Submitting to My Best Friend's Dad-Chapter 723 : Unsettling News

*Elio*

As much as I hated leaving Cat to her own devices, I knew I needed to take this call from Franky. It was imperative that I knew what was going on at all times and clearly his men found something.

I palmed Cat’s face in my hand and brushed my thumb over her cheek lovingly. My stomach flipped as her large, doe eyes poured into me with heavy emotion.

I wished I could take the worry from her regarding the problem with her friend. I made it my job to be optimistic about the whole ordeal, but in all honesty, I truly had no idea which way Anna was going to side with this.

I hit the answer button and held the phone up to my ear.

“What is it?” I asked evenly.

Franky’s sharp tone filled my ear, causing my nerves to freeze over.

“We found him,” he said. “He’s dead.”

I quickly pulled away from Cat and stood up from my chair. Caterina’s eyes filled with concern that I hastily defused by pointing over toward the balcony doors. My lips parted as I silently told her that I would be right back.

This wasn’t the kind of conversation that she needed to overhear at the moment. The only real thing she needed to focus on was finding a way to speak to Anna. I didn’t want nor need to trouble her with this sort of business, at least not at that very second.

Although this was one of Franky’s men who’d gone missing, the cause and effect could easily trace its way back to Cat and myself.

Once I was out on the balcony, I slid the doors shut, allowing us both to speak freely. It was imperative that I knew every detail of what happened.

“Tell me everything,” I instructed.

Franky’s voice remained even and direct as he spoke. “He was found at one of the warehouses, beaten to a bloody pulp before he was likely shot.”

My expression twisted into a vicious scowl, my mouth pulled back into a tight sneer. The muscles in my chest contracted with a mixture of grief and pure anger. Again, I knew that this was one of Franky’s men, but a loss was still counted as a loss to me.

I wanted so badly to think that Franky was acting pessimistic this morning when he spoke to Leo and me. I thought he was just painting the picture as grim as possible to spare us from disappointment.

Did I honestly think that the guy was going to magically turn up out of blue, completely unscathed? No.

There was a clear difference between being hopeful and being realistic.

But knowing that Franky’s prediction was correct all along didn’t exactly make me feel too great either.

“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath.

He hummed in agreement. “For what it’s worth, I know for fact that the guy went down fighting,” he explained.

“You examined the body,” I stated.

“Precisely. We found traces of someone else’s skin and blood under his nails on his clothing.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and pressed a hand to the side of my head. “Anything else?”

“Yeah....”

I was not favoring the pause that dangled off his voice.

“We found a note that was clearly attached to his body for us to find. It said, ‘This is just the beginning.’”

And that was the true piece of information that caused me to see fucking red. The ache in my head kept me from cycling through all the possible meanings for that message as well as who could have potentially sent it.

Junior was my first and only thought. But there was nothing indicating that he was responsible for this. After all, the bastard had been floating just under the radar since the death of his father. But months had passed since that night, and part of me felt like there was more at play.

Nonetheless, it didn’t leave a pleasant taste in my mouth to even think about because in the end, it only confirmed my concerns.

‘This was no accidental killing,’ I thought. ‘It was purely intentional and meant to send a distinctive message that my men and I are being targeted, which means that Cat is being targeted too,’

I let out another indignant curse while clenching my hand into a tight fist at my side. I ignored the biting pain of nails digging into my palm and gave out a clear order to Franky.

“Call Leo,” I said. “Tell him that you two are to meet me at the warehouse.”

I ended the call without giving Franky a chance to ruin my mood even further. We needed a plan. I couldn’t manage to go on any further without consulting with the others and establishing some kind of strategy.

But before any of that was going to happen, it was imperative that I spoke to Cat.

This day had already gone to shit. The last thing I was going to do was make it worse by trying to intentionally keep her in the dark about this. As much as it pained me, this information was vital to her life too.

I took a few deep breaths and was determined to regain my focus before letting my anger get the best of me. I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and opened the door to rejoin Cat in the kitchen. I had to tell her the unfortunate news.

