19. Fighting Back
nineteen
Felicity would be the first to admit she was not in any way trained or mentally, let alone physically, prepared for whatever the situation was she’d landed in. But she was determined to survive, and that meant gritting her teeth and crossing all her digits. She had no idea how long Tristán would be out of it, or if he’d snap back to mostly alertness like a raging bull at any moment, so she went with the first most logical course of action she could wrap her brain around. She took the rope, grabbed him by the arm, and put all her weight into hauling him closer to the bed.
He let out a groan of protest, his head partially dragging against the concrete tile floor. He was dribbling blood out of his mouth, she realized. She hoped it wasn’t bad of her that she felt kind of gleeful about that.
When she judged he was close enough, Felicity hurried to wind some rope around his wrist. Then she extended it to the base of the bedpost she’d dragged him to, winding it several times around that. There was plenty of rope left and she hated the idea of just wasting the rest, but she doubted very much that a potato peeler could cut through the new-looking rope with any expediency. So she set to work tying the sturdiest knot she could.
By the time she was done with all that, Tristán was groping at her legs with his free hand and making more consistent, intentional sounds. He still wasn’t speaking, but she took the behavior as a sign that his threat level was rising again regardless.
Felicity stepped quickly out of his reach, moving back to the counter where she’d left her pot, and raised it up so he could see. “If you manage to get out of that,” she said, “I’ll hit you again. I’ll hit you until you stop moving if you make me hit you a second time. I’m completely serious, Tristán, I don’t ever want you coming near me again, do you understand? Not. Ever.” She didn’t know if he was even cognizant enough to comprehend her words, but it made her feel a little better to say them. If nothing else, he did seem to recognize the pot as the weapon that had struck him down.
Felicity released a breath, then, and looked around some more. With Problem One hopefully secured, she needed to think about the looming threat of Problem Two—the next Ink Blot who would inevitably walk through that door. It was the only way in or out of the room. There weren’t even any windows, unless there was a window in the space behind the curtain. She honestly didn’t know if the door was locked, but it felt stupid to try and check. She’d seen for herself at least half a dozen gangsters just hanging out in the building, utterly immune to the sight of her being dragged around, on her way in.
Going back through that door without a real plan or protector was suicide.
She turned her attention again to the kitchenette. The potato peeler and zip ties would do her little good in another confrontation, so she checked the cupboards. Bagged rice, instant oatmeal, bread, some canned goods with pop-tops, a small toaster, a small single-serve coffee maker, and plastic dishes. Felicity rolled an idea through her head and pulled as much as she could out to see at once. It looked like Tristán had been planning to hold her here for the long-term. That bastard.
There were five canned items. Not exactly a lot, but it was a small kitchenette. She fingered the pull tab on one and glanced back at the rope, envisioning a crazy idea.
Tristán grunted at her, eyes squinted and bloodshot.
She flipped him off for good measure, then peeled off one of the lids. She took it, and the pot, and walked back over to him. She’d been careful the way she had tied the knot in the rope, leaving a large section simply extended under the bed. It was a lot of rope, to her mind. Now she had a use for it, and maybe a way to cut it.
Tristán tried to roll toward her, swinging weakly in her direction.
Felicity raised the pot and he retreated immediately. It was surprisingly disappointing. She lowered it, careful to keep it out of his reach, and pulled the rope to her so she could see about cutting it. Can lids had sharp edges, but they weren’t exactly true knives, so it took some sawing. At one point her grip slipped and she cut into her own hand a little, but she had good reflexes so it didn’t bite in too deep. Still, the lid and the rope were dotted with her blood by the time she was done. But she succeeded, and the pain barely registered beneath her pride.
Felicity took her items, kicking her half-brother’s legs out of her way when he tried to trip her up, back to the kitchenette. First, she washed off her hands in the built-in sink, using the bar soap that at least looked new which had been set there. She wrapped one of the towels around her palm in lieu of a bandage, despite that it made maneuvering awkward, then started moving things over to the doorway.
She threaded the rope through the still-attached pull tabs of the remaining canned items, tied one end of the rope to the doorknob, and anchored the other end beneath the toaster. Everything was spread in a small arch, within the swing of the door. Not only would whoever entered have to watch their step, but even if she’d somehow fallen asleep, they would make too much noise for her to miss. It wasn’t as good as setups she’d seen on television, of course, but she was proud of herself when she sat back and looked at the combination of carefully placed cans and small appliances. If she could have rigged the bag of rice to somehow fall on the head of whoever came through the door, she’d have done that, too.
Tristán made another strained groan that somehow sounded like “fuck.”
