29. Raiden
Chapter 29
Raiden
“ W e can’t just sit here and do nothing!” I roar, pacing back and forth across the clubhouse like a caged animal. My boots hammer the floor, sending vibrations through the room. Priest sits behind a scarred table, arms crossed over his broad chest, eyes narrowed. He doesn’t flinch at my volume and doesn’t move an inch. He’s a statue, waiting for me to run out of steam.
Some of the other guys—Bash, Wolfe, Trigger, Vic, Apollo—linger near the edges, quiet but watchful. All of them are aware of what happened last night. Lucrezia is gone. Kristopher took her right from under my nose. And I’m losing my fucking mind.
“Raiden,” Priest says finally, cutting through my spiral of rage. His eyes lock onto mine, unflinching. “Yelling at me won’t bring Lux back. You know that as well as I do.”
I slam a fist onto the table, the sound echoing through the room like a gunshot in the tense silence. “Don’t you think I know that?” My voice cracks on the last word, betraying the raw emotion I’m trying desperately to contain. “What the hell are we doing, Priest? Sitting on our asses? She could be anywhere, trapped with a psychopath, while we talk plans and strategies. Fuck. Strategies.”
Priest’s brow furrows, deep lines etching across his forehead, and for a moment, I see a flicker of sorrow in his eyes. “We need to be smart about this,” he says, his voice carrying the weight of experience I’m too angry to appreciate right now.
“ Smart? ” I spit the word out like it’s poison. “Kristopher is a goddamn lunatic. He doesn’t give a shit about smart . He kidnapped Lucrezia while I was upstairs, without a sound, without me even knowing. Do you understand how insane that is? How impossible? He vanished with her. I can’t just wait , Priest. Every second we waste is another second she’s with him.”
From the corner, Bash clears his throat. He’s leaning against a post, arms folded across his broad chest. He meets my gaze briefly and raises a brow, his eyes telling me to get my shit together. But I ignore him. I’m too far gone for calm, too deep in this spiral of fear and fury to even consider pulling back now.
Priest holds up a hand, a silent command that I’m supposed to respect. Normally, I would. But right now, I’m halfway to ripping the table out from under him and hurling it through the nearest wall. Still, I force myself to back off a notch, my fingers flexing at my sides as I try to contain the violence threatening to burst out of me. “Raiden,” his voice steady and measured, “I understand your anger, believe me. Don’t think I don’t care. I love that girl, too, you know.”
My chest tightens. Priest’s calm veneer slips just enough to show real pain, the kind that makes his eyes go distant, and his shoulders sag ever so slightly. When I met Lucrezia, I found out that she and Priest already knew each other. They met when she was just a kid, contemplating an end to everything, standing on the precipice of a decision no one should have to make. He found her ready to jump off a literal cliff, and he spent hours talking her down. They forged something that night—and he’s treated her like a daughter ever since, watching over her with the kind of fierce protectiveness that comes from seeing someone at their most vulnerable.
He continues. “If we run out there shooting at shadows, we’ll end up dead. Kristopher’s counting on you to lose your head and make mistakes. Don’t give him the satisfaction of playing into his hands.”
I run a hand through my hair, tugging at the strands until my scalp stings. My heart drums a furious beat against my ribs. “I’m not asking for a suicide mission,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m asking for action. We have to find leads or whatever the hell it is detectives do.”
“And we will,” Priest says firmly. “But we’ll do it right. We’ll be smart about this. Lucrezia wouldn’t want you wasting your life in some half-assed ambush.”
My eyes burn with unshed tears, but I refuse to let that vulnerability break through. “Priest, I can’t stand this. She’s out there with him, alone. Christ, who knows what that bastard’s doing to her right now!”
A chill washes over me at the thought, making my skin prickle with goosebumps. I swallow hard past the lump in my throat, meeting Priest’s gaze. He looks pained, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. “Don’t,” he says quietly, his voice rough with emotion. “Don’t picture that. It’ll tear you apart.”
I bark a humorless laugh that sounds more like a sob. “Too late. I’m already torn apart. Have been since the moment she disappeared.” It is a truth that hurts to admit.
An awkward silence settles over the room; then Bash steps forward to break the standstill. “Look, we’re all on the same page here. We want her back for your sake, Raid. But we need an angle, and we need something concrete to work with. We don’t even know where Kristopher’s holed up, let alone how many guys he’s got watching his back.”
Vic nods, quiet as always, but the set of his jaw shows he’s thinking hard. Trigger shifts uneasily from foot to foot, looking at Priest as if hoping for orders, his fingers twitching near his holster.
Priest exhales slowly as he turns to look at me. His tone shifts, becoming gentler than before, like he’s trying to calm a wounded animal. “We’ll reach out to our contacts and put feelers out. Maybe someone saw something. We’ve got allies in low places, people who owe us favors?—“
“I don’t want feelers,” I snap, cutting him off with a gesture that makes Trigger flinch. “I want results. I want to rip apart every warehouse, every fucking hideout, until I find her. I will turn this whole city upside down if I have to.”
