familiar smell of hospital disinfectant. He’d woken up to lavender sheets, fairy lights, plant jungles in chipped mugs…and a woman screaming at him with a lava lamp in her hand.
You tied me to the bed.
He almost smiled, just thinking it.
He could still feel the bite of lavender silk around his wrists, the drag of it across his skin when he shifted and realized—slowly—that he was shirtless, bound to a too-small mattress while some redheaded menace clutched a pillow like a weapon and accused him of reverse-kidnapping.
You could’ve tied yourself up! People are into weird shit these days!
He’d been so tired. So done. Seven years of command sitting on his spine, all the weight of the Marchesi empire knotted in his shoulders—and somehow, this was the thing that took him off the board.
Not a sniper, not a betrayal.
A glitter drink and a tiny chaos goblin with a lava lamp.
She should’ve untied him and run. Any sane person would’ve.
Instead, she went to work.
He could still see her, boots half on, hoodie askew, hair a wreck, as she realized she was late for a client. The way she scrambled around him, mumbling apologies to the universe, not him, like he was an inconvenient piece of furniture instead of a threat.
He remembered lying there, wrists burning, watching her shove a pillow under his head on the way out like she was worried he’d get a cramp.
“There. So your neck doesn’t snap while I’m gone.”
And then she left him.
Just…left him. Tied up. In a stranger’s apartment. In a city where his name could start a war.
He’d thought, even then, that it was the most honest thing anyone had done to him in years; no calculation, no angle. Just: I’ve got shit to do. Don’t die.
He should’ve been furious.
He’d laughed instead.
Not out loud. He didn’t remember the last time real laughter had made it past his teeth. But something in his chest had eased in that moment—like some part of him recognized her before the rest of him caught up.
That feeling only sharpened when she finally realized who he was.
It should’ve changed everything.
He could still hear the exact moment it landed—Vincenzo Marchesi—and the way her eyes went wide, her mouth forming the words you’re that Enzo like she’d just discovered there was a bomb under her couch.
He’d braced for it, for the fear, the groveling, or worse—the cheap, glittering opportunism he’d seen a thousand times before.
But she hadn’t bowed. She hadn’t even shut up.
You’re in the fucking mafia, she’d hissed, like he’d personally inconvenienced her evening plans.
And then she did what no one ever did in his presence: she kept being herself. Messy, nosy, loud, ridiculous. The same woman who’d tied a stranger to her bed and left him there went on playing drinking games and mocking his joggers after realizing he could, in fact, have her entire building condemned with a single phone call.
He’d never told her what that did to him. Never told her how much he’d loved that she didn’t recalibrate once the title dropped. Didn’t start treating him like a bomb or a god. She just kept treating him like a man she’d accidentally dragged home and wasn’t quite done with yet.
It was addictive.
Dangerous.
Holy.
He shifted in his seat, jaw flexing as the hum of the tires dug deeper under his skin. The night had only gotten worse for his self-control from there.
Tequila. Never Have I Ever. The kind of confessions that would’ve gotten anyone else killed for saying them to his face.
By rights, he should remember the first time he thought I could fall in love with you.
But the truth was, there wasn’t a first moment. There was a series of small ones, piling up until they crushed him.
Her laughing at his threats like they were punchlines.
Her calling him mobster with a straight face.
Her bragging about leg-wrestling a rugby player like it was a trophy.
And then that game, sprawled out on her floor, buzzed and tired, bodies lined up too close, hearts beating too loud—when she leaned over and demanded his real name like she had any right to it.
"Enzo." She’d rolled it on her tongue, unimpressed and amused.
Of fucking course it is.
He hadn’t realized how badly he’d needed that, that casual dismissal of the myth. The way she refused to be impressed by the monster everyone else saw.
But the moment that ruined him?
That came later.
When the tequila settled, when the game ended, when she dragged him to bed by the wrist like a raccoon she’d decided to keep.
He could still feel the mattress dip, the unfamiliar weight of someone else shifting casually around him with zero fear. The blanket, the warmth, the way she bossed him into rolling over so she could be the big spoon even though she barely covered his back.
And then that hand; small, warm, tucked under his arm, across his stomach, fingertips resting right above his waistband where his borrowed shirt had ridden up.
He’d gone still.
Not because he was afraid.
Because he wasn’t.
Because for the first time in years, someone was this close and he didn’t feel the reflex to catalog exits or weapons or angles.
He just felt…held.
