6
"Jason, she is your wife and you love her deeply. Myself and the other Family heads will do everything we can to help bring her home safe and sound. You have my promise."
She had been missing for two weeks.
Jason had full control of all of Sonny's resources, as well as those of the other Family heads, and worked around the clock to get his wife back. Don Sandoval and the others had called in all the favors they could, each of them trying to get at least some information as to where Manny Ruiz had taken Mrs. Morgan. They had nothing to go on – nothing except Manny's brief letters, delivered through several middlemen, always full of taunts and half-clues. Spinelli and the other technology gurus employed by the Family heads did their best to decode the messages for any hidden information that could be used to find the Fair Elizabeth, but were having little luck so far.
He didn't understand how this could have happened. He'd watched the security footage Spinelli had put together over and over, trying to make sense of it, but nothing clicked. This was precisely why he'd moved them to the Graystone. Well, the main reason was so that he could have some uninterrupted time alone with his wife without the well-meaning Corinthos family, Spinelli, and a veritable army of bodyguards walking in and out of the living room at all hours of the day and night. But the Graystone was secluded and heavily guarded with cameras all around the perimeter. There wasn't a square inch that was unsupervised, but somehow, Manny Ruiz's men had broken in anyway and kidnapped his wife.
It was unbelievable. One night, he had been showing her how to shoot his gun and when she'd gotten proficient enough at that, it became a different kind of lesson. After their first bout of lovemaking behind the sofa in the private den, he'd taken her upstairs and they'd spent the rest of the night as a tangle of limbs, stealing a few hours' worth of sleep only when they were both too exhausted to do anything else. And the next night, he went out to attend an informal meeting with Sonny and Tagliati, and she was gone.
Spinelli, bless him, hadn't slept a wink in days. He was glued to his computer, constantly networking with the other tech gurus employed by the Families so that he had up to the minute updates on the situation. Sonny spent most of his time on the phone or with Spinelli, anxiously pacing behind the boy as he pulled up security tapes from any locations that appeared on his list as places of interest. Michael was crushed and had lapsed into some psychological trauma state, no doubt remembering the incident of his own kidnapping, and was in no shape to return to school and so spent most of the day huddled up on the couch in his pajamas next to Spinelli. Brenda, who was beside herself with her own ineffectiveness, brewed coffee for the men and tried to at least make sure that they ate something.
Nothing was working. Don Sandoval had made two trips to Port Charles from his Connecticut territories so far; both Faith and Roscoe flew out to Chicago to take advantage of their family contacts there since the Ruiz family also had contacts in the Midwest, and Don Tagliati had left his borough and was currently staying in one of the furnished suites at Harborview. He was the only Family head that had one time associated with the Ruiz family, and since he figured that Manny would eventually contact Sonny and Jason in person, he wanted to be personally on hand.
They had used up their store of favors with the Family heads, but Jason couldn't worry about that at a time like this. All that mattered was bringing Elizabeth home before that psychopath snapped her neck like a twig for looking at him cross-eyed. Manny Ruiz was a loose canon, a madman, and every day that passed with Elizabeth in his clutches left less and less hope for them.
He just couldn't lose her now, not when he was so close to having a real relationship with her, to building a real life with her beyond their previously sham-marriage. If he got her back, he'd tell her everything. It didn't matter if he was rejected, if she didn't return his feelings, if she wouldn't. He just had to get it all out there, let her know all of it, and they'd go from there.
They'd just have to go from there.
---------------------------
Spinelli had come through, as he always did.
Jason slammed a new cartridge into his weapon and nodded at Max, who made quick motions to the rest of the guards. They were moving through an old abandoned warehouse that Don Tagliati had once used but that had been boarded up for years. Apparently, Manny Ruiz thought it was an excellent place to stash the young Mrs. Morgan until he could move her again.
Jason had wanted to handle this personally, no matter how hard Sonny, Brenda, Spinelli, and even Michael had tried to dissuade him. This wasn't business – this was entirely personal. Manny Ruiz abducted Elizabeth because she ruined his plans to use Michael as a pawn in his power play. He didn't need to use her as a pawn this time; he had all the wealth and resources he could need, especially after his last few extremely profitable months. This was just a game of cat-and-mouse, and it was all about taunting Jason with the fact that he couldn't keep his family safe.
And that was why Jason had suited up and driven to the outskirts of Brooklyn with Max, Ritchie, Tagliati's enforcer, and two of Don Sandoval's top men. He had a constant line to Spinelli, who had outfitted him with a special headset, and Spinelli in turn had a constant line to the Roscoes, who were particularly influential in that part of New York and would be instrumental in running damage control and cleaning up if things went bad.
Jason hadn't let Sonny get one word in about how to handle this situation before he left, because he already knew one thing for certain: either Manny Ruiz would be going home in an unmarked body bag, or he would.
