Chapter 4
Niran
Iglanced at my watch, frowning when I realized it’d been several hours since Bento and Anurak left the house.
With Anurak’s social anxiety, they would have been back way before now—birthday shopping or not.
And a glance at my phone told me Bento hadn’t checked in with me since ten A.M., when he’d assured me everything was fine and they would head back home once Anurak was done shopping.
Quickly, I switched over from the paperwork I’d been drowning in and worked on pinging Bento’s phone and the SUV, since I had trackers on both.
Both trackers were pinging at a shopping center, and both were showing at the exact same location.
It wouldn’t have been all that weird except for the fact that Bento’s phone had been sitting in the same place for a good few minutes now, according to the tracker.
Surely, they hadn’t shopped so much that Bento was still loading bags into the vehicle, had they?
That wasn’t usual for Anurak. The boy usually only spent what was necessary and not a penny more.
While Rico wouldn’t care if Anurak completely wiped out his bank account, Anurak just wasn’t that kind of boy.
Just as I picked up my phone to call Bento and do a check-in, my door opened. I looked up, ready to reprimand whoever had barged in without knocking, but the words died on my tongue when I saw it was Rico filling the doorway. His jaw was clenched, and he was white knuckling his phone.
Something was fucking wrong.
“Have you heard from Bento?” he demanded.
“No,” I told him. “I just pinged his location and was just about to call him, actually. Have you heard something?”
Rico shook his head and shoved his fingers through his hair, looking stressed and worn out. “No. And Anurak isn’t answering his fucking phone. Location is showing he’s moving quickly through a shopping plaza. Where is Bento’s phone pinging?”
I glanced back at the screen, my jaw tightening when I saw Bento’s phone was still pinging with the SUV.
“At the car,” I snarled, pushing back from my chair.
If he let Anurak get away from him, I was going to rip him a new fucking asshole.
I might be obsessed with the man, but he had a job to do and precious cargo to protect at all fucking times.
And we were all fucking dead if something happened to Rico’s boy.
Rico would line all of us up and put bullets in each of our skulls like he was playing fucking target practice if he lost Anurak.
“Something is fucking wrong,” Rico snarled, reading my mind. “Round up some men. I’m getting Alfonzo, and we’re going to get my fucking boy.” He pointed a finger at me. “If Bento allowed him and Anurak to get separated, he’s fucking dead, Niran, you hear me?”
I wasn’t sure I could let Rico kill Bento—not with the way I was attached to the man. But nonetheless, I nodded once, giving the illusion I’d allow it to happen. “Understood, sir.”
Rico spun on his heel, leaving my office and pulling his phone up to his ear.
I rounded my desk and went in search of two of our soldiers.
They were training, and after quick orders to get dressed and meet me in the garage in literally two fucking minutes, they were on the move and obeying my commands.
Rico climbed into the driver’s seat of his Audi R8, and Alfonzo dropped into the passenger seat. Just as my two men appeared, Rico backed out of the garage. I hurriedly climbed into my SUV, and as soon as the other two were inside, I backed out and quickly followed Rico while trying to call Bento.
He didn’t answer any of the phone calls I made on the way there, and I made a lot of them.
As soon as we got to where the SUV was parked, my jaw tightened. Hurriedly, I climbed out of my SUV, even before Rico climbed out of his car. As soon as Rico’s boots hit the ground, his phone rang. Quickly, he answered it, putting his phone on speaker, no doubt so we could hear the call.
“Perrito, where are you?” Rico barked.
“Papi,” Anurak wailed, “I need help. P-please.” He sobbed. Rico’s expression was murderous. “They—they attacked Bento from b-behind. H-He told me to r-run.”
“Where are you, perrito?” Rico asked again, his voice more soothing this time. He scanned the parking lot and the shopping plaza in front of us as if he could see through the walls to where his husband might be.
Bento had done his job. He’d made sure Anurak was safe, even at the expense of his own life.
I had to bite my tongue to physically keep myself from asking where the fuck Bento was.
I knew until Rico could get his hands on Anurak, no one else mattered—not even the man he’d rescued and given a home. A clean life. A new fucking start.
“I-In the jewelry store,” he sobbed. “Please come get me, Papi.”
“I’m on my way,” Rico promised, motioning for Alfonzo to follow him. “Is Bento with you?”
“No,” Anurak cried. “They took him. They—They knocked him out and t-took him.”
My upper lip curled in a snarl as I faced the scene in front of me.
“Search the fucking car,” I ordered the men I’d brought with me.
And then, I began to work my way around the vehicle, coming to the driver’s side where the door was open, the window shattered.
Glass was sprawled along the asphalt, and blood stained some of it, like someone had shoved Bento’s head through the fucking window.
Bending, I touched one of the glass shards and lifted my finger, finding the blood still wet. It was cool now, but seeing it wet gave me hope. He hadn’t been gone too long. I could get home, track him by traffic light cams, and find out where the fuck these mother fuckers took him.
Bento’s phone was lying under the SUV, the screen open to my contact info as if he’d been about to call me for back up. I grabbed the device and tucked it into my pocket.
I was going to find Bento, and I was going to bring him home. And then, I was going to torture the mother fuckers who took him from me before forcing them to die a slow, painful death.
No one got to take my man from me and live to tell the fucking tale.