Chapter 5~ Florence Nightingale

Chapter 5

KEGAN

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The girl wouldn't shut up. Not for a second, not even with three armed men flanking her and a very real chance she wouldn't survive the next five minutes.

I'd stared down Made Men twice her size who crumbled under the weight of my silence. I'd negotiated with arms dealers who'd rather eat glass than cross me. I'd walked into rooms where everyone wanted me dead and walked out with their loyalty, my reputation for calm precision preceding me into every single one.

But this British tourist in a Primark bikini, Cristo santo, was arguing with me like I was a particularly incompetent mall cop, entirely unbothered by the fact that I could end her life with a single word to any of the men currently surrounding us.

Maybe because this was out of my natural, always-smiling-Kegan element? Six hours of this particular nightmare had worn every polished edge off my usual composure, and this girl was somehow the one thing I hadn't accounted for in an already catastrophic day.

"I'm not putting him down," she said again, voice climbing an octave. Her arms tightened around Adelio like she was holding the last life vest on the Titanic. "Not until someone with an actual brain shows up and realizes I'm not the kidnapper here!"

My jaw ticked. The lucky poker chip in my pocket felt heavier than usual, I'd been rubbing it raw for the past six hours while we tore this beach apart looking for Russel's son, a nervous habit I'd never quite managed to break despite years of trying.

Six hours of Allesia's sobs echoing in my skull. Six hours of watching my best friend almost shoot all his men dead for daring to take their eyes off his son, ready to paint Sicily red if we didn't find his boy, a threat I knew he'd have made good on without a second's hesitation.

And now here was Adelio. Alive. Unharmed.

In the arms of a sunburned English girl who thought I was the threat.

"Last chance," I said, keeping my voice level. "Put. The child. Down."

She had the audacity to scoff. Actually scoff at me.

"Or what? You'll shoot me in front of all these witnesses?" She gestured wildly at the crowd of tourists who'd gathered at a safe distance, phones out, filming everything. "Go on then. Add 'murdered tourist' to your CV. I'm sure your mum would frame it."

Something twitched in my chest. Amusement, maybe. Or disbelief that someone this reckless had survived this long, given how spectacularly she seemed to lack any working instinct for self-preservation.

I took a step closer. She took a step back.

"You think this is a joke?" I asked softly.

"I think you're a nutter with a gun who's been watching too many mob movies." Her chin lifted. Defiant. Terrified, but defiant. "And I think if you wanted to shoot me, you would've done it already."

Merda. She wasn't wrong, and that unsettled me more than I wanted to admit, standing here with a gun trained on a stranger who'd apparently seen straight through the one card I'd been counting on to end this quickly.

I could've dropped her the second I saw her with Adelio. Clean shot. No hesitation. But something had stopped me, maybe the way the kid was clinging to her, or the way she was whispering to him like he was hers to protect. Or maybe it was the simple fact that kidnappers didn't usually wear neon bikinis and argue philosophy while at gunpoint.

Still. Couldn't let her know that. A man in my position couldn't afford to show his hand, not even to a terrified tourist who probably hadn't the faintest idea how dangerous the situation she'd wandered into actually was.

"You're right," I said, letting a smile curve my lips. The dangerous kind. "I don't want to shoot you. I want to know who sent you."

Her eyes widened. "Sent me? Sent me? Mate, the only person who sent me anywhere was my best friend Viv, and that was to get a bloody milkshake!"

"Cute story." I said it flatly, unwilling to give her an inch until I'd verified every word of it myself.

"It's the truth—"

"Kegan!"

Russel.

I turned, and there he was, my best friend, my Don, the man who'd burn the world for his family, striding through the crowd like an avenging angel. His face was carved from stone, eyes wild, gun already in his hand.

Behind him, Allesia stumbled forward, eight months pregnant and sobbing so hard she could barely walk. Her hands were pressed to her belly, mascara streaked down her face in black rivers, and the sight of her like that hit me harder than the sight of Russel's gun ever could.

And when Adelio saw them, when that little boy saw his parents, he started screaming.

"Mama! Papa!"

The girl's face went white.

I watched it happen in slow motion, the exact moment she realized she'd made a catastrophic mistake, the color draining out of her cheeks so fast I half expected her to faint on the spot. The moment she understood that the man she'd been calling a kidnapper was actually the consigliere of the most powerful family in Europe.

And she'd just claimed his nephew as her own.

"That's my son," Russel snarled, gun trained on her head. His finger was on the trigger. One wrong word and she was dead. "Bitch, who the fuck sent you?"

"I—wait—no, I didn't—"

"Who. Sent. You."

"Nobody!" The girl's voice cracked. She was shaking now, still holding Adelio even as he stretched his little arms toward his mother. "I swear, I found him in the bathroom! There were men, actual kidnappers, they had him taped up and I just, I thought I was saving him!"

"Liar," Russel hissed.

Allesia let out a broken sob and lunged forward. She was ungainly, massive with pregnancy, but fury made her fast. She ripped Adelio from the girl's arms with a mother's desperate strength.

