Accidentally Yours Chapter 73

*****Enzo*****

Enzo woke to silence.

Not the soft kind—the dangerous kind. The silence that slithered into your chest and reminded you the world wasn’t safe. That quiet wasn’t peace. Quiet was just the pause before the blade came down.

Lola was still asleep, curled into him, breathing slow and steady. The weight of her head on his chest, the heat of her thigh slung across his—like nothing had ever happened. Like the world hadn’t tried to take her.

His hand ghosted up her spine, knuckles brushing the edge of her jaw.

Her bruises at that slightly worse stage right before they start to get better.

***Mine***.

The word wasn’t tender. It was a vow. A snarl. A curse. Because as much as he wanted to stay right here—memorize the curve of her lips, the way her lashes left shadows on bruised cheeks—he couldn’t. Not after watching the video a couple nights ago. Not after seeing her limp in another man’s arms.

***No one takes her from me. Not now. Not ever.***

The rage was still there, coiled tight in his chest, waiting. It licked up his spine every time his eyes closed—images flashing, distorted, stitched together by fury: her small body slumped, carried like cargo. A faceless man’s hands on her. Every rival’s smirk grafted onto that faceless head—Bellandi, Zhang, half a dozen others who’d love to gut him where he stood.

***Could’ve been any of them. Could’ve been all of them.***

And what cut deepest—he hadn’t been there. Across the goddamn world handling business while his woman was drugged, dragged, shoved into a car. The only reason she wasn’t broken now was because they’d spiked that shot with so much ketamine her body couldn’t lock up during the crash.

***Ketamine***. His blood boiled just thinking it.

***They gave her horse tranquilizers like she was nothing. Like she wasn’t the fucking sun I orbit.***

He pressed his lips to her temple, gentle—because she deserved gentle—but his eyes burned toward the door.

***Enough***.

The meeting was already called by the time he walked in.

Dom and Gino sat stiff at the table, coffee cooling in untouched mugs. Nico paced the corner like a caged animal, shoulders tight, jaw working.

The second Enzo shut the door behind him, the air snapped taut.

“They tried to take her.” His voice was steady, too steady, but his hands curled into fists on the table. “And we don’t know who. That pisses me off more than anything else. Which means it’s time to tighten the net.”

Dom leaned forward, arms braced on the wood, his expression carved from stone. “We don’t even have a name?”

“No.” Enzo’s teeth clicked together. The word tasted like glass.

Gino swore, dragging a hand down his face. “That’s not just sloppy, boss. That’s fucking dangerous. Somebody had the balls to move on her and not leave a trail? That means they thought it through. That means they thought they could win.”

Nico stopped pacing just long enough to spit: “They thought wrong.” His voice was a blade, low and sharp. “She’s ours. They don’t get to touch her, no one does.”

Enzo’s chest tightened.

***Not just mine. Ours. They love her too. She belongs to this family now.***

Dom’s jaw flexed hard. “She’s only breathing right now because her body was too doped up to tense up in that crash. You get that? If she’d fought it, if she’d panicked—” He broke off, his fists slamming against the table. “She might not have walked away from the crash. It rolled and she was just a wet noodle flopping around in there.”

The image punched Enzo straight in the gut. Lola’s lifeless body. Blood. Bruises. Stillness.

He shoved the vision away before it buried him.

***No. Not happening. Not while I’m still alive.***

“They don’t get another shot,” Enzo said, low, lethal. “Not ever.”

“Then where the fuck do we start?” Gino demanded. His usual humor was gone, stripped raw. “We all sat right here last night, laughing and drinking with her, like we didn’t fail her hours earlier.”

Enzo slammed his palm flat against the table, the crack echoing off the walls. “Exactly. That’s what eats me alive. They did it right under our noses. They waited for me to be across the world, waited for one second where she wasn’t at my side. They found that sliver and they took it. And they think they can try again.”

He leaned forward, glare sweeping the table like a scythe.

“They think we’re weak. That we’re sloppy. That she’s free game. That they can reach for her and not pay the price.”

He bared his teeth, voice a growl. “So I want every fucking camera pulled, every informant squeezed, every rat sniffed out. If it takes burning this city down brick by brick, then that’s what we do.”

The room was silent but for the sound of Nico’s fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. Then he said, voice like steel wire: “Burn it. I don’t care if it’s Bellandi, Zhang, or some faceless nobody with a death wish. We gut them all until we know.”

Enzo’s jaw flexed.

***Good. They’re angry. They should be angry. She deserves their anger.***

Dom gave a single, brutal nod. “Business was one thing. We let shit slide sometimes if it wasn’t worth the war. But this? This isn’t business. This is family.”

Enzo’s chest tightened again.

***Family. That’s what she is. That’s what they’re saying out loud without even realizing it. She’s theirs too. And anyone who forgets that will choke on the reminder.***

He nodded once, slow, lethal. “Then we move as one. No more laughing. No more downtime. We go back to business.” His voice cut, low and absolute. “And business is blood.”

Enzo’s knuckles were white against the table, his voice still reverberating in the silence when he spat the words that sealed the room:

“We put the city on fire until we find our Ghost.”

And that was when she walked in.