2. Cian
Chapter 2
Cian
“Fuck.” I spit the curse, knuckles and arms straining as I drag myself up the rope.
The hot evening breeze ruffles my hair. Four stories below me, flashes of light punctuate the darkness.
Running footsteps.
Grunts. Shouts.
Alarms.
I can’t afford to get distracted.
Muscles coiled tight, I hoist myself up the last section and propel my body onto the rooftop with one final heft.
I’m on my feet before I even catch my breath. There’s no time to lose.
There. Fifteen paces away from me is the skylight.
According to the blueprints of this building I stole and studied, and what I know about the soon-to-be-dead motherfucker known as Enzo De Luca, that skylight should be directly above his office. If I’m right about that sick, twisted bastard, both he and Harper Brennan will be in there when I cable down, guns blazing, in about forty-five seconds.
I dart forward, taking care to quiet the strike of my combat boots on the cement rooftop. Ripping the cable equipment from my grappling belt, I ready myself to crash a party.
It’s only been two months since Harper’s disappearance, but somehow, it seems like we’ve been searching for her and her kidnapper for far longer.
Morbid excitement chants inside me like a vicious, blood-hungry crowd. The last man I was this eager to kill was my father. But the satisfaction of standing over my father’s bloody, lifeless corpse will be nothing compared to the victory of wiping Enzo De Luca off the face of this planet.
At least, that’s what I’m hoping.
If I’m still miserable after I’ve sent him to the morgue, I don’t know what I’ll do to myself.
I ease the skylight open. The cable’s set.
Submachine gun in hand, I drop down into Enzo’s private study, my boots landing on a Persian rug sprawled wide across a hardwood floor.
Surprise crashes into me.
The place is…empty.
The pristine bookshelves carved into every wall give the illusion that this room has no entrance or exit. A large hearth sits dark and cold. An oil painting hangs on the wall straight ahead, likely covering Enzo’s personal safe.
All the usual clichés are present.
But Enzo De Luca is not. Neither is the woman we’ve been trying to save for the past two months.
A bomb-like urge to tear this place apart goes off inside me, but I hold myself back.
If that fucker was smart enough to evade the little raid we’re throwing in his honor tonight, he may also be smart enough to booby trap his office.
A quick scan reveals no trip wires.
I do spy four hidden cameras, but thanks to the glitch Rory unleashed on their computer systems, those won’t be an issue.
The problem is that after tracking Enzo’s whereabouts for weeks, he duped us again.
The bastard knew we were coming.
Un-fucking-believable.
Red-hot rage reignites in my veins. I refuse to let this mission be a total loss. Since we’re here, we may as well gather as much information about the De Lucas’ organization and further operations as possible.
Eyes locked on Enzo’s computer, I stalk over to his oversized, overcompensating mahogany desk and retrieve a USB drive from my pocket.
Between my fingers, I clasp one of Rory’s inventions. The device creates a backdoor entryway in the computer’s software long enough for a hacker to slip inside, steal any desired data, and get out. Once it’s in, Rory can do whatever he wants with this computer.
That’s my understanding, anyway. I’m not the tech expert of the bunch.
I insert the USB. The damn thing takes two whole minutes to initialize, which is two years in a situation like this.
Annoyance overpowers me. I fucking hate waiting.
“Cian? Status?” Finn’s voice crackles over my radio.
I dig my fingers into the back of the leather chair sitting in front of the screen. “He’s not here.”
Finn curses. Forcing myself to take a deep breath, I close my eyes for a second.
Closing my eyes is a mistake, because Harper appears in the darkness.
Two minutes , she whispers. I hear her voice in every silence. In every crowd, I see her face. Harper Brennan haunts me and has since years ago, after that one night at the club.
While Harper was a teenager, I went out of my way to ignore her, because nothing good could come of lusting after one of the boss’s younger daughters. We live in separate wings of an enormous estate, so our paths don’t cross as often as people might think.
That all changed one night at the club when she was twenty. I was assigned to work security, and Harper was prepping a guy for her father. I never approved of how Thomas used her to distract men but offering my unsolicited opinion of my boss’s parenting would be a surefire way to earn a beatdown. Still, that evening, the job required me to focus on her, and what I encountered left me reeling.
Harper Dane Brennan. Perennial prom queen and flirt extraordinaire.
Vivid blue eyes. Golden blond waves tied up in a ponytail so pretty, I battled the urge to wrap the length around my hand and yank her to her knees. A short black dress showcasing a tight little body and perfect curves that I had no right to notice.
In the end, though, my attention wound up being a good thing. Since I watched her so closely, I noticed right away when that scumbag attacked.
Three years have passed since that night. Endless days I’ve spent lusting after her.
The fact that she’s been in Enzo’s clutches for two months, and we’ve failed to save her eats away at me, embittering me to my bones.
A series of beeps yanks me from my thoughts, alerting me that the USB is ready.
“Rory, it’s done. Get started.”
Irritation courses through me while I watch the cursor on the screen start moving through files and folders. What the fuck am I doing, waiting around for Rory to sift through this shit? I should be standing over Enzo’s corpse right now.
Instead, I’m standing in his office with my dick in my hand, trying to help Rory spot something, anything , that might contribute to our continued efforts to number Enzo’s days.
Rory flips through the security camera footage archives, including a folder that appears to contain all of Enzo’s torture sessions, and I lean closer for a better view. There’s not one blond beauty in the batch, but I do clock a video of Enzo and Finn from a few weeks ago.
