44
Way Down We Go - KALEO
We split into two separate cars as soon as we learned Athena’s location. Santino, Eva, and I took the lead as we sped through rush-hour traffic. The cell phone she used pinged at some remote home about an hour outside the city. I’d offered to drive because, as upset as I was at losing her again, merely hours after finding out she was alive, Santino was in worse shape. Years ago, I’d been in his shoes. I understood the desperation, the sense of hopelessness, and the utter devastation that came with knowing the person who meant everything in the world was in danger.
Reaching across the console, I took my girl’s hand, letting her touch anchor me as it always does when the demons from that time in my life begin to surface. I was dealt a shitty hand as a kid, but none of those atrocities could compare to the anguish of not knowing if I’d ever see her again. My worst nightmares didn’t consist of my past and the monsters who’d get off on beating and stripping my dignity. The nights when I’d wake up screaming, sweat beads on my forehead, and unshed tears in my eyes were those when the image of my little girl faded into ash. One moment, a heartbeat, one goddamn slip to the left or the right, could have altered my entire existence.
My whole heart existed within two people. Losing them was an unfathomable reality.
“Derek.” Eva’s tender voice pulled me from my thoughts as the tips of her nails feathered along my skin. “We’re going to find her.”
With a nod, I lifted my eyes to the rearview mirror, where Santino sat, his posture rigid, jaw clenched. He stared out the window, but it was evident the world raced by in vain, as I knew his thoughts were occupied with Athena.
“Five minutes out,” I said, grabbing his attention and meeting him in the reflection.
“Do we have a game plan? We don’t know what we’re walking into. This is Ronan,” Eva said, a grave look on her face. “Whoever has been helping him through the years probably has their hands all over this, too.”
I veered onto an embankment, cut the engine, and held my wife’s hand. “There’s no time to strategize. Athena is hurt, she’s…” I trailed off, conscious that Santino was listening. “We work with what we got.” When I paused again, her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You’re staying.”
“I’m not.”
“Angel, like you said, we don’t know what we’re walking into. It’s too dangerous.”
“Derek, that’s bullshit! Stop trying to sideline me like I can’t handle myself.”
“Eva—”
“No, would you say the same to Amalia? Would Kai?”
The car door slammed shut when Santino stepped out and started down the gravel driveway.
I framed her face. “There’s no time for arguments. I know you’re capable, but Vali needs one of her parents. I refuse to let her grow up the way I did. ”
That was all it took—the mention of our girl. “Derek Cain, I swear to god, if you die in there…” She fisted my collar and slammed her lips against mine.
Time stood still with Eva. I had long committed her taste to memory, the way she felt, and how she melted into my arms, but every second with her felt like the very first. Electric, warm—home.
“One hour, tops,” she murmured against my mouth. “Go find her and come back to us.”
“I love you,” I said, exiting the vehicle before regret could set it.
Kai and Amalia followed Santino as I caught up.
“I pulled the blueprints. It’s an old manor. Pretty straightforward. Three floors and a basement. Except…” Amalia pulled out her cell. “This back corner is unaccounted for. This floor plan is missing about one thousand square feet. It’s not a guarantee she’ll be down there because if he doesn’t think anyone will find him, there’s no point in going through the trouble.”
Santino studied the sketches as he picked up his pace. “So we split up.”
“Yeah, Kai and I take the upstairs, and you and Derek down.”
“One problem,” Kai said, pulling out a black jammer. “Once we’re inside, it’s a dead zone. No signal in or out. If you get into trouble, make your way to Eva at the end of that road.”
“Start that thing up, Kai. As far as we know, he’s unaware she placed the call,” I said, catching up to Santino. “We don’t want to get caught on their cameras.”
He agreed with a nod.
“Amalia, point of entry?”
“Eastern side door. It was an employee entrance and right off the kitchen and pantry. Less likely to be occupied…unless they get hungry.”
“Noted.”
Santino stopped abruptly, the home just beyond thick shrubbery. We followed and waited for him to speak his mind or make a move, but instead, he hung his head, letting the gun fall from his grip and into the dirt.
“I’ve seen and done a lot of shit,” he gritted out. “None of it fazed me, but I can’t…What if she’s…”
Amalia touched Santino’s shoulder. “I can’t promise that she’s alive. Hell, I can’t even pretend we’ll all walk out of there. But I refuse to believe that all this was for nothing. That everything we’ve been through, all the shit that’s brought us together, would just die here. Look around. We’re all connected somehow, like a perfectly spun web.”
“ Mi reina , there’s only one way I’m walking out, with you by my side or not at all.”
Amalia split the bushes and started for the home. “You still owe me a honeymoon, Cain. You’re not getting rid of me just yet.”
My brother chuckled and followed behind his wife.