Felicity stood, picked up her pot, and walked back properly into his line of sight. He’d shifted enough to assure her he was trying to stay alert, trying to figure out what she was doing. But it was also clear he wasn’t fully succeeding. She didn’t know exactly where she’d hit him with her wild swing, but apparently an adrenaline-fueled metal pot to the skull was effective. Looking at him on the ground, tied up and wounded and still trying to glare at her, made all her messed-up, complicated feelings rush to the surface.
She stepped closer and kicked his feet to keep his attention. “Hey, asshole. You know you’re the last, right? You know your parents are dead. Manny’s dead. It’s just you, since I’ve never really been part of that family.” She watched his eyes widen, as much as they were able since apparently his entire face was swelling, before sinking into a spiteful glare.
He made more sounds that might have been attempts at words. She was starting to suspect his jaw was badly damaged.
Felicity didn’t blink. “And I don’t have to be part of that family anymore.” She raised her wounded hand, turning it so the diamond faced him. “I’m engaged. I have a new family now, one that doesn’t hate me or abuse me. I’m happy now.” Her chest burned as his glare intensified. “I’m happy,” she repeated, “and I’m not going to let you destroy that. So fuck you, Tristán. Fuck you straight to Hell.”
She said nothing more before turning away from him and striding out of his sight, around the bed, so she could put her back to the wall. She didn’t want to sit in the nasty old chair he’d been sitting in, either. So as a small added defense measure, she tucked herself as best she could between the side of it and the bare wall, sliding down and settling in. She had no idea how long she would be stuck there, no idea how long it would be before someone came through that door or even if Tristán might somehow escape her tie. But that was why she held onto her pot.
It took Mikey over an hour to isolate and clean up one single image well enough to bring in the few eyes they had. Cristiano was too impatient to wait for a third-party to do the pickup, so he swung by himself and coerced Miguel into his car. It wasn’t the most subtle thing he’d ever done, but he absolutely did not give a fuck.
“Yo, man, what gives? I didn’t miss a call,” Miguel said as Cristiano pulled into traffic.
“No time for that,” Cristiano replied. “Need you to look a picture and tell us if you recognize someone.”
“You couldn’t just text it to me?”
“Quality’s not what we’d like. Deal with it.”
Miguel leaned back in his seat but stayed quiet for the remainder of the short drive. Until they arrived at the unlabeled office front, at least. “Where the hell even is this place, old man?”
Cristiano cut the engine and met the boy’s stare in the rearview mirror. “Right now, it’s a work in progress. Follow me.” He shoved from the car, too agitated to be grateful that Miguel did as he’d been told, and led the way into the building.
The building was three stories tall on the outside, but Cristiano went straight for the stairs that took them into the fully finished basement where he knew Mikey was working. No one tried to stop him. One man nodded in recognition as he held open a door, looking vaguely uncomfortable. He wasn’t in a mindset to feel guilty about that.
The basement was lit up, several desks with veritable walls of monitors set throughout the space. Berto glanced their way as Cristiano passed his seat, nodding in acknowledgment.
Behind Cristiano, Miguel let out a low whistle. “Damn. This is nice.”
Mikey stood from behind the largest desk and waved Cristiano over. “I have the image on my central monitor,” he said as they approached. “If I blow it up any bigger, it gets too distorted.” He held out his hand, stopping Cristiano before Cristiano could round the desk properly. “Do not break my equipment, please. What you’re going to see is not my fault.”
Cristiano felt the glare settle on his face. He couldn’t stop it. “Move, Mikey.”
Mikey sighed and stepped out of the way.
Cristiano reached back and half-pulled Miguel forward. “Your eyes are the ones we need.” Not that he didn’t follow behind the boy to see the image for himself. Whether Miguel knew who it was or not, he wanted to have a face for the man who’d taken his woman.
Miguel shrugged his arm free and leaned forward. “I got it, I— Oh, shit.”
The room went silent.
Cristiano forced his lungs to function. He could only see a portion of the image over Miguel’s figure, enough to recognize Felicity’s distressed face and a man directly in front of her. The male wasn’t fully facing the camera, but enough of him had been captured that the picture was good enough for anyone who might know him. Like Miguel, apparently. “Speak.”
Miguel turned, positioning himself out of the way and motioning to the picture. “That’s Cezar Barros.”
“Shit,” Mikey muttered.
Cristiano ground his teeth; stare riveted to the image captured on the monitor. The image of a man with teardrops tattooed under his eye, a Glock in one hand and his other wrapped too tightly around Felicity’s abused wrist. Felicity, looking panicked and on the verge of tears. Frightened. Vulnerable.
“So that’s Barros.” Dante’s voice at Cristiano’s shoulder snapped him from the dark haze.
Cristiano turned his head, realizing as he did that more bodies had filed into the room. The room was still silent. Every man was on his feet, watching and waiting. Miguel had moved back to the far side of the desk, for once biting his tongue.
