Chapter 72

Dominic POV

Dominic stood by the window of the motel, jaw tight as the weight of his own fury pulsed through him. The air in the room was thick, almost suffocatingly so, while the only other sound came from Marco groaning faintly on the couch behind him.

“It is not our fault,” Luca croaked, shifting the ice pack placed against his forehead. “They said they were lonely. They asked us to come over to spend time together. We did not think anything was amiss. They both seemed in good spirits.”

Dominic looked away from the window, his eyes narrowing deeply at his cousin. “And you fell for it?”

“What, would you have liked us to test everything they gave us? Be realistic, cousin. They slipped something in our drinks without us seeing. Next thing we know, we are waking up on the floor.”

Dominic didn’t even answer. His fury was too heavy to make room for words.

Mexico. That’s all they had to go off now. Not a city, not a state, just the fucking country. An entirely hopeless needle-in-a-haystack situation. The front desk agents had been no help when he’d demanded more answers. They’d brushed him off and threatened to call security when he grew more agitated.

Now that he was back at the motel, and with no signs of either of the twins remembering much after they’d been drugged and the girls had left, he was running out of options.

The only question now was: how much was Alek involved in all of this?

Moving away from the window, he headed out of the girls’ motel room and to the one next door, swiping Marco’s forgotten laptop off of the table he’d formed a makeshift work station at.

On his way back and with quick, lethal keystrokes, he began tracing flight logs, known border crossings, anything that might hint at where two women might’ve gone. Aurora might’ve outwitted his cousins, but she wasn’t going to vanish forever. He wouldn’t let her.

If this was all Alek’s doing—talking the girls into fleeing for whatever reason, or at the very worst, blackmailing them into leaving in order to make it easier to kidnap them—then they were already working on borrowed time.

“Pull the CCTV of the airport they flew into,” he barked at Marco, tossing him the laptop. “I want to know what vehicles they left in once they arrived, who was with them, what direction they headed. And backtrace those fake passports. Someone signed off on those documents. They didn’t come from nowhere.”

Marco nodded, sitting down onto the couch next to his brother. “I will call our contact in Veracruz. If we can get a location on them, I can set up an extraction.”

“Good.” Dominic pulled his phone out of his pocket and began a message to a local hanger where his father’s private jet was being stationed. It could be ready within the hour if the crew got there quick enough. Mexico wasn’t that far of a flight.

If all went according to plan, he could be on the ground in Mexico city by nightfall.

Heading back to Aurora’s room, he began to pick through it, looking for anything that could point him in what part of Mexico she planned to hide in. That city was huge but chances were high she and Gianna would stick to the English-speaking parts as they got their bearings.

“You’re really going through with this?” Romero asked from behind him, voice sharp.

Dominic didn’t look up as he opened the top drawer of her dresser and looked around. “Do I look like I’m fucking around?”

“You’re about to hop on a plane to a different country with no concrete location, no leads beyond a country name, and no backup. All for a woman who was merely supposed to be part of a larger plan. Since when has her importance surpassed that?”

Dominic’s eyes snapped over to him as he turned to look over his shoulder. “That doesn’t matter right now.”

Romero’s hands flexed at his side. “Dominic, look at yourself right now. You think you’re going to find her in Mexico in a day? A week? The Carusos are already twitchy as it is with the threat of the Russians. You disappear now and they’ll know something’s up. Not to mention Matteo is already looking for an excuse to push you out of the circle.”

“I don’t care.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“I said I don’t care. About the Carusos or the plan for that matter. Not at the moment. It’s been tabled for now until I can get Aurora back here and away from Alek.”

Romero stared at him for a long moment, disbelief palpable on his face. This was the first time in a long time Dominic had seen his second express emotions so clearly. Usually he was a stone-faced stoic. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I’m not,” Dominic growled out, shoving the drawer shut. “If you think I’m going to sit here twiddling my thumbs while someone takes her from me, you don’t know me at all.”

He was tired of being questioned about this. Of them going around and around in circles with no end to either of them giving. Romero refused to see things from his point of view no matter how simply he tried to explain himself, so why bother doing so for a tenth time?

This is one subject they would never see eye-to-eye on.

Romero’s face twisted. “We’ve been working on this for ten years, Dominic. Ten. We lost people we both cared about. Throwing that away for some…. woman is ridiculous. She means nothing. She was supposed to be your way into the Caruso family in order to take them down. But now suddenly things have changed because you’re getting married?”

Dominic stepped closer, the heat of his rage radiating off him. “Plans change, Romero. You of all people should know that. I don’t know how many times I need to justify myself to you when you shouldn’t be asking questions in the first place. Don’t come at me acting like I’m not aware of the sacrifices that have been made to get where we are today. I know very well what’s been given. Don’t you dare act like I’ve somehow forgotten that.”

Romero shook his head. “It sure seems like you have. All you care about these days is Aurora. I joined you on this mission because I wanted to see the end of the Guerreros your father created. You were supposed to be the change we all needed and now… I don’t know if you’re capable of it.”

Dominic’s fists clenched. “Watch what you say to me. Or the next words out of your mouth may be your last.”

There was a long silence.

When Romero finally spoke again, his voice was low. “You need to get your shit together. Or you will find yourself standing alone. You’re letting this girl wreck you. Look at yourself. Really look. You were ready to have her family burned to the ground mere months ago. Now you’re chasing her across the southern border like a dog.”

Dominic growled. “I’m rescuing her.”

“From what? You don’t know that she was taken by Alek, that’s simply your assumption. You’re assuming she didn’t go willingly. Or has been planning this from the very beginning.”

Dominic froze.

He hated how much that stung.

Romero continued, unsympathetic. “You’ve been too focused on controlling everything, you never stopped to think that maybe she was playing you. She is a Caruso after all. She may have looked innocent but that doesn’t mean she is any less Franscesco’s daughter. She’s blackmailed you once. What else do you think she’s capable of?”

Without thinking, he grabbed the front of Romero’s shirt and used it to slam him against the wall. His second’s head knocked back hard, causing his eyes to squeeze shut in pain. The urge to do it again until he saw blood was overwhelming, enough that it scared Dominic into pausing for just a second as he pulled in a few deep breaths.

A set of footsteps quickly descended down the hall.

“Ma che diavolo… have you lost your minds?” Luca snapped. “What has gotten into the both of you?”

Dominic shoved away from him and backed up several feet, swiping a hand across his mouth as the taste of blood tickled on his tongue. A slight, sharp pain twinged on the inside of his cheek from where he’d apparently bitten it subconsciously while debating whether or not to beat his second.

Romero simply continued to stare at him with that same unwavering expression.

“Hello? Am I talking to two walls?” Luca waved his hand in the air between them.

Romero studied him for a long time. “You’ve changed.”

Dominic didn’t argue. The truth was that he had.

Whether it was Aurora worming her way under his skin, or just the realization that power didn’t mean shit if he had no one to share it with, he wasn’t the same man who’d stood over his father’s corpse with a smoking gun and a smile.

He wasn’t the same man who’d planned to burn the world down.

Now… he just wanted to protect what little of it still mattered to him.

Romero sighed. “I don’t know when you will get it through your head that you are wasting your time on this.”

“Push me again on the subject and you’ll see how far my patience stretches.”

Romero pushed away from the wall with a defeated look on his face. He didn’t try to stop Dominic this time as he breezed through the doorway and down the hall.