“Ready?” I said, picking up the firearm and handing it back. “No matter what happens in there, Ronan is mine.”
Santino chambered a bullet. “Only if I get a piece of him first.”
By the time we caught up, Amalia was tearing her knife out of a man’s throat. His body was sprawled across the threshold of the side door she’d mentioned. Kai looked on with a grin that told me everything I needed to know about where his mind had drifted to at that moment.
“Is he the only one?”
“For now.” She shrugged, wiping the blood against the dead man’s pants. “He chose one hell of a time to walk out for a smoke break. But this tells us that Ronan isn’t alone.”
We agree with a chorus of nods.
“Watch your six, brother,” Kai said, clapping my shoulder.
“You too.”
I watched them ascend a shadowed stairway, disappearing beyond the corner before the second landing.
Santino and I followed Amalia’s floor plan to the cellar door, but just as we were about to enter, we spotted three men in an adjacent living room. They were asleep, sprawled on the sofas and chairs, and empty bottles littered the floor. Drunk. Easy kill .
“We might as well get them out of our hair so they won’t be a problem later,” I said, holstering my gun and replacing it with my favorite blade.
Santino gritted his teeth and passed me, clutching the first man by the hair and slicing through his neck damn near to the spinal cord. Without hesitation, he finished off the second while I handled the third.
We swept through a second room and empty closets, continued toward the basement, and descended a spiraling staircase. However, we quickly realized that Amalia’s blueprint was outdated. The entire basement had been converted into what looked like catacombs, making a quick exit impossible.
“We’re just going to have to go for it.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Before we could knock down doors, a shrill scream sent us sprinting forward.
“Amara!” Santino’s voice echoed off the walls, mixing with Athena’s.
A fork in the corridor caused us to pause and listen, her screams both a beacon and a source of anguish. But she was alive, hurt, but alive, and that was all we could hope for. Another cry tugged us left to the only closed door in that hallway without a thought, and in a simultaneous gesture of desperation, we shot at the door handle and kicked it open.
Athena and Ronan whipped around. She was straddling his abdomen, wearing only a black bra and underwear. Her skin was stained with dried blood, and the side of her torso was bandaged. But in a split second of distraction, Ronan removed the knife she had presumably stabbed into his shoulder and raised it, aiming for her chest until Santino’s bullet pierced his forearm and into the wall. He yelped like a bitch and dropped the weapon.
“Santi!” Athena staggered to her feet, nearly collapsing when Santino lifted her into his arms.
“Fuck, preziosa , I found you.”
She smiled through the tears and kissed him. “I knew you would.”
My gun was trained on the son of a bitch who once thought himself my adoptive father and savior, but his time had come to an end. I finally had him at my mercy. But first…
“Athena.”
She turned to me, cautiously getting to her feet, as a rush of tears flooded her eyes. “Hi, Derek.”
After so many years, my sister was back in my arms and in my life. My stomach reeled when I thought of how easily we’d let her go, believing Ronan’s lies that she’d gone and didn’t want to be found. Maybe I’d felt hurt, betrayed that someone else I cared for had walked away. And that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Kai hadn’t gone into detail, but he said she’d crawled out of hell, a nightmare Ronan had set into motion.
“I missed you,” she said, wiping a tear from my cheek.
I held her gently, afraid to cause her pain, more than she’d already endured. Her face was bruised and swollen, her lip split open, with blood covering most of her skin.
“You need to get out of here. Get checked out.”
She gave me a teary nod.
“You know, I’d hate to break up such a beautiful little family reunion, but I got a hole in my goddamn arm.” Ronan propped himself against the wall.
“You need me to even you out?”
He tipped his head and laughed. “Derek, my pride and joy. It’s been a while, huh? How’s that pretty little wife of yours? And my granddaughter.”
I vividly remembered the last time I’d blown a man’s kneecap.
James fucking Ford.
Fatherhood had always terrified me because every man I’d encountered in my life had failed me, beat and destroyed any glimmer of hope and love I’d once craved until I became nothing but a vessel and messenger of death.
I might have forgiven Ronan for all his wrongs, but what he did to Eva warranted a death of the uniquely painful and creative variety .
“Go,” I said to Athena, setting her frail frame back into Santino’s arms. “Get to a hospital. I’ll see you later.”
“Running again, mo stoirin ?” Ronan chuckled tauntingly, breathing through the pain of now having a hole in his leg. “You promised me a slow, torturous death, blah blah. Isn’t that what you said?”
Her eyes connected with mine, and a grin lit up her battered face. “Promises kept.”
I sent her a wink as Santino carried her out of the room. Ronan called her name in a sudden panic.
“Begging doesn’t suit you. You knew this would be your end. And here I am, keeping my own promise, and the one I made my wife—the woman you sold to that Belov motherfucker.”
