“I got that after I threw her out and called her every disgusting name I could think of. After she was gone, I could see blood on the floor where we’d been and on me. She was a fucking virgin, and the things I said and did . . .” He shook his head and raked his fingers through his disheveled hair. “I don’t have a clue what to say to her, how to fix this, but she’s mine. There’s no going back from this. I know she’s mine. If she’s really in danger, I have to help her.”

“Do you think her grandfather beat her?” Jake asked. “You knew him. Would he do that to his own granddaughter for failing in her mission?”

“No way. Antonio was many things, but he loved that girl.”

“I’ll get the police report and see what happened last night,” Jake offered. The phone buzzed and he picked it up to listen for a moment. At once his face darkened as he slammed down the phone, cursing. “Elijah, front desk just reported a man pulled Siena Arnotto into a car. She fought him and he shoved and slapped her before getting into the car after her.”

Elijah swore in his native Spanish. “Did they get the license plate?”

“They said it was one of Arnotto’s men. A leopard. That has to be either Paolo Riso or Alonzo Massi, since Marco is dead.” Jake was on the move as well. “Where will they take her?”

“My guess, back to the Arnotto estate. It’s large. A lot of acreage to cover. He won’t take her anywhere near the house. That has to be crawling with cops, possibly even Feds. He’s going to take her somewhere private, somewhere no one will hear her.”

“I’ll get a bird in the air,” Jake said, and fished out his cell phone as they raced through the building to the garage where both kept vehicles.

Elijah drove and he drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic, fear pushing at him hard. He wasn’t a man who was fearful. He’d faced death on several occasions and he had come out on top, but this wasn’t him in the fire. This was Siena.

He had spotted Siena when she was a teen. He’d been drawn to her then. She was beautiful, but it was more than that, something he couldn’t put his finger on, but he found himself dreaming about her, which, because of her age, made him very uncomfortable. The few times he saw her over the years, as she’d grown, hadn’t changed the way he felt about her. The intrigue. The mystery of her. The fantasy of her.