"Fuck!!!!" the hotel vase crashes on the wall.

I toss this tablet on the bed and I walk to the balcony.

Fuck.

I have to agree with my brother. Fuck.

"That asshole had a kid!?" Mason's voice comes from somewhere and I can't focus on that. I pat my pocket. I need something to calm down. My mind gallops. It feels like my head is split in many sections and they all keep crashing on each other. My head buzzes, and it feels like it's going to burst.

I try to push out the thoughts of what could happen to our girl and our son. I shake my head and I turn back to the room. Jose is yelling on the phone and Mason has one of our employees pinned on the wall.

"You telling me, all of you couldn't find anything on this guy when Drago told you to look into him? Tell me why I shouldn't rip your throat out right fucking now." His hands tremble as he squeezes the hacker who looks like he's about to shit himself.

The boy has saliva and mucus coming out of him and he's crying.

"Diavolo, our fathers are on their way up." Leo walks in the hotel room.

That takes all our attention. Mason lets the boy go and we all move to the table where all the printouts are being scattered by one of our men.

"Fuck, I should have followed my instincts. I knew there was something about this fucker." Leo says

"We all let our guard down. Now our girl and our son are in danger." Jose mutters.

His words feel like a stab in my ears. He is right we all should have known. We have enemies everywhere and one of them was bound to want to get their hands on her. But I would have never guessed the jock would be the one.

But all of that isn't going to help us. We need to focus.

"We need to focus. We have to figure this out soon and go get them."

"I agree. We need to lock ourselves down. He will use her to get to us and we need to prepare." Mason says coldly as he picks one of the files on Darrell, or who we now know as Adrik Popov. Son of Gregor Popov.

Gregor Popov, the Russian Pakhan we now know Zahara's father had killed in Cuba all those years ago. The asshole Gregor hid his children very well. Our fathers told us his children were never found neither by enemies nor his allies. Only Darrell of the three children has surfaced, but anonymously, and he changed his name and has no accent.

He fit right in, and no one would question a one-in-a-thousand white kid from a shitty town in Ohio. And that anonymity has helped him move in secret all these years and Adrik has garnered quite the allies for himself. Using his father's old men, and making acquaintances of the surviving bratva in Pavana; the ones our fathers didn't wipe out or chase away on their rise to power.

"We need to get to the other siblings." I say as I look at their birth records.

"They should be 10, the twins. We need to get to them." Leo says

"You. Those records of his assets and his hidey holes we want it now. Tell your colleagues I will start shooting people in 10 minutes."

The boy scurries to the adjoining room where our teams are collecting information and working to track him and her.

I go through these records on my tablet this time. I need to see what we haven't seen before. Adrik started school here in the US 8 years ago in a shitty town in Ohio.

Nothing called attention to him. His report cards, he wasn't in the foster system, and he has a valid birth certificate. But where was he the first few years of his life? Maybe that could give us clues to where he hides. He disappears again 4 years ago when he started high school and then he emerges last year and goes here in Glenwood.

His admission was declined in St. Francis. It's no doubt he wanted to be close to us. So, by all the evidence, we were his target. I wonder if he took her because of us or her father.

Her father was the fifth member of The Syndicate and if everything is right then Clark had Popov killed. But if he knew Clark killed Popov, why not just go after Zar and come after us. That means he must have not known. Clark really sat on that nugget of information.

It's still a mind fuck that we hated him for nothing all those years. I didn't think he would come out the hero in this story. So much has happened that I don't even know what is what anymore. And I am very conflicted about how I feel about him right now.

I just know we need to get our girl and our son back home. I don't care about anything else anymore. In fact, I am tired. I try and not think of what could happen to her in his hands. What he could do to hurt all of us.

He really has us with her. He has us good.

The door bursts open and our fathers come in.

"You are serious, this is Popov's son?" my father asks

"That mother fucker fucking us over even in his death." Jose's father says. We all rise and meet our fathers in the middle.

"Yes, the mother fucker's spawn lived, and he has a fucking army. They were efficient and they disappeared in 10 minutes."

"That means he had been ready all this time." Leo's father says.

"She's fucking pregnant. She is no pawn of war." Mason's father grinds out

"Anything new in the last minutes?" my dad asks, and I would laugh if it didn't feel like a huge rock was in my chest, suffocating the life out of me.

Jose lights a cigarette. "When I get my hands on him." He says with black death oozing out of him. His index is bandaged where he has been taking out his frustration.