He hissed, dragging his mangled leg as he attempted to sit upright. “Come on, son, are you going to let pussy ruin our relationship?”
I holstered my weapon and slowly unsheathed my blade. “You’re talking too much, and I haven’t even started. Maybe I should take your tongue first.”
“You goddamn ungrateful son of a bitch. I should have let you rot in that home. Maybe that’s what you wanted, to stay on your knees and become a whore too.”
I swallowed thickly as unfettered rage caused my hands to tremble at his words and the memories they evoked. Gripping the leather hilt, I brought the knife to his throat and pierced his skin until his blood dripped down my forearm.
“Derek.”
Eva.
“I told you to stay in the car,” I gritted out, eyes still burning through Ronan.
“Eva, dear. It’s so nice to see you again.” He returned his sinister glare my way and whispered, “I’ll be bonded out by morning.”
I clenched my teeth. As much as I wanted to tear this man apart, I didn’t know if I could follow through if she asked me not to. Evangelina held that power over me, and he knew it .
“Derek, I had to know you were okay.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “And one more thing…” Leaning close to my ear, she set me free with three little words. “Get him, baby.”
An ear-to-ear grin split my face. “That’s my fucking girl.”
“Evangelina! I’ll have your badge. You little bi—”
Ronan made a particularly delicious noise when I shattered his other knee. “Keep fucking singing.”
“Shit…shit…” he panted, sweat beading and rolling down his face, mixing with spatters of blood.
A masterpiece in the making.
“Now, Derek, you didn’t think I’d let you have all the fun?”
Helena.
“Oh, fuck .” Ronan began dragging himself across the room, his useless legs streaking a trail of red like the slimy fuck he was. “No, not that cra—”
“Careful. You know how I feel about being called crazy. Makes me especially homicidal.” She reached behind her back and pulled out a fucking katana. “On second thought, I’d love the extra motivation since I brought my new favorite toy.”
Ronan’s breaths were heavy, his eyes wide and bloodshot as they pinned between me and Helena. I could almost taste his fear, and it was glorious.
“Eva! Evangelina, call for backup. You’re a goddamn cop. Don’t you fucking leave me here with these—”
His eyeballs bulged from their sockets when I wrapped my hand around his throat and squeezed.
“Don’t address my wife. Silas, take her upstairs.”
The door closed behind them, and my attention was once again on Ronan as he was on the verge of passing out, his face purpling.
“Derek, let that man breathe—for now.”
He dropped to the concrete floor, twitching before finally gasping for breath.
“I’m glad you finally decided to join us. ”
“I would have sliced off your ball sack had you done this without me.” The grin she wore shifted to a dark scowl when her eyes moved back to Ronan. “He owes me. Isn’t that right?” she taunted, circling him.
“P-please...”
It was almost tragic to witness how far he’d fallen from the once respected head of Ares to this pathetic man groveling for his life.
He grabbed Helena’s ankle, and without a moment’s hesitation, she swiped at the extremity with her sword, severing it at the wrist. The louder he screamed, the bigger her smile.
“That was for Silas.” She took his other hand. “That one too.”
I folded my arms and watched in utter amusement as she hacked away until his feet joined the pile of severed limbs. Blood painted the walls and stretched across the floor.
While Helena and I never miss an opportunity to sling insults at one another, we had settled our differences years ago. At the end of the day, we were family. And she was like another mother to Valentina. Knowing my little girl had women like her and Amalia to look up to—well, I slept a little better at night.
“Don’t fucking fall asleep on me. I can listen to you scream all day.” Helena pressed the bloodied edge of the sword to his throat. “What was that you said to me once?”
“F-fuck…you,” he grunted, eyes rolling in and out of his head.
She grinned wickedly. “No, that wasn’t it.” Helena’s sword sliced off his nose, and his wails filled the room like a fucking symphony. “That’s the one—where you squeal like a goddamn pig at slaughter.”
“My turn.”
Ronan only had a handful of breaths before he died of blood loss. As much as I wanted to take my time and watch him suffer until I’d had my fill, it was time to retrieve what I’d come for.
“You have something that belongs to me.” My hand gripped his neck again, and his weary eyes connected with mine. “Tell my bastard father I send my regards.”
The sound of my blade piercing through his rib cage was almost as sweet as the strained howls erupting from his mangled mouth. He violently spasmed as I reached inside for his heart until I felt it beating in my fist. There was a moment when his green eyes pulsed with horrified awareness before they drifted out of focus.
“For Athena,” I said, releasing him, the lifeless organ in hand.
“For my father. ”
Helena’s katana caught the collapsing body before it hit the floor, and Ronan’s severed head rolled between my feet.