“They paid me,” he said, sniffing and then wincing at the pain of his broken nose. “These guys somehow knew she’d be at the gym today, and they gave me five grand to take the kid. All I had to do was grab her and run out the front door, and they were waiting in the parking lot.”
Damn it.
If Nikolay had realized that the men behind this were right outside the gym, he would have made sure to get a hold of them. The missed opportunity just pissed me off more.
“Who hired you?” My voice was deep with fury. I gripped the front of his shirt and yanked him toward me until the chair was tipped forward as I put my face right in front of his.
“I-I can’t. I can’t tell you. They’ll—”
“What? Kill you?” I flashed a cold smile at him. “Forget about that. The men who hired you to kidnap Alexis will never get their hands on you. I guarantee that.”
Because I was going to make sure he died here.
I shoved him back, and the chair tipped over with a loud crash. The man’s head banged into the concrete.
“It was a man named Marco Giordano. He used to date my sister. That’s why I’m the one they approached to do it.”
I recognized the surname. The Giordano family was part of the Italian mafia. That was all the confirmation I needed to know that my suspicions were right. The Italian mafia was behind all of this. They framed me for murder and were trying to rig the trial against me. In doing so, they were dragging Sarah into the whole mess. And her innocent daughter.
Those fuckers would pay.
Turning away from the sniveling man tied to the chair, I headed toward the stairs, pausing when I reached Maxim.
“Take care of him,” I said.
Maxim knew what that meant, and if he thought it was strange that I didn’t finish the man myself, he didn’t say anything.
I could’ve done it and probably taken perverse pleasure in it, but having confirmation that my greatest enemies had targeted the woman and child I was starting to greatly care aboutaffected me more than I expected. I just wanted to get the hell out there, go home, and see them. Ineededit.