Dante studied the screenshot for a moment longer, then lifted his stare to the room. “Every man sees this picture. I want boots on the ground. Barros reportedly drove off in a black four-door Mercedes. If you think you see this motherfucker, shoot out his goddamn knees and call it in. No one sleeps until Cristiano’s fiancée is home safe.”
“He took the Merc?” Miguel’s question sounded almost accidental in seconds following Dante’s speech, and the boy had the brains to avert his gaze when attention shifted to him.
“Does that mean something to you?” Dante asked.
Miguel cleared his throat. “Just, uh, rumor was that car’s his prized possession, you know? He don’t mess around with it. So if he used that, instead o’ the beater he sometimes drove, that means he wasn’t planning on makin’ a mess or something. That’s … good, right?”
“Are you an idiot?” Mikey whispered to him, cutting a sidelong look at Miguel.
Cristiano’s fists clenched again at his sides. He recognized Miguel’s point, unpleasant thought it was, but he also recognized what that meant. The truth he’d feared from the start of this. “He’s taking her to Tristán.”
Miguel opened his mouth again, probably on reflex. “Why the hell would—”
Mikey smacked his palm over Miguel’s mouth. “Shut up now.”
Cristiano pushed out a rough breath. All he wanted to do was get back out there, but that was an ineffective strategy without some effort toward coordination. “Don’t waste time on any location we’ve already raided. He won’t have taken her anywhere he thinks we’re aware of, or anywhere he doesn’t feel in control. Spread the word.”
“You heard the man,” Dante said sharply.
Cristiano watched, for just a moment, as the gathered men in the room turned to file out. In his peripheral vision he saw Mikey lifting his tablet, presumably to send out the file to all their troops as Dante had ordered. It was time to get going, finally. He turned and offered a nod to his cousin in gratitude, then angled around the desk to stride from the room. “If anyone finds her before I do, call me. Otherwise, don’t.”
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed. It felt like hours, though the lighting in the room remained exactly the same. Her legs fell asleep long before her eyes got heavy and Felicity had to fight with herself to stay awake. She wasn’t safe here. It was strange to be so bored while being held against her will with her life on the line that she could actually drift to sleep, but that was where she was.
So, at first, she thought she was dreaming when she saw Tristán on his feet.
It was her ingrained reaction to the sight of him looming near that snapped her fully awake again, and then her heart leapt into her throat. She hadn’t had some half-dreaming hallucination. Tristán—swollen face and all—was walking toward her. His chest heaved with each rasping breath and dried blood was caked to the side of his jaw.
Felicity scrambled to her feet, almost toppling over when she realized her legs were more like jelly. She’d had to tuck them mostly under her to fit in her spot. A choice that was now working against her. She had no option but to brace herself with her wounded and still wrapped hand on the top of the recliner, leaving her only her good hand with which to wield her pot. Her legs were barely holding her, shaking in place. There was no way she could run. A single step would land her on the floor.
Several inches of rope dangled from Tristán’s wrist, the dangling end terribly frayed. In his other hand, hanging low at his side, Felicity realized he held a switchblade. He’d had a knife in his pocket the entire time.
Stupid. Stupid, Felicity.She should have checked. She should have made herself dig through his pockets. He might even have had a phone or something on him. None of those thoughts had occurred to her, not until she saw that ominous knife.
Tristán made a sound that was almost like a coo, his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow, and he tried again. “Ouu ahr a bich!” He spat the final, least butchered word, and threw himself forward.
Felicity screamed, doing her best to block his lunging blade with her pot while at the same time throwing herself backward. She got stuck between the heavy chair and the wall, the space not wide enough for her to fit between, and her ears rang with the bone-rattling clang of his knife connecting with the backside of her makeshift shield. “Get off! Get away!” She tried to shove him back, but she’d wedged herself in at a bad angle and her momentum was lousy. It didn’t help that her legs hadn’t finished torturing her yet.
“Ore!” He tried to stab at an angle and she only barely blocked him. This time, his weapon slid across hers with a terrible screeching sound.
It took her a second to process the background noise that had erupted almost simultaneously. Gunshots, somewhere outside the room she was trapped in.
Tristán seemed to hear them, too, because he took a half-step back and glanced to the door. His eyes were still half swollen shut and bloodshot, but he seemed to have regained some degree of focus and concentration. He wasn’t fully lost to a rage.
Felicity fought to keep from collapsing. That seemed worse, somehow.
Tristán turned his glare back on her. “Ouu ruun’d eweryhing.” The gunshots weren’t stopping, and she thought she heard echoes of screaming in the chaos beyond the walls, but she couldn’t let herself focus on any of it. Tristán moved his knife to his other hand, stepped closer, and raised it up. “Ghoodbye, Lishy.”
