Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Bianca
The jet engine screams to life with a high whine that starts low and builds until it's a physical thing pressing against my eardrums, making my teeth ache.
They're really doing this—really taking me.
Adrian's hand closes around my arm, fingers digging in hard enough that I feel bones shift beneath the skin, hard enough to leave marks that will purple by morning. If I make it to morning.
"Come on." He pulls me toward a side door, not the main hangar entrance where the jet waits, but a smaller door that probably leads directly to the tarmac. "We need to move. Now."
I dig my heels in and try to plant myself, but he's stronger than I remember, more desperate than I've ever seen him.
He yanks harder. "Don't fight me, Bianca. This is for us. For our future."
"I don't have a future with you."
"You will," he says, and his voice cracks on the words. "Once we're away from here, once we're somewhere safe, you'll remember why you loved me. Why we were good together."
I never loved him—not really. I know it now. I settled for stability and convinced myself it was enough, but he doesn't want to hear that, so I save my breath for what's coming.
The guard ahead of us, one of Caterina's men with a scar running down his jaw, opens the side door and cold air rushes in like a slap. I can see the jet beyond, stairs down, interior lights glowing warm and inviting like this is a vacation instead of a kidnapping.
This is it. My last chance.
I wait until Adrian's grip loosens, just slightly, just enough when he reaches for the door frame to steady himself. Then I run.
My hands are still bound behind me and my wrists scream where the zip ties cut into flesh, my mouth raw from where they ripped the tape off earlier to let me breathe. But I run anyway, because what else is there?
Ten feet. Fifteen. Twenty.
Freedom is just ahead—the main hangar doors are open and I can see the parking lot beyond, cars and maybe people, someone who can help. Someone who—
Something slams into me from the side with enough force to knock the air from my lungs.
The guard, moving faster than someone his size should be able to move, catches me around the waist and we hit the concrete together. My shoulder takes the impact first, then my head, and the world explodes in white pain and ringing silence that makes everything feel distant and underwater.
Can't breathe. Can't think. Can't do anything but lie there while rough, impatient hands haul me up.
"Stupid bitch," the guard growls in my ear, breath hot and rank. "You really thought you'd make it?"
I try to answer but can't—my lungs won't work and everything hurts in ways I didn't know were possible.
"Bring her!" Adrian's voice cuts through the haze, high and panicked in a way that would be satisfying if I wasn't half-conscious. "We don't have time for this!"
The guard drags me back and my feet barely touch the ground before Adrian takes over, grabbing me and lifting me like I weigh nothing. He's sweating—I can smell it, sour and desperate, can feel how his hands shake where they grip me too tight.
"It's okay. It's going to be okay." He's talking fast now, words tumbling over each other. "We just need to get on the plane. Once we're in the air, they can't follow. We'll be safe. We'll start over. I'll take care of you the way I should have from the beginning. I'll—"
He's not talking to me anymore, I realize. He's talking to himself, trying to convince himself this is still salvageable, that Caterina's plan is still working, that any of this will end well.
But I can feel it in the way his movements are too fast, too jerky, in the way he keeps looking over his shoulder like he expects Dante to materialize out of thin air. The plan is already failing.
He just doesn't see it yet.
Dante
The breach happens in three seconds flat.
Enzo's team takes the side entrance with flash grenades first—light and sound that turn the warehouse into chaos before his men pour through, weapons up, shots low and precise. Kneecaps. Shoulders. Nothing fatal, not yet at least.
Rafe's team splits at the back, half taking the corridor where Caterina's guards are positioned while the other half hits the stairwell to the catwalk, cutting off the high ground before anyone can use it against us.
I go through the main entrance with no subtlety, no strategy—just speed and violence and the singular focus of getting to Bianca before anything else can go wrong.
The guard holding Bianca sees me coming and reaches for his weapon, but Enzo's shot catches him first, hitting his arm. The bone shatters with a wet crack that echoes over the gunfire and his weapon skitters across concrete while he goes down screaming.
Adrian spins, and when he sees me, his face goes white in a way that would be satisfying if I had time to appreciate it.