"How dare you," Allesia choked out, tears streaming. "How dare you touch my baby—"

And then she slapped her.

The crack echoed across the beach.

The girl stumbled back, hand flying to her cheek, eyes wide with shock.

"Allesia—" I started.

But Allesia wasn't done. She slapped her again. And again. Each blow punctuated with a sob.

"You're a woman, you animal—"

"I was trying to help!" the girl cried, arms up to shield her face. "I saw the kidnappers! They had guns! They were going to take him!"

"Lies!" Allesia screamed.

The crowd was getting louder now. Phones everywhere. This was going to be a nightmare for our PR team, assuming any of them still had jobs by the time I finished explaining how a beach vacation had turned into an international incident involving a screaming pregnant woman and a stranger in a Primark bikini.

Russel stepped forward, gun still raised. "Give me one reason I shouldn't end you right here."

"Russel." I moved between them. Subtle. Just enough to block his line of fire. "Not here."

"Get out of my way, Kegan." The threat in his voice was unmistakable, raw and dangerously close to the surface.

"Look around," I said quietly. "Fifty phones. Fifty witnesses. You kill her now, it's not just bad press. It's an international incident."

His eyes were black with rage. "I don't care—"

"Yes, you do." I held his gaze. "Think about Adelio. Think about Allesia. You want them to watch you execute someone on a public beach?"

Adelio was crying now, face buried in Allesia's neck. My godson. Safe. Alive. Two words I had never once let myself imagine failing to say after this particular day began.

That's all that mattered. Everything else, the girl, the crowd, the phones, the mess we'd have to clean up before nightfall, was secondary to that one simple fact.

"Come on, man," I said silently. "You trust me, don't you?"

Russel's jaw worked like he was chewing on bullets. For a moment, I thought he might shoot her anyway. Shoot through me to get to her, and there was a part of me, small but real, that recognized he was entirely capable of it if I misjudged this even slightly.

His gun never wavered.

The girl's breathing had gone ragged. Her knees were half-bent, like she was ready to either bolt or pass out.

"Russel," I said evenly, "your kid's back in your wife's arms. That's the win. Let's not turn the beach into a crime scene."

"She had him." His voice was low, dangerous. "She fucking touched my son."

"She also didn't shoot him, stab him, or sell him before we got here. Which, in this situation, makes her practically a saint."

The girl blinked at me. "Excuse me?"

"Not now," I snapped without looking at her.

Russel's eyes snapped back to me. "You think this is funny?" His voice had dropped into something low and dangerous, the kind of tone that used to precede men disappearing entirely.

"Not even slightly," I said, smiling just enough to annoy him. "But the press will. They'll love the headline: 'Mafia Don Guns Down Defenseless British Tourist in Neon Bikini.' Think of the memes."

A muscle jumped in his cheek. He shifted the gun a fraction higher.

"Easy," I said, lifting a hand in mock surrender. "Save that energy for the men who actually sent her to take your boy. We still have to find them."

"Well, she's fucking covering for them," Russel growled.

"Maybe. Maybe not. But we can't interrogate a corpse."

He hesitated. Barely.

I stepped a little more in front of the girl. "Give me ten minutes alone with her. I'll know if she's lying. You can shoot her later if you don't like my report."

The girl made a strangled sound. "That's… not actually comforting."

"Exactly the point," I said without looking back at her, "I've been known to talk very dangerous people out of very bad ideas. You're going to be fine. Probably."

Russel's breath came harshly through his nose.

For a second I thought he was going to pull the trigger just to shut both of us up.

Then Allesia's soft, wrecked voice cut in behind him.

"Russel, please. Not in front of Adelio."

The boy clung to her, hiccupping around his tears, wide-eyed at the sight of his father's gun.

That, more than anything I could have said, made Russel's shoulders twitch.

Not relax. Just twitch.

I watched the moment he forced himself to breathe, the leash barely holding, every muscle in his body coiled tight enough to snap.

The gun stayed in his hand. His eyes stayed murderous.

But at least, for now, the world kept turning.

I kept my body angled between Russel and the girl, my own pulse finally starting to settle now that the immediate threat of him pulling the trigger had passed. Around us, my men were already working the crowd, confiscating phones, offering hush money disguised as generous compensation for "the disturbance," the kind of cleanup operation we'd performed so many times it barely required conscious thought anymore.

The girl was still trembling, though whether from fear or shock or the simple fact that she'd nearly been executed on a beach by a man built like a tank, I couldn't say. Probably all three. Her eyes kept darting between Russel, Allesia, and me, like she was trying to work out which one of us posed the greatest immediate threat.

That was smart, in a reckless sort of way. Wrong instincts entirely, but smart.

"We're taking her in for questioning," I told Russel, my tone leaving no room for argument. "Not killing her. Questioning."

He didn't answer right away. His attention had shifted to Allesia, to Adelio still sobbing quietly against her shoulder, and something in his rigid posture finally began to loosen.

"Fine," he bit out eventually. "But I want to be there when you interrogate her."

That, I hadn't expected, and it worried me more than his fury had.