Chapter 2 Flynn
FLYNN
The girl falls without a sound, crumpling in on herself like a paper bag and instinct takes over.
I catch her in my arms before she can hit the gravel and scoop her up into my arms.
Curly dark hair drifts past my elbow while her head lolls against my arm, and for a moment the destruction of the building around me is second to the twist in my gut as I study her unconscious face.
Her cheek is bruised, her sleepwear stained with smoke and drink and one arm is covered in various cuts and lacerations.
Judging by the state of her feet, she’s been running barefoot without a care in the world.
That drive of survival makes pain a thing of the past.
Whoever she is doesn’t matter, but if there’s a chance she has information that I won’t find in the Yudkin manor then she’s valuable.
Turning on the spot, I head back down the path to the driveway flooded with several cars from my organization.
Several men armed with assault rifles raise their weapons as I melt out of the shadows, but upon recognizing me all of those guns lower and one man jogs forward with his dark brow creased.
“Boss?” He eyes the woman in my arms. “Dead?”
“No. Take care of her.” It takes half a second to pass the unconscious woman into his arms, then I unholster my gun from my hip and jog toward the burning building.
It wasn’t supposed to get this bad.
The bastard we chased all the way here rigged his car to explode, and it started a chain reaction with two of my cars that had been in close pursuit.
The bastard parked it so close to the house that on top of three burning vehicles strewn across the flower beds, the entire place is also coming down around our ears.
Several of my men took the brunt of the explosion.
Behind me, their bodies are being shifted away from the mess of twisted, torn metal, crumbling bricks and shattered glass.
I ignore all of it and charge into the inferno with several of my men hot on my heels.
Inside, flames consume everything in our path.
Wallpaper peels from the walls, expensive carpets turn to ash at our feet, and ceilings creak as spreading cracks weaken fixtures holding up expensive chandeliers.
Taking the least smoky path through the building with one arm raised over my nose and mouth, I pass a grand piano and an ornate dining room into another hallway flooded with smoke but untouched so far by flames.
The east wing of the house is taking the brunt of the fire for now, but it won’t be long until this whole place goes up in smoke.
I can’t think about the possibility of what I’m looking for being in the East Wing.
If that’s the case, then nothing will stop me from wiping every scumbag Yudkin and associate off the face of the fucking planet.
After sprinting the length of the hallway, I stumble into the kitchen just as the door at the other end flies open.
Weapons click as my gun raises, finger poised to shoot the first fucker that stumbles through the door, but rather than the smarmy face of a Yudkin, my right-hand man, Frank, hurries through with both hands raised.
“Flynn? The fuck are you doing in here?”
“You think I’d come here and not get involved?” I snap, lowering my gun.
Frank led the initial surge of men into the manor just as the explosions ripped through the wall so his sweaty skin is marred with ash and smoke as he strides forward wiping at his bald head.
“You have a death wish?” he growls.
Ignoring him, I scan him up and down to ensure he’s not injured, and then our eyes meet. “Did you find anything?”
Frank’s narrow eyes widen ever so slightly as he slowly shakes his head. “We scoured as much of the East Wing as we could. No sign.”
My pounding heart stalls in my chest, and it’s as if someone is reaching up from my guts to squeeze my heart in a fist. “You’re sure.”
“Positive,” Frank replies. “There’s nothing. One dead girl, a couple of guards that we dealt with, and that’s it.”
“And Antov?” Hatred sours his name on my tongue and I quickly spit to the side to rid myself of the taste. “The bastard?”
“Nothing.”
“Fuck!”
“We’re still searching but—” A sudden creak from above sends all eyes upward and Frank sighs deeply. “This place might come down before we search everywhere.”
“That’s not an option.” The gun in my hand cuts into my palm as tension bleeds through my body, locking up every muscle like I’m turning to iron. “You hear me? That’s not an option. We have to find—!”
“Boss!” A sudden call from behind me draws my attention. A third door leading from this vast kitchen is open with one of my men standing there, his assault rifle held close to his chest. “We found someone.”
I’m sprinting toward him before he’s even finished and his eyes widen in alarm. As I approach, he turns and points down the hallway he came from.
“She’s down there.”
I rush past him, my feet pounding against the floor as hard as my heart thunders in my ears.
I can’t dare to hope but even as I repeat that in my mind, hope lifts in my chest that this nightmare is about to be over.
Down the corridor I sprint with Frank trailing after me, then I skid to a stop around the corner to find three more of my men standing around a crumpled body on the ground.
For a split second, fear cuts through my chest like a molten blade and I rush forward while shoving everyone out of the way.
That fear turns into a sharp spike, instantly bursting the bubble of hope rising in my chest.
A bitter sting of disappointment rips through me as I find an older woman crumpled down against the wall and realization hits me.
It’s not her.
She’s older, with tightly pinned curls falling apart around her face.
Blood trickles down her chin as she lies on the floor, propped up at her shoulders against the wall with her head awkwardly angled.
Her blue silk nightdress turned dark from the blood spreading from a gunshot wound near her chest and the gasping, bubbling way she breathes tells me all I need to know.
