Chapter 17 Taken
Four days of security details standing at every entrance, and Del had almost started to believe she could breathe normally again.
"You're doing the thing," Sienna said, sliding a tray of empty glasses across the bar toward the wash station, sweat already beading at her hairline though the night had barely started. "The counting thing. You've counted the security guys at the door three times in the last hour."
"I like knowing they're still there."
"They're still there. Matteo's guy, the tall one, hasn't moved from that spot since seven.
" Sienna nodded toward the entrance, where one of Matteo's men stood in a dark suit that did nothing to disguise the earpiece or the particular stillness of someone paid to watch a crowd instead of enjoy it.
"Nico's been running the cameras like a paranoid raccoon all night too.
Between the two of you I'm starting to feel like we're under siege instead of just, you know, running a club. "
"We might be under siege."
"I know. I was trying to make a joke." Sienna's smile faded slightly, the playful edge dropping into something more serious that she wore rarely and always meant when she did. "You okay?"
"I will be once this is over."
Del scanned the floor from her usual spot near the DJ booth stairs, the club packed tighter than any Friday in the last month, bodies moving under the lights in a rhythm that felt, for four days now, like the last normal thing left in her life.
Matteo's security had blended in well enough that most of her regular staff hadn't clocked the additional presence, three men rotating positions near the exits, one posted permanently by the loading dock since the incident with Devon.
She hadn't met Devon. She'd cried for him anyway, briefly, alone, the night Matteo had told her what Sorin had done to a man whose only crime had been standing watch on the wrong warehouse at the wrong hour.
"Del." Nico's voice in her earpiece, the one Matteo's team had insisted she wear starting three days ago, static crackling faintly under the club's bass. "Camera four's showing a service van at the loading dock. Not on tonight's delivery schedule."
Del's stomach dropped, the familiar bass suddenly sounding wrong, too loud, pressing against her ribs like a threat instead of music. "Whose van?"
"Unmarked. No plates visible from this angle." A pause, Nico's breathing audible even through the static. "I'm pulling security toward the dock now."
"I'm coming."
"Del, stay on the floor, let security handle—"
She was already moving, cutting through the crowd toward the service corridor, adrenaline sharpening every sense into something almost painfully clear, the specific taste of fear coating the back of her throat that she refused to let slow her down.
Sienna caught the shift in her posture and fell into step half a beat behind, no questions asked, the same instinct that had made her family instead of just staff.
"Stay here," Del said, pushing through the service door.
"Absolutely not."
"Sienna."
"I'm not letting you go back there alone while Nico's already headed that way with half our security detail." Sienna's jaw set, stubborn, the same expression Del had seen on her since she was fourteen and had decided some argument wasn't worth losing. "Move faster or I'm passing you."
The service corridor stretched dim and narrow behind them, industrial fluorescents flickering overhead, the bass from the main floor dropping to a muffled thud through the soundproofed door.
Del rounded the first corner and nearly collided with Nico, who grabbed her arm hard, his face carved with an urgency she'd rarely seen from him.
"Two men, unmarked, came through the loading dock gate before security could stop them." Nico's voice came fast, clipped, professional even through visible fear. "One of our guys is down, not dead, hit hard, but down. The other two are engaging them near the walk-in cooler."
"Where's the third security team?"
"On their way, ninety seconds out." Nico's grip tightened on her arm. "We need to get you and Sienna out through the front, now, before—"
The lights along the corridor cut out.
Not flickered. Cut, total darkness dropping over the three of them in the space of a single breath, and Del heard Sienna's sharp inhale beside her, felt Nico's body shift protectively in front of both of them, and then the corridor filled with movement she couldn't see, fast footsteps, a grunt of impact, Nico's voice cutting off mid-word.
"Nico!"
A hand closed over her mouth from behind, hard, gloved, and Del's training kicked in before panic could, driving her elbow back into soft tissue with everything she had.
The grip loosened enough for her to twist free, and she ran blind down the corridor toward what she hoped was the walk-in cooler, Sienna's ragged breathing somewhere close behind her.
"This way," Sienna gasped, grabbing her wrist and yanking her sideways through a doorway Del recognized by touch alone, the dry storage room, shelving units and boxes of liquor stacked floor to ceiling.
The door slammed shut behind them, and for three seconds, silence.
Then it burst open again.
A flashlight beam cut across the room, and Del threw herself sideways behind a shelving unit, dragging Sienna down with her, watching two silhouettes fill the doorway, both armed, both moving with the particular economy of trained men rather than opportunistic thugs.
"She's in here," one of them said, voice flat, unbothered. "Boss wants her alive. The blonde's expendable if she fights."
Del's blood went cold. Sienna's hand found hers in the dark, gripping hard, and Del made a decision in the space of a single heartbeat, shoving a full case of bottles off the shelf toward the nearest silhouette with everything her adrenaline could summon.
Glass shattered, a man cursed, and Del was moving before the sound finished, grabbing the nearest heavy object, a metal ice scoop, and swinging it hard into the side of the closest attacker's head.