When we rescued Finn that night, Enzo claimed responsibility for Harper’s disappearance, but a quick glance through his hard drive shows no sign of her. Hard to believe he could hide her from us this well, but that’s where we’re at. The fucker’s evaded all attempts to kill his sorry ass.
A bang blasts through my earpiece, chased by Darren’s voice. “Shit! Rory, I could use some assistance here.”
“Got you. Cian, keep digging,” Rory says, and then my head goes quiet for the moment.
I toggle to the next folder, and the machine pings without warning. My heart drops like a rock. It’s a message, a private relay.
I click, and the pop-up banner leads me to a secure location. None of the messages contain any text, just attached photographs. I open some of the older images.
All of them feature blond women about Harper’s age and size.
Confusion gives way to understanding.
Enzo De Luca was bluffing.
The first message and photo date back to April. That means he’s been searching for Harper as long as we have, with the same lack of success.
I squint, trying to process this and coming up short.
Wait a fucking a minute. If Enzo De Luca didn’t take Harper after I ran into her at the bar, then what happened to her?
Ice-cold fear freezes my gut. Have we devoted our resources to a wild goose chase, hunting down the wrong man this whole time?
Is it the Red Hill Mafia again? They went after her sister, Riley, a few weeks ago, but she has history with them. We abducted their heir in retaliation after he attacked her and tucked him away in a cell. As a gesture of good will, Shane eventually returned him, a little worse for wear, in exchange for an agreement to expand part of our turf and a big shipment of designer party drugs. Harper went missing before any of that went down, though.
If Enzo doesn’t have Harper, where the fuck is she?
I scroll back up to the top message, the one that came in a few seconds ago. When I click it open, the image that materializes in front of my eyes shrivels my lungs.
All the oxygen in my body evaporates at once.
It’s her.
A candid photo of Harper Brennan in a blue bikini and sunglasses, lounging in a beach chair and reading a book.
The image is dated today, and when I double-click the coordinates listed beneath the photo, a map of the Pacific Ocean pops to life with a little red dot blinking in…
The Hawaiian Islands.
Motherfucker.
Wild shock grips me before my brain races to the truth so quickly I nearly black out.
Harper wasn’t abducted.
She ran away. On her own. Of her own volition.
For eight weeks, I’ve been in chaos, over-a-fucking-cliff and worried out of my mind, wondering if she was okay, keeping a list of all the ways I planned to make Enzo’s death painful depending on what he dared to do to her.
Meanwhile, the little witch spent the entire time sunning herself in the tropics and drinking mojitos on a beach.
My hands curl into fists. The worst part isn’t the fact that we’ve worked around-the-clock to find her flighty, irresponsible ass, or that I began a slow descent into insanity ever since her engagement announcement, or even that my friends, our associates, and I keep repeatedly risking our lives in hopes of tracking her down.
No, the worst part about this photograph is that for months, I’ve stopped picking up other women. The only reason I’ve stepped foot in a bar is to search for her.
Ever since the night before the wedding.
The night she fucked me up by letting me taste her sweet lips.
I’m so sex-deprived it’s a miracle my cock hasn’t fallen off. Meanwhile, she’s kicking back on some beach in Hawaii, looking like sin in a tiny bikini and probably taking dick from every horny asshole in the Pacific.
My fingers twitch. So help me, I could strangle her.
A bookcase to my left explodes open, tomes spewing to the floor. My gun’s already in my hand, trained at the hidden entryway.
I want it to be Enzo, because I very badly need to blow off some steam, but the person hurrying to close the bookcase behind him is a wild-eyed, out of breath Rory with disheveled golden-brown hair.
Relief pings through me, but not enough to lessen the frustration and anger that currently consume my body.
“What are you doing up here?”
“That’s what I should be asking you , numb nuts.” Rory strides my way, exasperation in his hazel eyes. “You weren’t answering your radio.”
My radio? Forgot all about the thing. Seeing Harper’s photo undid my focus completely.
Embarrassment bursts in my gut. Am I really so worried about her that I lost track of my surroundings like some green kid?
“Enzo pulled one over on us.” I delete the photo of Harper before Rory makes it behind the desk.
“No shit. We’ve gotta get out of here.” Rory yanks the USB out of Enzo’s computer.
“Come on.” I nod toward the cable still hanging from the open window in the ceiling, moving in that direction myself. And not a moment too soon.
Outside the study, pounding footsteps crescendo.
Yelling grows closer.
A pop-pop of gunfire erupts.
The bookcase bucks as men throw their weight against it.
“Cian!” Rory’s already halfway up the cable.
I scramble up after him, and we’re out of there before the De Luca enforcers charge inside.
Half an hour later, we’re headed back to the estate, the second vehicle in a small caravan.
“How the fuck do we keep missing him?” Rory tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “Tell me you at least got something off his computer.”
“Enzo doesn’t have her.”
My friend’s startled gaze lands on my profile.
“What?”
With difficulty, I swallow the anger searing my throat. “He’s been searching for Harper for weeks, same as us.”
“I don’t know whether to be insulted or impressed.” Rory scoffs. “So, Enzo was bluffing the entire time…”
He was, but now his bluff is about to come true. Enzo concluded his search for Harper.
He found her.
Whoever sent him that picture knows Harper’s location, and that person is there, physically, right now. Me deleting that message doesn’t change a thing.
Harper’s in danger.