Chapter 19 Blind Rescue
Chapter nineteen
Blind Rescue
As their small, last-minute entourage pulled up to the location where they believed Reiko was being held, Santino dropped his gaze back to the screen of his phone and the most recent photo of her one more time.
It’d been hours since her captors had taunted him with the despicable picture.
The image was seared into his brain like a scar after all the times he’d looked at it, and he loathed it—but it was the last he had.
His precious Reiko, stripped practically bare, bound nearly to the point of sensory deprivation, and for all intents and purposes dropped to the ground like trash. Taking her at all was a disrespect to him. The choices in how they held her were downright dehumanizing.
Santino’s grip on the phone tightened. Had they left her like that?
Did he want them to?
It was hard to breathe through the intensity of the emotion that burned up his throat as he rolled that back and forth in his mind. There was no good answer. None of it was fucking acceptable.
Seatbelts slid back. He heard a door from a nearby SUV slam.
Santino sucked in a rough, unsteady breath.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so shaken.
He lifted the phone close and pressed his lips to the image briefly.
I’m coming, beautiful. He lowered the phone, tucked it away, and exhaled slowly.
His hand came to rest on the doorlatch before he broke the silence that sat heavy in the car. “Let’s go.”
If they’d been able to coordinate better, if this attack had been foreseen, he could have—would have—accepted Mikey’s offer of reinforcements.
But between the time it would take to rouse and gather the men, prep their jet, and then actually fly out to St. Louis from wherever the De Salvos parked their fancy plane, they wouldn’t have arrived until damn near dawn.
Santino hadn’t been able to tolerate the idea of that.
As it was, even with Mikey’s super-computer and one of Santino’s own on-scene techs, too much time had passed.
There was still information they didn’t know. Santino was trusting the nerds to do the rest of their thing without him, because all he truly gave a shit about was rescuing Reiko.
The fact that Armando and Ciro practically had to sprint to keep ahead of him as they made entry into the old, supposedly abandoned building they’d found to be owned on paper by Aronne’s deceased brother was a testament to Santino’s mindset.
Santino was usually much better about not waltzing head-first into a potential deathtrap.
Aronne himself wasn’t there, of course—Santino had received coded confirmation that that particular thorn had been thoroughly removed from his side—but he had obviously already dispatched men to defend the space. The majority of his men, it seemed.
Shoot-outs were always some degree of chaotic, no matter how clear-headed a man was when he walked into one.
Santino had not walked into that building with a clear head.
It was not his fault that when a bullet whizzed past his ear, close enough he was sure he felt a warm, sticky trickle of blood roll down the side of his face, he responded by pivoting toward the shooter and moving closer.
He made sure to empty what remained of his current clip into the dumbass’s body, of course, and he finished it by towering over the slumped, bullet-riddled figure and popping the final one into the traitor’s skull.
It was messy as shit. It was what the no-good rat-fuck deserved.
It was what they’d all get by the time Santino was done with them. Their blood and brains splattered on a wall and their useless husks crumbled at his feet. Fucking poetry.
But later. After he found his woman, scooped her gently into his arms, and rushed her somewhere safe and warm.
After he’d had time to kiss away her pain, after she’d had time to release her fear in whatever kind of outlet she needed.
He’d buy her all the exercise equipment she wanted if that was her preferred therapy.
He’d buy her a goddamn gym, for her exclusive use, and he’d decorate it with chrysanthemum displays.
Santino pilfered the gun and visible spare clip from the dead rat, tucked away his pistol, and resumed his trek into the building.
From the outside, it was single-story, but Mikey had said the digital record showed a basement.
No telling what condition the basement was in, but Santino would bet his fortune that was where she was. I’m coming, beautiful.
No matter whose blood he had to wade through along the way.
One or five bodies later, as yet more gunfire exploded through the air behind him, Santino finally spotted the door he was looking for.
Closed, unassuming, unguarded, and exactly where the Mikey’s direction had said the basement entrance would be.