He grabs Bianca—the bastard tries to use her as a shield, literally pulling her in front of him like she's armor instead of a person, like she's something expendable instead of everything that matters.
I cross the warehouse floor in seconds, each step measured and each breath controlled despite the rage burning through my veins. This is what I was made for—not boardrooms or politics or playing nice with men in suits, but this. Violence. Justice delivered with my own hands.
Adrian backs up, dragging Bianca with him. "Stay back! I'll—"
I don't stop, don't even slow down.
He fumbles at his belt and pulls out something I can't make out immediately, but a second later I see it's a knife. Four-inch blade. Street trash weapon for a street trash man.
"I said stay back!"
I'm close enough now to see the sweat on his face, the fear in his eyes, the way his hands won't stop shaking even as he swings the knife. It's wild and desperate, showing zero technique—not that I expected something better from a man who gambles away what he can't afford to lose.
I catch his wrist and twist, feel bones grind against each other. He screams.
The knife's still in his hand, so I break his wrist properly this time. The snap is clean and beautiful in its finality, and his fingers go limp while the knife clatters to the concrete.
But he's still standing, still between me and Bianca, so I break his knee.
My boot connects with the side of his leg and the joint gives with a sickening pop. He collapses sideways with a sound that's half scream, half sob.
Bianca stumbles away from him, free finally, hands still bound but moving. Marco catches her and I see him start working on the zip ties, so I turn my full attention back to Adrian.
He's crawling now, dragging his shattered leg behind him, reaching for Bianca with his one good hand like he has any right to touch her after what he's done.
"Bianca—please—" His voice breaks. "Please. I did everything for you. Everything. I paid for your mother. I kept you safe. I gave you stability. You owe me—"
"I owe you nothing." Her voice cuts through his begging like glass.
He stops and looks up at her, blood running from his nose and tears mixing with sweat on his face.
"You were never my savior, Adrian. You were my prison.
" She steps closer and Marco tries to pull her back but she shakes him off, needs to say this, needs him to hear it.
"You sabotaged my mother's care to keep me desperate.
You deliberately let her suffer—let me think I couldn't afford to save her—just so I'd stay trapped with you.
You used my fear to control me, used my love for her as a weapon, and then you sold me to pay your debts like I was furniture you didn't need anymore. And now you think I owe you?"
"I love you—"
"You don't know what love is." Her voice is steady now, cold and final, every word a blade.
"Love doesn't manipulate. What you feel isn't love, Adrian.
It's obsession. It's possession. It's the sick need to own something you were never good enough to earn.
And I'm done being something you think you own. "
"Bianca, please—"
"I feel nothing for you but disgust." She crouches down, gets eye level with him, wants him to see her face when she says this.
"And I'm sorry. So sorry that I ever convinced myself I loved a person with a soul as ugly and twisted as yours, that I wasted three years of my life trying to make something work with someone so fundamentally broken.
The only good thing you gave me was your debt to pay, because it introduced me to Dante. "
The words hit him harder than my fists ever could.
I see it—the moment something breaks inside him that can't be fixed, that was maybe always broken.
His good hand fumbles and finds the knife, fingers closing around the handle with the desperate strength of a man who has nothing left to lose.
"If I can't have you—" He lunges.
Fast. Faster than a man with a broken knee should be able to move.
The blade arcs toward Bianca's throat but I intercept, my body between them, my arm up. The knife slices across my forearm in a shallow cut that barely registers through the adrenaline flooding my system.
Then I have him—one hand around his throat, the other grabbing the wrist with the knife.
The fight is brief and brutal.
He slashes wildly, catches my ribs. The cut burns but doesn't slow me.
I twist his wrist until the knife falls again, but this time I don't stop with his wrist. I drive my fist into his face once, twice.
His nose breaks and blood sprays across both of us.
He tries to fight back, manages a weak punch to my jaw that I barely feel.
Another punch. His cheekbone cracks. His eye socket caves. He's making sounds now—wet gurgling noises that barely sound human—but I hit him again and again and again. My knuckles split. His blood mixes with mine.
Somewhere behind me, Bianca is screaming, telling me to stop, that it's done, that it's over.