The Survivor

Chapter 24

Silence: one of the hardest arguments to refute.

The humorous thing about it was that you could hear nothing, but at the same time, hear everything.

Dead drop silence.

It was chaotic.

This was chaotic.

"Maria Solovyova?" Matteo repeated slowly, hardly registering the words. "As in Ivan Solovyovo's wife?"

"Yes."

"What the bloody fucking hell?!" Xander exploded, storming up to his twin, grabbing him by the collar of his black nightshirt, "You can't throw this bombshell at us and be calm about it."

"Xander!" growled Matteo, pulling his little brother off Xavier.

Angelo frowned, his gaze thoughtful, "Now that changes a lot of things." he turned to his future don, "Alessandro, what are your thoughts about all this?"

It was still the early hours of the morning, the rain continuously thundering upon the window of their mansion, and the large protective windows shielded them from the frosty, cruel weather.

Alessandro's eyes gleamed with a cunning and dangerous glint as he listened intently to Angelo's musings. With a sly smirk, he finally spoke up, his voice low and calculated.

"Maria accused Stephen Solovyovo of dealing, right?" He waited for their nods of approval before he continued, "Stephen loved Maria, or at least he used. From this information, it appears to me that Stephen got rid of the evidence to disgrace Maria. But why? Why would she do it? Why wasn't it Ivan or his men that charged Stephen that? Hell, Ivan would probably do something worse than send his brother to jail."

Alessandro drawled. "Perhaps she is using Stephen as a pawn in a much larger game. A game that involves power, control, and a ruthless desire for dominance."

No one knew the answer to any of the questions.

Why Maria?

Why did Stephen do that?

Their thoughts were interrupted by Athena De Luca entering the room, wearing a worried expression on her face.

"What is it? What's wrong?" Angelo questioned, rushing to his pale grandmother.

"They aren't answering," she whispered, sinking her body into the plush comfy chair.

What?

"What are you on about?" Matteo asked, waving a hand in front of her face and monitoring her pupils. "Are you high on some shit?"

Even pale and trembling, a spark ignited in the older woman's eyes. She brought her hand up to her grandson's face and gave his ear a painful twist, enticing an 'ouch' from the boy.

"You arse, you know bloody well how I feel about using drugs!" She growled, "Casper hasn't answered or informed us about anything about the Russian bombing thing. I haven't heard from them since. Hell, even Martin Murphy isn't answering!"

Martin Murphy, the head of security, had accompanied Stefan and Casper to find out what happened in the Russian warehouse incident and who was responsible for it.

The alarming thing was that Martin was one of the most reliable people (unlike his son, who was a cannonball waiting to explode) and for him not to answer meant two things something was still on the mission, and couldn't find time to inform them or... they were in imminent life-threatening danger.

"Gran," Angelo said gently, "You know how uncle is. Those two are the greatest assassins in the world! There is no way that something like some puny guards could take on them." Angelo reassured. "Besides, we could use some help."