33. Finn
Chapter 33
Finn
Whether the morphine has worn off or the pain Enzo’s inflicted has become sharp enough to cut through it, I’m not certain.
What I am sure of is that he’s broken all the fingers in my right hand and the two bones in my forearm. Old Bone Breaker is about to fracture the shit out of my humerus with an oversized dead-blow hammer when emergency floodlights flare on, alarms shrieking like banshees.
Enzo freezes, arm and hammer outstretched.
The floodlights destroy the shadows preventing me from seeing Enzo’s features clearly, and for the first time all night, I behold my tormentor’s face.
And I immediately understand why he hides it from his victims. Even scuffed with scars and worn with age, his boyish, babyish face is almost feminine. Big round eyes and a pouting mouth.
His voice and his height are the only intimidating things about him… if he has his victim strapped down to a chair, unable to see his face.
Hiring assassins to tail my friends, using the Red Hill boys to come after me, even breaking my bones in the dark…
“I can see you’re overcompensating.”
His glossy black eyes bulge with fury. He whips the dead-blow hammer at my upper arm with all his strength. The buffer of my muscle isn’t nearly enough.
The hammer comes down full force, crushing bone, muscle, and tissue. Excruciating, compounding pain radiates through my mangled arm.
White-hot agony wrenches a strangled roar from my throat that’s swallowed up by the ear-splitting siren-whine all around us. Enzo drops the hammer with a clang on the cement floor and stalks toward a wall, where the entrance to a hidden pathway reveals itself. He disappears through it, leaving me alone with two De Luca enforcers for guards.
Four floodlights illuminate this grungy torture cell. High cement walls, a long table in the back covered with Enzo’s favorite toys…all lit by a blacklight. Two doors, one ahead of me, one behind, and one additional door, if I count the hidden passage. Blood and other unidentified substances stain the concrete floor. Enzo’s abundant, oppressive scent smothers the dank, damp air.
What a depressing place to die. Not that I plan on it.
The pain in my arm comes in never-ebbing waves, like being stabbed by a thousand blades over and over. If not for the adrenaline prying my eyes open and forcibly keeping my mind in focus, the hurt would knock me out.
Then again, maybe the adrenaline is wearing off.
Wow, I’m in so much pain, I’m hallucinating.
In my warped mind, the door ahead of me bursts open, springing the enforcers in the room to life. In marches a gorgeous woman, arm extended, a gun in her grip. She reminds me of Riley. My heart drops into my gut.
Holy shit.
It is Riley.
Behind her, Darren, Cian, and Rory emerge.
Why is she here?
For half a second, rage filters through my pain-induced stupor. What the hell were the guys thinking bringing her here?
Riley glances at the enforcer to my left, whose now charging toward her. My heart lurches. If I weren’t strapped down, I would fling myself in front of her?—
She fires her weapon. The bullet discharges quick as lightning, sluicing through the enforcer’s eyeball and straight out the back of his skull. His limbs spasm as he collapses. Dead.
Every voice inside me demanding to know why she was allowed to come here shuts the hell up so I can admire her.
Shit. If Riley’s that lethal with just a glance, what’s she like when she’s focused?
Darren dispatches the guy to my right, while Cian and Rory watch the door. While my senses are submerged in a murky haze thanks to a mix of adrenaline, morphine, and the terrible pain stressing my body, I can’t take my eyes off Riley. She runs to me, eyes bright with worry.
As soon as she’s close enough, I shove a rough, relieved kiss on her perfect mouth. Through the drugs and the unspeakable agony, Riley’s kiss sobers me. Reminds me. I’m alive. And there’s life on the other side of all the death and destruction that consumes my world. She’s the dawn beyond my endless night.
Her eager mouth forces mine open. Something wild, angry, and urgent on her lips speaks that same language as my dick.
“You are so sexy,” I growl against her tongue.
Darren works the restraints around my ankles, freeing the feet I can’t even feel anymore. “Too bad you look like something that crawled out of a grave.” He gives a theatrical sniff. “You kind of smell like that too.”