Not surprisingly, she was exactly where I left her before my call. She picked her gaze up from the table when she noticed me coming into the room.

“What is it? Has something happened?” she asked.

Her features were pinched with worry, and I hated knowing that I was about to make it ten times worse by explaining everything to her.

I need to protect her. And I had absolutely no intention of letting her come with me when I left to head to the warehouse.

But I wasn’t going to lie to her.

Cat was right. If I wasn’t going to allow her presence at some of these meetings, the very least I could do was tell her the truth about the current state of our situation.

I sat down and reached out to take her hand between my own.

“You remember when I told you about one of Franky’s men going missing a little while ago?”

Cat slowly nodded her head. “Yes.”

“Well, Franky and his men finally found the guy.” Her brows raised in surprise. “He’s dead.”

Her mouth fell open as a sharp gasp escaped her throat.

“I have to go meet with Franky and Leo now to figure out what we’re going to do from here,” I told her.

She closed her mouth and gently tilted her head downward.

“And I take it that you don’t want me to come with you right now,” she said.

I could see from her sullen expression that she was upset that I was purposely leaving her behind, but I didn’t have a choice. There was no way I was going to risk her safety now.

Slowly getting up from my chair, I leaned down to press a chaste kiss to her head.

“I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Leaving her like this felt like a punch in the gut, but I needed to go. I didn’t have any other choice.

***

When I arrived at the warehouse, I was quick to notice that Leo managed to get there before me.

‘Good,’ I thought briskly. ‘There won’t be any time wasted waiting around.’

All I wanted was to form and plan and return home. The less time we spent waiting, the better.

Once I made it inside, I saw that both Leo and Franky were standing around a table waiting for me. Two men were stationed outside of the main doors, and the rest of Franky’s men were spread out around the place.

I came up to the table and slammed both of my hands down. The shattering noise echoed throughout the warehouse, capturing everyone’s attention almost instantly.

“Well, somebody had better tell me just how the fuck this happened!” I shouted.

Many of the men dropped their eyes to the floor like they were unwilling to look at me for fear that they’d magically combust. With all that had gone on that day, I honestly wished I possessed such an ability. Maybe then I wouldn’t have felt so powerless.

Of course, I didn’t expect an answer to that, and Franky seemed to realize that as he spoke next.

“Elio, the plan is simple,” he said. “It’s best that going forward, we all stick together and find out who’s responsible.”

“No more individual stakeouts,” Leo clarified. “We won’t run the risk of losing someone else, should the need arise where we need to fan out and search an area.” 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

I nodded my head in agreement. Yes, at the very least we weren’t going to make the same foolish mistake of letting our men work alone. It was best to have them paired up, but it wasn’t enough to ease the distress in my chest.

“What else?” I prompted.

“Aside from the body, we had his car brought on as well,” Franky mentioned. “I currently have a few men looking over the car as we speak given everything we know about the disappearance. I also have another team looking for any sort of hidden cameras around the area to see if we can find anything at all that might link this to someone directly.”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Something is going to turn up, Elio,” Leo said with confidence. “It has to. There’s only so much that these bastards were capable of dealing with at the time of the kidnapping.”

That was true. What were the chances of them tampering with every single surveillance camera in the area to cover their tracks? Not very likely, especially if the camera just so happened to be hidden.

So once again, we were back to searching for anything that could be of use, which meant that I was, once again, in wait mode.

I nodded my head, wishing I felt better about the current plan than I did. But what else could be done?

It sucked that all we could do was hope to find even a trace to follow. And in the meantime, I felt utterly helpless on the sidelines.

But I wasn’t about to tell Franky that.

“Okay, that’s the current plan then,” I confirmed. “Have your men search over everything and let me know as soon as anything is found.”

Both Franky and Leo nodded their heads before we all split to leave in our own direction. I turned back toward the main entrance with the clear intention of heading straight home to Cat.

I was more than ready for this day to be over, but so many thoughts and concerns were running through my head at too quick a pace. Were Franky’s men capable of finding what we needed? Who was behind the violent attack and threatening note?

One of our guys was dead.

Would someone in our family be next?