31. Cian
Chapter 31
Cian
“Let’s move!” Darren roars, fingering the trigger of his Uzi. He sends bullets spraying behind us, straight into the first wave of De Luca foot soldiers closing in. Riley ducks right down the next hallway with Finn close behind her. He insisted on storming the facility with us this time, even with his arm. He knew the same way I know.
We can all feel it coming.
Tonight, we end this.
Rory covers Darren while he reloads.
Meanwhile, Darren pins me with an oddly excited glow in his chemical-blue eyes. “We’ll keep them busy.”
Rory nods in the opposite direction.
This is where we part ways.
“Find Harper.” Rory lingers with me as Darren disappears after Finn and Riley. “And remember the plan .”
One nod is all I can manage. Rory’s warning me not to get carried away, no matter how sorely tempted I am. I can’t promise anything, so my silence will have to be enough.
Then we’re both gone, jogging away from each other in the same hallway.I’m not alone until I zip around a corner, head swiveling left and right for oncoming assailants. There will be many.
More than we anticipated.
But the more the merrier , a dark part of me declares with glee. The more De Lucas there are here, the more of them we can put out of commission. And I’d be all too happy to dedicate the rest of my life to a cause like that .
I’m at home in the chaos, winding through darkened, labyrinthine compounds behind enemy lines. This is what the inside of my brain’s like now—black, cavernous, confusing, littered with danger around every corner.
This is the only place where I can be exactly as violent as I am in my mind. There’s something freeing in the knowledge that all my murderous fantasies are about to come true. I will be the violent end of everyone responsible for targeting Harper.
Earsplitting alarms wail in waves.
Up ahead, two foot soldiers guard a door. Their heads jerk in my direction too late. I fire. Four bullets fly through one’s forehead, out the back, and into the other’s face. They go down. I bust open the door behind them, my pulse throbbing in my neck?—
My stomach dives. The prisoner inside isn’t Harper.
I race down another hallway. A staircase appears up ahead on the left.
That’s it , I remember with a start. We went over the blueprint of this place in the car.
Enzo De Luca has a private office in this facility. It’s upstairs, same as the one I broke into the night we found Harper’s location. There may even be a skylight.
I throw myself at the stairs, sprinting up three steps at a time.
I know that wherever Enzo’s keeping Harper, he’s going to be close by. His office and the surrounding rooms are the best places to start.
I’ll find her. If it’s the last thing I do in all my life, I’ll fucking find her.
Rabid desperation animates my limbs as I reach the second-floor landing.Two enforcers, arguing back and forth about something, see me coming too late.
I pepper them with bullets before bursting past them into the hallway.
Damn it. The layout is just as confusing up here as it is downstairs.
Still, nothing’s going to stop me.
I cut down the first corridor I find, jogging blindly through the shadowy, floodlight-flashed space. This entire facility is a maze.
A train of foot soldiers charges past in the next intersection. I flatten myself against one wall and backstep around a corner into a darkened alcove. None of them notice. Not with the alarms blaring and lights flashing.
As I wait for the hall to clear, everything races through my mind one more time.
The plan is simple.
Phase one: get into the De Luca warehouse facility.
Phase two: split up. I go after Harper, find her, and extract her.
And phase three: Darren, Rory, Finn, and Riley go after Enzo.
To end this once and for all.
It took an entire hour for me to agree to this plan. My desire to end Enzo De Luca with my own hands is overwhelming, but getting Harper to safety—considering what shape she might be in—is more important.
That’s what Rory meant. Remember the plan.
No matter what state I find Harper in, no matter what we’ve walked into, my one and only job is to get her out of here.I wish I could say that if I walk in on someone hurting her I won’t go ballistic, forget the mission, and burn this place to the ground, but I can’t. I’m armed, dangerous, and liable to do anything for the woman I love.
Why did it take a fucked-up situation like this for me to understand that?
Another platoon of soldiers appears up ahead, jogging my way.Retreating farther into the alcove’s darkness, I ready myself to fire and?—
My heel hits a solid mass. I tumble, falling backwards onto the uneven cement floor.
What the fuck was that?
A figure hunches over in the darkness. Small and feeble, hidden by the shadows, untouched by the garish lights flashing in the hallway.
My heart leaps.
Harper.
Even though I just tripped over her leg, she offers no reaction. Head drooping, her chest rises and lowers in rapid, shallow breaths.
My burst of elation dies a quick death. Something’s wrong.
Her arms hug her midsection. I pull one away, revealing a forearm covered in dark blood. Even in her disheveled state, I immediately spot the chunk of missing hair.