Riley draws back from me, breathing hard, and opens her fist. “Take these.”
Three white tablets sit in her palm. She slips them into my mouth, and I swallow without no question. I’d eat poison if she fed it to me. Knowing my friends, the pills are probably Excaliburs, the fastest-acting pain inhibitor on the black market. They knew I’d be in major pain when they got here, maybe even close to death. Of course they’d bring reinforcements.
And not a moment too soon.
“ Jesus .” Darren takes stock of the carnage formerly known as my right arm. “This is going to hurt.”
He gets me out of the restraints. Even freeing my mangled arm has my body wailing. I clamp my jaw shut to keep from making a sound.
From my core, a cooling, numbing sensation starts to bloom.
Damn, those pills work fast.
Riley and Darren help me out of the chair. My right arm hangs motionless and broken at my side, leaving me with only a working left arm and two sleepy legs with which to escape.
The cool bloom expands inside me. The same sensation unfurls in my brain, like ice cubes being dropped into tepid water. I already know the strength of this sensation will, in a matter of seconds, dull my suffering. As the potency of the pill spreads over me, I realize I might have taken a one too many and am probably about to be as high as a kite.
There’s a very good chance we’ll all die trying to escape this place. Being high on black market painkillers isn’t the worst way to go. Especially since I’m with my best friends in the world and the only woman on Planet Earth who’s ever loved and accepted me exactly for who I am.
Around me, Riley and the others stay on high alert. We emerge from my torture chamber into a narrow hallway that lets out into a long corridor on both ends. We all glance both ways.
Cian nods right, and we follow him, discreet, steady, and swift. Rory brings up the rear, gun pointing behind our group in case trouble runs up on us.
Everyone wears earpieces. Cian presses his fingers to his and, under his breath, says, “Approaching Alpha One.”
This is the moment I realize my friends brought more reinforcements than I thought. Just how big a rescue operation did they mount in the several hours I’ve been in De Luca captivity?
Questions backstroke through the lazy river of my mind. Fuck, these pills hit faster than snake venom.
“Come in, Alpha One.” Cian’s eyes squint with suspicion.
Something’s wrong. He whips a walkie-talkie off his belt and turns the volume up ever so slightly. Without warning, a familiar voice lurches from the speaker.
“Abort, Alpha One has been compromi—” The unmistakable trill of machine gunfire follows the unfinished sentence.
A short stillness falls over us. Cian’s expression darkens. “They got Declan.”
He spits a curse and gestures left. “Let’s go to Plan B.”
Knowing Cian, he probably memorized the entire layout of this building…
We round a corner into a long, wide hallway. Weightlessness suffuses through me, slightly impairing my balance. If not for Riley’s hand squeezing mine, I might float up to the ceiling like a balloon.
My broken, dangling right arm feels like a bag on my shoulder, not an appendage. Thoughts fracture and separate. This drug is a spoon stirring through the foam of my mind, mixing everything into swirls.
Riley’s hand steadies me.
The high doesn’t fully hit until the five of us are moving down the next dark corridor, navigating to a different exit.
“I love you guyyss. But just so you know, this is the worst game of hide-and-seek ever. Can’t we all just take a group nap?”
“Is it me, or do drugs make Finn funnier?” Darren peers around a corner, holding his gun upright.
“It’s not you.” Rory snickers as he and I stand back-to-back. “How many Excaliburs did you give him, Riley?”
“Three,” she whispers.
My head lolls in her direction. “Hi, wifey. I’m mad at you for coming, but I’m also not mad. You’re so pretty.”
Darren snorts. “Finn’s going to be funny until July.”
Rory whistles. “We need to get him out of here before he collapses.”
Cian, ignoring us all, engages his earpiece again. “Come in Alpha Two.”
“How many…of us are…here?” I confuse myself in trying to ask.