He wasn’t actually going to stab her from that angle. It was a feint. She was almost positive. But, of course, she couldn’t take the risk—and they both knew she could only block from one direction. So, she shielded as much of herself with the pot as she possibly could and let out one more scream, because if she tried to kick him she’d wind up on her ass.
Tristán tried to wrench the pot from her with his free hand, forcing her into a physical struggle unexpectedly.
And then the door swung into her makeshift alarm system.
“What the—”
Tristán’s head swung toward the door.
Felicity darted a glance to the side, even as disappointment crushed her. The muttering voice couldn’t possibly be Cristiano’s. But the disappointment stalled when she realized she had met the man whose eyes were widening. Cristiano had introduced them a couple of days after she’d met his family.
“Fuck,” Ryōma said. In the span of a heartbeat, he had a gun trained on Tristán. The shock was off his face as quickly as it had come and he tipped his head back, half out the door, to release a sharp whistle. “Cris!”
Hope sparked in her chest. He’s here. Cristiano’s here!
Tristán made a distinctly less happy noise. “Fuhk ouu.” He faced Felicity again. Rage darkened his eyes.
“Uh-uh, asshole,” Ryōma said, stepping over her mess of cans and rope without lowering his gun. “Back away from the woman. I’m not allowed to kill you, but I can still put you on the ground before you know what hit you.”
She watched Tristán fight with himself. He never removed his glare from her, never dropped his knife. She suspected he had reached the point where he was willing to fall if he believed he could take her with him.
“I said back away.”
Tristán lifted a foot, slowly, as if he were complying.
He wasn’t going to. She saw it in his eyes. All she could do was try to aim her pot in the direction of his swinging knife, hoping to knock his arm off-course if nothing else. A gunshot rang out, splitting the air. Felicity squeezed her eyes shut, unable to do anything to dodge.
A rush of air in front of her proceeded the clatter of Tristán’s knife crashing to the floor and the hard thud of a body hitting something else solid, several feet away. But Felicity couldn’t bring herself to unclench.
“Watch him.” The words were growled so low she almost didn’t recognize them. Not until a large, warm, strong hand settled over her white-knuckled grip on the pot handle and another cupped her cheek. “Open your eyes, baby. I’m here.”
Felicity blinked her eyes open, almost afraid she was hallucinating. “Cristiano…”
Frown lines marred his forehead as his thumb stroked her jaw. “Let go of the pot.”
She unfurled her fingers and her impromptu weapon fell to the floor. Her lips parted as she sucked in a shaky breath.
Cristiano pulled her out from where she’d pinned herself, hauling her up to his lips in a crushing, powerful kiss. He tangled a hand in her hair and hooked her thigh over his hip.
Felicity whimpered into the kiss, clinging to him as best she could, relief and happiness fueling that spark of desire he always ignited inside her.
Cristiano gentled his hold, rumbling against her as he slid her back to her feet. His hands settled over her spine and he leaned forward enough to press his forehead to hers. “You’re safe now, baby.”
She couldn’t stop the tears if she’d tried. “I knew you would come.”
He wiped her cheeks with both thumbs and pressed his lips to her hair. “Always.”
She reached up to latch onto his arms, wanting to hold him, to have him closer and tighter to her.
Cristiano caught her wrist in a loose grip and examined the towel wrapped around her hand. “You’re hurt.”
She’d forgotten. For just a moment, she’d forgotten about the stinging in her hand. “It was my own fault,” she said on reflex, “and it’s not so bad. The—”
He kissed her again, cutting her off, but this time kept it brief. “Right now, I only care that you’re hurt. The details matter for recovery, not for how it factors in to whether or not I’m pissed off about it.” He kissed her a third time, both hands on her face again, then straightened and turned them toward the room. “Ryōma, get her outside and see about cleaning up her hand. I still need to deal with this piece of shit.”
Felicity pulled her lip between her teeth. She wanted to understand—she sort of did, objectively—but she mostly just wanted Cristiano to stay with her.
Cristiano threaded a hand into her hair, tilting her head back to look up at him. “You’ll be safe, Foxglove. I just have to finish what you started here. I won’t take long. Nothing else is happening to you, because all these men here have a strong desire to survive the day.”
She felt herself smile, just a little. “Don’t make me wait too long.”
His eyes softened at the corners, he eased his hand from her hair, and motioned forward the man who’d kept Tristán from seriously wounding her.
Ryōma smiled, the expression seeming easy. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s get you outside. We’ve got some good first aid kits in the SUVs. I bet we can do better than a towel.”
Felicity stepped up to him, allowing him to place his fingers over the center of her back, and walked with him out of the room.