Then her finger had started to move, slowly, lazily. Tracing shapes against his bare skin.
Letters.
He’d realized, somewhere between the second and third pass, what she was writing.
His name?
No.
Hers.
L O L A.
Over
and
over.
Quiet, absurd, and possessive in a way that hit him harder than any threat ever had.
You realize you’re tracing your name into my skin right now?
Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.
He hadn’t said what it did to him. How something old and exhausted inside him had gone quiet right then, settling around the idea with terrifying ease.
You’re claiming me. She hadn’t meant it like that; not consciously, not yet.
But his body didn’t care about context.
His heart sure as hell didn’t.
Lying there, with her mouth warm and insistent against his back, carving herself into his skin with a fingertip, Enzo had known, clearer than he’d ever known anything, that whatever came next, he was finished.
There was no version of his life after that night that didn’t have her in it.
The rest just proved it.
He exhaled slowly, eyes on the dark stretch of road ahead as the convoy pushed north.
The sundress had been…cruel.
He could still see it: white cotton with tiny flowers, hem too short to be legal, legs that went on forever in platform sandals, space buns crowning her like the chaos pixie she was. She’d walked out of that bedroom like a weapon dipped in sugar, grabbed his hand, and planted it on her ass in front of his men like she was issuing a challenge.
You ready, husband?
He hadn’t been ready for any of it.
Not for the way they all stared. Not for the strangled reactions around him. Not for the way his own lungs forgot how to work because suddenly the hypothetical future he’d never allowed himself to imagine had a shape.
It looked like her, in that ridiculous dress, deliberately making things harder for him with every step.
And then she hit Gino.
He almost smiled again, the ghost of it sharp and pained.
Of all the moments that night, that was the one that had carved everything into certainty.
Watching her march across the asphalt in that sundress, bag dropping, fist snapping out in a clean right hook that sent his cousin reeling into a car—
That was the nail in the coffin.
She didn’t flinch afterward. Didn’t apologize. Just stood there, chest heaving, eyes blazing, announcing in a calm, bright voice that Baba had put her in Judo at nine and she could dismantle any man in under ten minutes if he was dumb enough.
The crew had taken a step back.
Enzo hadn’t moved.
Because as she turned and looked at him, bright, furious, and alive, he’d seen it clearly:
The same girl who left a mafia don tied to her bed so she could open the shop on time.
The same girl who learned his name and didn’t shrink.
The same girl who traced her own name into his skin while she slept.
All of that, in one punch, in one dress, in one defiant little tilt of her chin.
Who are you?
You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.
God, he did.
That was the problem.
He knew exactly what he’d gotten himself into.
And now she was up there, locked in some white-walled nightmare with electrodes and clinical monsters and he was down here, stuck in a convoy with too many guns and not enough time, replaying every moment that proved one thing:
She wasn’t built for cages.
She’d survived them before. That didn’t mean she should have to do it again.
He dragged a hand over his mouth, throat tight.
She’s mine.
Not like property.
Not like leverage.
Not like a pawn on his board.
His.
The only human being on this planet who’d ever seen him at his worst and still tucked a pillow under his head. Who’d climbed into bed behind a stranger and claimed him with a fingertip instead of a gun.
There had never been a moment before her. Just everything after.
“Enzo?”
Rafael’s voice cut into the memory, low and respectful from the front seat.
Enzo blinked, pulling himself back to the present. The snowy silhouettes of pine had drawn closer, the air outside blackening with mountain shadow.
“We’re about six hours out from the outer ridge,” Rafael said. “You want to stop and regroup before we lose the freeway? Last chance to turn around if you wanna honor that thirty-day timeline.”
Enzo’s jaw hardened.
Turn around.
Wait.
Sit.
Pretend forty-eight hours of radio silence from the woman who’d rewritten his whole life wasn’t a problem.
“No,” he said quietly.
Rafael nodded once. “Didn’t think so.”
Enzo looked back out at the road, at the dark ribbon drawing him closer to the place that had dared to take her.
He thought of lavender restraints, tequila games, a finger writing L O L A into his skin.
He thought of a sundress and a punch.
And he let the truth land fully, heavy and immovable:
She was his the moment she tied him to that bed.
He just hadn’t understood the cost yet.
Now he did.
“Keep driving,” he said, voice soft and lethal. “Whatever’s up there? They took my wife. There’s no thirty days anymore.”
The engines roared in answer.
The convoy pushed on.