“Ten.” Rory’s hard tone cuts through my growing delirium. “Nine now, with Dec gone.” He huffs. “That leaves Jon, Rob, Tony, James, and us. The others are guarding the exits so we can?—”
“ Goddamn it .” Cian’s frustrated curse interrupts Rory’s explanation. “They got Tony too.”
“Sounds like we’re going to need another exit.” Darren’s voice gets lower when he’s angry. I haven’t heard the sound in a long time.
Cian leads us back the way we came and into an adjoining hallway, motioning for us to follow him.
This place is a maze. Or maybe this maze is a labyrinth. “Where’s the minotaur?” I mumble. Either way, I’m disoriented. I can’t even tell if I’m still standing up.
Running footsteps and yelling fill the spaces between the bleating sirens still screaming overhead. We trail behind Cian until his steps abruptly slow, an overpowering smell wrinkling his face. “What is that?”
Darren sniffs and shakes his head. “I’m not picking up any chemicals…”
In my heightened sensory state, I sniff as well, filling my lungs with the scent Cian’s complaining about.
“That’s Enzo.” Everyone gawks at me. “He smells like a hippie dipped in cigar smoke.”
Cian’s eyes lock on mine. He’s suggesting something in silence, but I have no idea what until Darren says, “Stop it, Cian. We’re getting out of here.”
Up ahead, De Luca foot soldiers zip past, prompting us to flatten ourselves against a nearby wall to stay hidden.
“This won’t be over until Enzo’s dead,” Cian insists when the coast clears.
Darren shunts his head forward, like Cian is missing the obvious. “We didn’t come here for Enzo. And we’re already down two.”
Staying low, Rory checks the corner behind us. “Our priority is getting Finn out of?—”
Cian swivels back to argue, but in a split second, his eyes fly wide open.
He fires his gun over my shoulder and Rory’s, nailing an enforcer up the hallway in the chest. Without that silencer attached to the barrel, I would’ve lost some hearing. And Rory, had he straightened up even a millisecond earlier, would’ve lost some brain matter.
Gunfire erupts.
Next thing I know, I’m running. My body follows Riley’s, her hand leading mine along. Enzo’s scent only gets stronger as we wind our way through this labyrinth of darkened hallways lit by optic white floodlights and flashing alarm bulbs. The high makes it seem like I’m trapped in a fun house or a dizzying nightmare.
We round a corner into a spread-out space with chairs stacked high against the walls. In the center of the room, we find Enzo addressing the group of soldiers encircling him.
Darren grunts. “Well, looks like you might get your wish after all.”
“Lucky me.” Cian cocks his gun, but Riley, still squeezing my hand, steps ahead of hi.
“Ladies first.” Riley aims. When she takes the first shot, the whole party scrambles apart. One bullet nails an enforcer in the back of the head, and another takes down a second enforcer immediately after. Even though I’m fucked up and high as a damn kite, watching Riley shoot people is fucking hot.
Cian, Darren, and Rory take out the others, until it’s just Enzo De Luca against the five of us, all by himself.
“On your knees.” Cian flicks his gun at Enzo.
Enzo grins, sadistic and cruel. “Fuck you.”
Cian puts a bullet in Enzo’s leg, which forces him down to his knees, groaning. He seems so much more pathetic in the light. Cian strides toward him, ready to do the honors, but through the sting of his bullet, Enzo sputters and grits out, “Kill me, and the little blond canary dies.”
The muscles in Cian’s back twitch and pulse, almost making him look bigger.
Beside me, Riley’s eyes go wide as saucers. “Harper,” she whispers.
Meaning slips through my mind and disappears, like water through a sieve.
Cian’s body trembles, his face contorted with feral rage, the shadow in his eyes black as night and sharp as any blade.
“ Where . Is. She.”
Enzo ignores Cian. “Would be a shame if she didn’t make it.” The man staggers to his feet, wincing against the pain in his bad leg. “I haven’t gotten the chance to sample the goods yet.”
Cian’s mere nanoseconds from lunging for Enzo’s throat when footsteps explode into the place. De Luca reinforcements swarm, flooding in from the back of the room, flanking Enzo and forcing us to flee.