Impotent rage whites out my vision. That sick bastard took a knife to my Harper’s locks and nailed them to the fucking wall.
Then an inhuman amount of relief slams into me, followed by a torrential downpour of gratitude. Even though Enzo hurt her, she’s in pain, and only semiconscious, the fact that she survived this ordeal at all proves the existence of miracles.
Thank you , I want to tell her. Today and every day.
Not that Harper’s ability to remain alive surprises me.
My baby’s a survivor. All she needs to do is hang on long enough for help to arrive.
I’m overwhelmed by the precariousness of it all. Life, I mean.
How who lives and who dies is often random, bleak, and beyond our control.
Entirely by accident, I stumbled across the woman I love.
She’s bleeding, injured, and it’s my fault.
She’s still breathing, though, and that’s what matters.
I pull her into my arms without speaking a word, and all resistance seeps from her body. Finding her in this state kills me.
Harper winces and trembles in my embrace.
My muscles tighten.
Someone’s going to fucking pay.
“I’m finally dead.” She mumbles, nearly too low for me to hear, something like relief or resignation in her distorted voice. “But I’m…so glad…heaven is…you.”
Her heavy head falls against my shoulder.
Enough emotion wells in my chest to drown a giant.
But now’s not the time. I’ve found her. I need to complete the rest of the mission.
Once we’re safely home and she’s recovered, I can bare my heart.
Reality fractures into sounds, sights, and sensations as my heart beats wildly out of control with anticipation, rage, and blind vengeance.
The tang of bloodshed permeates the air.
I barrel left through an open doorway and find myself on a catwalk overlooking what may have once been a factory floor.The pathway is narrow and made of metal, and two stories below, chaos unfolds.With Harper in my arms, I hesitate to cross to the other side.
There’s enough going on down there that they wouldn’t notice if I sprinted across. But I worry about stray bullets. What if a few ricocheted? Being on that catwalk would put us out in the open?—
“ Enzo !”
It’s a feminine growl of rage I’ve never heard before. Intense, guttural, bounding through the space like an energetic echo.
Riley.
I take stock of the scene shaping up below.
Riley and Finn, with Darren and Rory right on their heels, thunder onto the factory floor with guns blazing. It’s not until several more bodies drop that I see him.
Enzo. They chased him in here.
Picked off his entourage.
Cornered him.
As soon as my eyes lock on that motherfucker, my body’s moving before I have any idea what I’m doing. Holding Harper tight to my chest with one arm, I aim with the other.
The world slows to a crawl as I finger the trigger.
Even while trapped, Enzo’s face contorts into the smuggest, ugliest smile I’ve ever seen. He opens his mouth to trade words with my friends, but nothing comes out before my bullet pierces his neck. Straight through his windpipe.
Missed his head by a few inches.
Enzo clutches his throat, blood oozing through his fingers and spilling down onto his hideous three-piece suit.
“Up there!” Male voices rise around the room seconds before the tink of bullets glancing off the underside of the catwalk begin to punctuate the air.
Fuck. We’ve been spotted.
“ Cian, run !”
Riley shrills a warning as Rory and Finn fire. At least three of their bullets pierce his skull before the rest dot his torso, collapsing his corpse to the ground like a felled tree.
It’s over. I know it in my bones.
Enzo De Luca is dead. Finally dead. Forever.
But the victory of that never reaches me. Not with dashing feet approaching my flank.
A De Luca enforcer spots us. “He’s got the target!”
I crane my neck. A cluster of soldiers spills out onto the catwalk behind us. Picking up the pace, I hightail it across until I’m through the doorway on the other end. Thankfully, another staircase comes into view, and I hurry down, as gentle as I can be with Harper in my arms while also running for our fucking lives.
Back on the ground floor, I race as far from that factory as I can before yanking a grenade Darren gave me from my breast pocket. I rip out the safety pin with my teeth and chuck it into the hallway behind us.
Around a corner, I drop us down to the ground as quickly and gently as possible, shielding Harper’s body beneath mine to wait for?—
The detonation shakes the world.
Heat. Smoke. Crumbling cement.
Harper remains unconscious.
Panic infiltrates my brain. What if I never see those eyes open again?
I shake my head, pissed at the pessimistic direction of my thoughts.
Fuck that. She’ll be okay.
She has to be.
I gather her in my arms and round the corner. Human remains, rubble, and smoke are all that’s left of our pursuers. The grenade took them out and also created our exit.
A fresh breeze cuts through the smoggy, bitter scent of structural damage choking the air.
Under a dark sky, I sprint through the grass.
Eerie silence.
Radio static.
A dark road.
Smoke behind us.
I run and run until my legs give out.