Bash clears his throat again, this time louder, deliberately drawing our attention away from the brewing tension. There’s something calculating in his gaze that makes my skin prickle, a spark of an idea flickering behind those shrewd eyes that I’m pretty sure I’m not going to like. “There’s another option.”
I glare at him. “What option?”
With a slow, measured shrug, as if what he’s about to say is no big deal, Bash says, “Saverio.”
Silence drops like a guillotine blade. Priest’s eyes widen slightly. Vic looks like Bash just suggested punching God in the face—a mixture of horror and incredulity that would be comical if the situation weren’t so serious. I step forward, voice low and dangerous with disbelief. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Bash lifts his hands in mock surrender, an infuriatingly calm expression still plastered on his face. “Hear me out. Saverio’s her brother. He might want her back enough to help us find Kristopher. Their family ties run deep; we all know that.”
I laugh bitterly, the sound scraping raw in my throat. “We just tried to kill Saverio, remember? We blew up his house. You think he’s going to have a heart-to-heart with us now? After we turned his mansion into a smoking crater?”
But Bash remains oddly calm. “He’s her family, Raiden. The Castigliones are twisted, but they care about blood more than anything else. If Lucrezia’s life is at risk, Saverio might put aside his grudge to rescue her. We both know he has resources we don’t.”
My vision blurs with fury, red creeping in at the edges. “We’re not running to that bastard for help. I’d rather die trying to find her myself than crawl to him on my hands and knees.”
Bash meets my fury with a steady look. “You might just get your wish if you go it alone. Think, Raiden. Kristopher has disappeared before, and he’s doing it again. We have no leads, no trail to follow, and nothing but dead ends and shadows. Saverio’s network is extensive. He’ll have men everywhere, informants in every dark corner of the entire state. He could flush Kristopher out in a matter of days while we waste weeks chasing our tails.”
This isn’t like when we helped the Terlizzis find Adalina Martinelli’s father. Then, we knew we had a connection to Tommaso. We knew the men in his family did drugs, knew their haunts and habits, knew exactly where to apply pressure. We just had to wait them out until one of them cracked. But Kristopher has never turned to us for anything—not money, not favors, not even a friendly word. If we wait around hoping he’ll make a mistake or show his hand, we’ll lose Lucrezia forever.
“Raiden,” Priest says quietly, getting up and walking over to me. He places a hand on my shoulder, forcing me to meet his gaze. “I know how much you hate this idea. But Bash isn’t wrong. Saverio might actually want to save Lucrezia. If we approach him right, maybe we can come to some understanding. We have to consider every option here.”
I shake Priest’s hand off with more force than necessary. The clubhouse feels too damn small, the walls closing in, and I can barely breathe. The very thought makes my skin crawl. Ask Saverio for help? After everything we’ve done to him? After what we represent and what we took from him? It’s madness. Pure fucking madness. But Lucrezia’s face flashes in my mind—her knowing smile, her eyes that challenge everything, and the way she looked at me last night like I was an anchor in the storm. She’s worth any price, even a deal with the devil himself.
“Fuck,” I mutter under my breath, my voice cracking slightly under the weight of what I’m considering. “This is insane. Completely fucking insane.”
Priest nods, offering no other gesture of goodwill. “We’re running out of options. Kristopher’s dangerous and unpredictable. We can’t let pride dictate our moves, not when Lucrezia’s life is at stake.”
I turn to glare at him. “If we go to Saverio, he’ll ask for something in return, you know that. He’ll try to use this to his advantage.”
Priest grimaces like he’s swallowed something bitter. “Probably. But we’ll deal with that when the time comes. The priority is getting Lux back safe. Everything else is just details we can sort out later.”
A muscle twitches in my jaw, the tension crawling down my neck and into my shoulders. I feel like my chest is on fire, each breath stoking the flames of rage and desperation. Every instinct screams at me to trust no one, especially not Saverio. But I picture Lucrezia alone in some filthy hole, Kristopher smiling down at her with that sick grin of his. I’d burn Manhattan to ashes and watch it all crumble to dust to spare her that fate. What’s a deal with Saverio compared to that?
“Fine,” I grind out, each word tasting like broken glass in my mouth. “If that’s what it takes, I’ll talk to him. But if he tries to fuck us over, if he so much as sneers at her fate or plays games with her life, I’ll kill him myself.”
Bash’s shoulders relax a fraction. Vic and Trigger exchange glances across the room, relief mingled with uncertainty and something that might be pity. Priest watches me carefully, his eyes sharp and assessing. “You sure about this?” he asks, his voice unusually gentle.
I snort, shaking my head as bitter laughter threatens to bubble up. “No. I’m not sure about any of this. Not one goddamn thing. But I know I can’t lose her. I know I’d rather face the devil himself and bargain for her life than waste another second playing guessing games while she’s out there somewhere, waiting for us to find her.”