He staggered, and she didn't wait to see him fall, shoving past him toward the door, screaming Sienna's name into the dark.
"I'm here." Sienna's voice, close, terrified but steady. "Del, there's more of them, I can hear more coming."
They burst back into the corridor and directly into chaos, security detail engaged in a full firefight with at least four attackers, muzzle flashes lighting the narrow space in strobing bursts, the deafening crack of gunfire echoing off concrete walls in a way that made Del's ears ring immediately.
One of Matteo's men went down hard against the wall, blood spreading fast and dark across his shirt, and Del grabbed Sienna and pulled her flat against the floor beneath the line of fire, both of them crawling toward the loading dock exit.
"Nico," Del gasped, searching the chaos for him.
"There." Sienna pointed, and Del saw him, pinned against the far wall by one of the attackers, fighting hard, blood already running from a cut above his eye, giving as good as he got but outmatched by sheer size.
Del didn't think. She grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall bracket and swung it full force into the attacker's back, and Nico used the half second of distraction to drive his elbow into the man's throat, both of them stumbling apart, Nico gasping and bleeding but upright.
"Go," Nico shouted, shoving Del toward the loading dock. "Both of you, go, I've got this."
"I'm not leaving you."
"Del, please—"
The world exploded sideways.
Something hit her hard from behind, a full body impact that drove the air from her lungs and sent her sprawling across the concrete, and she twisted fast enough to see a man in tactical gear looming over her, gun already holstered, hands reaching for her instead.
She fought, nails raking across exposed skin, a scream tearing out of her throat that got swallowed instantly by a gloved palm, and she bit down hard enough to taste blood before a second man grabbed her legs and lifted, her whole body suddenly airborne and helpless despite everything she threw at them.
"Sienna!" Del's voice tore raw through the chaos, twisting hard against the arms holding her, catching one flash of her niece being dragged toward the far exit by Nico, both of them bleeding but moving, alive, and some desperate animal part of Del's brain latched onto that single image and held it like a lifeline as the men carrying her hauled her toward the loading dock's open bay door.
"Fight all you want," one of them said, voice bored, professional. "Boss just wants you breathing. Didn't say unbruised."
The words landed like a threat and a promise both, and Del stopped fighting the grip and started fighting smarter instead, going still for one calculated second before driving her head back hard into the nose of the man holding her shoulders.
He howled, grip loosening, and Del twisted free enough to get one leg under her before the second man's fist connected with her jaw, white light exploding behind her eyes, the world tilting sideways as her knees buckled.
She hit the concrete hard, vision swimming, copper flooding her mouth where she'd bitten her own tongue, and rough hands hauled her upright again before she'd fully recovered, dragging her the last twenty feet toward a waiting van, its engine already running, back doors thrown open.
"Nico," she gasped, blood in her mouth, vision blurring at the edges. "Sienna."
"They're clear." A different voice, this one almost gentle, almost apologetic, which somehow made it worse. "Boss doesn't want the extras. Just you."
Zip ties bit into her wrists hard enough to bruise, cinched tight behind her back, and Del was shoved into the van's cargo hold, the metal floor cold and vibrating under her as the engine revved.
She kicked out at the nearest attacker on pure instinct, connecting with someone's knee hard enough to draw a curse, and earned a backhand across the face for it that split her lip and left her ears ringing worse than before.
The van doors slammed shut.
Darkness. The engine's growl. Her own ragged breathing, blood pooling thick in her mouth, wrists screaming where the ties cut into skin, and Del forced herself to breathe through the panic clawing up her throat, forced herself to think instead of spiral, cataloguing every detail she could manage through the pain.
Two men in the back with her, at least one more in the front.
The van turning left out of the loading dock, which meant they were heading away from the main road, toward the industrial stretch behind the district.
She thought about Nico's bleeding face, Sienna's terrified voice, the security detail down on the corridor floor, and let the fear crest and pass through her like a wave instead of letting it own her, the same way she'd forced herself through every crisis this club had ever handed her.
The van hit a pothole hard, jolting her sideways, and Del bit back a sound of pain and forced her spine straight despite the restraints, despite the blood, despite every instinct screaming at her to break.
She counted turns instead. Left out of the dock, right after maybe ninety seconds, then a longer stretch of straight road rough enough to be unpaved, the kind of surface that meant industrial land, warehouses, nothing residential close enough to hear anything.
She memorized the rhythm of it, filed the count away behind the pain, because if she got even one chance to run, she needed to know which direction actually led somewhere.
One of the men in the back with her lit a cigarette, the flare of the lighter throwing his face into brief orange relief, young, bored, not looking at her at all.
"How much longer?" he said to the front.
"Twenty minutes, maybe less."
Twenty minutes. Del held onto the number the same way she'd held onto the turn count, small and useless and hers, the only currency left available to a woman with her hands bound behind her back and blood drying stiff along her jaw.
She was still conscious. She was still counting.
That was enough for now.