Punctured lung.
She’s dying.
“One of us?” I grind out through clenched teeth.
“Found her like this,” one of my men replies. “Not our work.”
Bubbles cling to the blood pouring out of her mouth and she watches me with half-lidded eyes. I have no doctors here.
We came to kill, not to save, and by all rights I should take my gun and press it between her eyes.
She’s surely a Yudkin after all.
Instead, I kneel down at her side and she gasps raggedly in a panic.
“Do you know who I am?”
Whatever answer rests on her lips never sees the light of day as her next breath is her last, and the world around us grows quiet in the absence of her wet, ragged gasping.
Now, the only sound is the growing crackle of the all-consuming fire.
“What do you want to do, boss?” asks one of the men behind me.
“Bag her,” I say, climbing back to my feet. “I want to know who she is.”
“On it.”
They move in around me so I step back and steel the strange collision of emotions in my gut.
White-hot fury is all that’s existed in my chest for the past couple of days, but now there’s an unexpected note of sympathy.
That woman was old and frail.
To die like that surrounded by the enemy is a different kind of cruel.
“Where are you going?” Frank immediately steps into my path as I start back toward the kitchen.
“The fuck do you mean where am I going? We still have two wings to search and I’m not stopping until I—.”
“No.” Frank’s palm lands flat on my chest, and while I draw him in height and mass, Frank has always been tightly packed when it comes to his strength. “You need to leave.”
“I’m not fucking leaving!”
“Our men are tearing this place apart. If there is something to find then they will find it, but you need to leave!”
“Frank!”
“No!” His voice lifts and something softer enters his eyes. “Flynn, if you go deeper you’re risking your own life and it’s not just about you. Hasn’t Angie lost enough?”
His words, as firm as they are, hit like a ton of bricks and my next breath is as ragged as the last of the woman behind me.
Angie.
She’s the reason I’m here, the reason I’m tearing myself apart trying to fix everything I broke, but at the same time Frank is right and I hate that.
She’s also the reason I can’t risk going deeper into the burning manor, no matter what I might find.
“I’m not giving up,” I grind out, suddenly aware that the air around me is growing in warmth. The fire is spreading. Time is nearly up.
“I’m not asking you to,” Frank replies tightly. “But we’re working and we need you alive so back the fuck off.”
His unmoving hand against my chest doesn’t shift in strength and I spend half a second wretchedly debating back and forth.
In the end, Frank’s sense wins out and I rip myself away from him with an angry growl.
Fury ignites hotter inside me and releases in a terrible roar of anger as I spin and slam my fist as hard as I can into the nearest wall.
Fuck!
Reluctance weighs down every step as I retreat back outside with my men carrying the body of the dead woman.
Every urge to turn back and help with the search is squashed by Angie’s face floating through my thoughts.
I told her I would fix everything and now my words turn to a lie as I make it back outside without any answers.
Outside, the full extent of the blaze reveals itself.
The entire building is up in flames and they claw their way higher as if trying to dislodge the moon from the sky.
Windows have long since shattered and display the raging flames inside while smoke blots out the sky and leaves only the occasional star to peek through and witness the destruction of the Yudkin manor.
I can’t stand still. Every nerve inside me is dialed up to a thousand.
My clothes are too tight, my shirt grates against my skin like it’s made of sandpaper, the air is too cool to breathe and it’s like ice is invading my lungs.
Pacing back and forth on the gravel, time trickles by at a snail’s pace, and more and more of my men rush out of the burning structure, all coughing violently and gasping desperately for air.
All of them are empty-handed.
As is Frank when he appears twenty minutes later with the last of my men in tow.
He walks straight toward me and stops a foot away, coughing hard until one of my men quickly brings him a bottle of water.
He’s shaking his head as he uncaps the bottle and drowns himself in desperate gulps.
That’s my answer, but the betrayal of hope remains in my heart.
“Say it,” I demand tightly.
“Antov isn’t here,” he croaks, coughing once more. “No sign of what we’re looking for either.”
My stomach twists in on itself and the weight below my ribs grows in mass as I process the information.
No Antov.
Of course not.
That fucking rat’s probably found a hole somewhere, but it won’t keep him safe from me. I’ll rip up the entire city until I find him.
“Are you sure?”
Our eyes meet and Frank nods. “I’m positive.”
For a single moment, anger gives way to despair and pain blooms through my chest, burning hotter than even the heat coming off those scorching flames.
I clutch at my hip and stare hard at the gravel nestled around my boots, willing the pain away.
I can’t give into it.
If I do, I’ll be useless to everyone involved.
“We’re not leaving empty-handed though.” Frank smirks and jerks his thumb behind him.
Through the smoke, several of my men appear and they’re doubled over not just from coughing, but from the male body they’re dragging with them.
I track their movements all the way to the black car where, as they open the door to dump the body inside, I spot a mass of black curls.
The unconscious woman.
“You’re right,” I agree with a weary, defeated sigh. “At least we’re not empty-handed.”