He took a moment to reload so that he could be as ready as possible.
Arguably, he should have waited for Armando or Ciro or any available man to breach with him—but he wasn’t so patient.
It was in that beat of silence, as the gunfire ceased once more and before he’d pulled open the door, that Santino heard the sound that gutted him. A woman’s scream. Muted, muffled, almost indiscernible, but most definitely coming from the door immediately in front of him.
There was no way it could be anyone other than his Reiko.
Foreign desperation surged through him like an electric currant, his entire body responding without conscious thought, and Santino damn near ripped the door off its hinges as he threw himself across the threshold.
It was not his smartest, most calculated strategy.
He wasn’t thinking about stairs—or footing in general—and as stupid as that was, it also saved him a bullet to the face when his rushed, leaping movement caused his heel to glide off the edge of a step.
Fast reflexes enabled him to twist enough to grab hold of the banister so he could crash onto his knees before he’d fully processed the gunfire.
Then he threw himself in reverse, sideways down another step and back to the wall, bringing his own gun up as he swept his focus outward and down into the half-lit space.
From what he could tell, the basement was divided into multiple rooms, but it opened into one large area that was shaped like two off-set boxes. And aside from dividing walls and fluorescent lighting, it wasn’t what anyone would call “finished.”
Santino dismissed all of that as quickly as he noted it, fired wide in Danilo’s direction to get his bastard of a cousin to stop squeezing the fucking trigger, and as soon as he was clear he launched himself down the remaining steps. “Danilo! What the goddamn fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He could barely hear his own words, despite that he knew he’d screamed them, because he’d finally spotted her. His beautiful, suffering Reiko.
She lay on the ground, just inches from the farthest side wall, was on top of a dark tarp. Her body was positioned on her side and she was bound exactly as she’d been in the photo. She may not have moved at all since that picture had been taken.
Standing roughly between them with a Glock in hand, a knife sheathed at his thigh, and a terrible curve on his lips was Santino’s own flesh and blood.
His cousin, Danilo Segreti. Danilo waved his gun with a casual roll of his wrist, not unlike the way his mother used to gesture with the spatula when she ranted while she cooked.
“You know ‘what’. This is exactly what it looks like, exactly what it feels like.” He swung the barrel of his gun in Reiko’s direction and held it steady.
“I’m taking the control that should always have been mine, cousin.
Kick your guns aside and get on your fucking knees, or your little bitch never sees the sun again. You die either way, so it’s up to you.”
She was breathing. Her chest heaved and her nostrils flared as she sucked in breaths through her nose, the only way she could with that fucking gag in her mouth, and for as much as Santino hated it, he also loved it.
Because from a distance, he hadn’t been able to see those small details.
This close, at least, he could see she was alive.
No matter how uncomfortable or panicked, she was alive.
And the way her toes kept clenching and wiggling suggested she was conscious—conscious and listening, because that was all that had been left to her.
Hang on, baby. He wanted to tell her he would have her free in a moment, but he couldn’t risk Danilo pulling the trigger. And there was no doubt in Santino’s mind his bastard cousin would do it.
Santino met Danilo’s hard stare and made a show of moving his hand away from the trigger of the weapon he held.
He lowered as gently as he needed to, and then, with equal care, set down his usual piece.
He stood in place, hands raised as if he were under arrest, shifted his weight, and with one sweep of his leg kicked both guns out of reach.
He made sure they slid in a direction neither of them could reach without turning their backs on the other.
Danilo raised both brows and dipped his chin as if Santino had forgotten the next part. “Knees, you worthless monkey.”
Santino couldn’t help the way his head tilted. Frankly, his knees still hurt from crashing onto them earlier. “Monkey? We share blood, Danilo.”
Danilo’s lip curled. “And supposedly we’re all descended from apes. Don’t try any stalling bullshit with me, Tino. Knees, or she gets a new hole.”