Not that I'm judging or better in anyway. I have been fighting the urge to not go to my usual coping mechanism. Usually, I would have taken a few moments to destroy other people's lives as we all go manic. I have always been like that. When I feel sad, I always don't feel right to be sad alone, I like sharing those kinds of feelings.

Depending on how much I'm hurt or how much time I have. Sometimes I go after corrupt politicians, sometimes immoral businesspeople, sometimes CEOs, rotten teachers, cheaters. Whoever is unlucky enough that the dart lands on. Chaos helps me focus. But I am trying to be different, to be a better person for her, so I sit on those urges. My tablet chimes and I jump the notification. A call from an unknown number.

"Hello." I say and I put it on loudspeaker.

"Cirillo. Hello." He makes no effort to conceal his Russian accent like he always has.

My inside solidifies as my hands tremble. Mason takes the tablet in my hand.

"Motherfucker, if you fucking touch her."

I get up and his father takes the tablet. We all hurdle in a circle.

"Ah, its nice to finally make your acquaintance. The old syndicate and the new syndicate. I feel special."

He knows we are all here. We all look around.

"What do you want?" Jose asks in a surprisingly cool voice

He chuckles. The bastard chuckles.

"Ah, that you will know later tonight."

"Where is she? And why bring her into this. We are who you want." Leo demands.

"Pipe down, Saito, my boy. I haven't touched your little pass around. But I must say I was tempted especially last night when I..." Mason takes the tablet, and he throws it to the wall.

FUCK!

"What the fuck are you doing!?" Leo shoves Mason and Jose throws the punch. Mason tumbles to the floor. I leap to grab them. My own rage boiling over. The only link we have to her. He's fucking up like he always does.

I grab Leo as he bends to the on-the-floor Mason whose face houses his own rage. He wants to feel pain.

"Stop this shit right now!" I stand between them pushing their chests back.

"He wants to provoke us. He wants us emotional and manic." My own voice comes out strong and sure, but it is not what my heart feels. I am dying a thousand deaths a minute. The children of one of our fathers' biggest enemies has our girl and our unborn child.

"He knows he has you. You need to focus. If you let him have you, then he will take everything." Leo's father says in a loud voice. His voice comes as my ears ring and my mind feels like it hurts.

"Fuck!" Mason shakes and he retreats with a red face.

"Why did he have to take her?" Jose's voice comes out cracked now.

"If...if something happens to her, I'll never forgive myself." Mason's eyes glaze, and he looks like a broken little toy.

"No, we can't think like that. He wants to use her."

"It's my fucking fault, all of it. It's my fuck up." Mason falls on his knees and he places his face in his hands.

"Mase, man, don't say that." Jose says. But I don't know if he believes that himself. Mason is the one who has made most of the calls that brought us here and we all followed him like fools.

His hubris is what brought us here. He believed she would just come back to us and the love we shared would automatically fix everything and she'd just come around. What fucking idiots were we. So yes, I agree with him. It's his fault.

Shadows move around us, and Leo's father lifts him from the ground.

Jose's father grabs hold of me by my shoulders, and he shakes me. "Fucking focus. The asshole has what's yours. What did we fucking teach you!"

Leo's father has his hands holding Mason's face and he is trying to get him back to equilibrium.

"It is time to lock it all down. He isn't better than us, better than you. We were better than his father and you are better than him. You will get her back, and we all will finish this, once and for all." He says to Mason.

Mason looks like he can't even hear him as tears run down his face. He is slipping. He pulls out of Leo's father's arms, and he tries to walk away but he doesn't make it anywhere when Leo's father grabs him and slaps him into next month.

I hear a gasp from somewhere in the room, but I don't know where its coming from. Mason tumbles to the ground and Leo's father bends his knees to stare down at him.

"You will stop your moping. You can fall apart when she is home."

Mason stares up at him for a few long moments and then it is like a curtain closes in Mason's eyes and they focus and the cold Diavolo makes himself known.

He lets Leo's father pull him up and he wipes his tears.

We all breathe, and we focus.

In a few hours we have found a few of his low-key properties but nothing concrete. Zahara's father joins us. He flew in from New York. It is an hour away from the time of the meeting, and we need to have something; we must be prepared.

"I found them." Clark says as he gets off the phone. We all turn to him.

"The siblings?" Mason asks

"Yes, the siblings, the mother, the aunt and the cousin."

We all near him.

"Where are they?" Leo asks

Clark looks at all of us before his eyes land on Jose's dad. "In Cuba."

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