Chapter 39
Dunn
I found Mikayla in the bedroom, shoving clothes into the stupid little backpack she insisted on carrying. She was angry and hurt, insistent on leaving. In all the years that I had worked for him, I had never seen Gianni look so desolate.
I lingered in the doorway, pretending to check my phone, before I stepped forward and cleared my throat.
“You really think he’s going to hand you back to Popovich?” I had asked her quietly.
She had laughed without humor. “That’s what men like him do, isn’t it? Everything and everyone is a piece on the chessboard-until they’re not.”
“Don’t be like that,” I had said. “Gianni may have done some bad things in his life, Mikayla. But he’s not a bad man. He wouldn’t use you like that.”
She had stopped packing long enough to look at me. “You’re loyal to him. Of course you’d say that.”
“I’m telling you because it’s the truth.”
Her mouth had pressed into a thin line, and I had known she was going to walk out anyway.
While she’d turned to get her toiletries, I’d slipped the tracker into the inner seam of her bag. I was quick about it so she wouldn’t suspect anything, and I knew that possibly one day, Gianni would thank me. It was a tiny sin committed, but it was for her own survival.
NOW
Now that same tracker was dragging me straight into hell.
The signal pulsed steady on my phone, a small red dot pinned to the side of the mountain like a wound that refused to close.
Mikayla’s bag. That stupid, fragile little backpack she’d carried out of the villa in Montalcino like it was all she had left of herself.
I followed it through the trees, through the cold air, through a forest so thick it felt like the mountain was trying to swallow us whole.
Archie Popovich’s home rose out of the dark like a wound cut into the earth. Stone walls. Narrow windows. It was too big and too old, the kind of place built to keep people in.
We fanned out through the trees, boots silent on pine needles, breath coming out in thin clouds. Archie had left a handful of men behind. Not for what Gianni sent us to do.
The first guard stepped out from behind a tree, cigarette glowing like a beacon. He never saw us. The suppressed crack was barely louder than the wind. He went down without a sound.
There was another by the side entrance. Another by the outer wall. We took them all, each with a quick, clean shot that sent them to the ground.
We slipped inside through a service door, the stone hall swallowing us. My grip tightened on my rifle as we moved forward, tight and careful, sweeping corners, checking doors, listening for movement.
A man rounded the corner ahead of us.
I put him down before he could lift his gun.
We kept moving.
Room by room. Corridor by corridor. With its heavy doors and thick walls, the house felt like a maze designed to make you lose yourself.
There were no windows you could see out of; they were too high or in the ceiling, and I realized that everything about this house was meant to disorient. To exhaust.
“Second floor,” I muttered, watching the tracker pulse. “She’s above us.”
A guard burst out of a side room. One of my men dropped him. Blood splashed against the stone.
We took the stairs two at a time.
I felt something twist in my gut.
“Spread out,” I said. “Find the locked doors.”
They didn’t take long.
There was a door at the end of the hall, heavy and reinforced, a keypad on the outside.
“Mikayla,” I yelled, the word ripping out of me raw. “Mikayla!”
A voice came from behind the door, shaky but unmistakable. “I’m here.”
Relief hit so hard it almost made me dizzy.
“Stand back from the door,” I said. “Get as far away as you can.”
I raised my weapon and fired into the lock. Metal exploded. The door buckled inward with a scream of tearing hinges and slammed open.
Mikayla stood inside, pale and wide-eyed, her hands clenched at her sides like she was holding herself together merely as a courtesy.
“Dunn?” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said, stepping toward her. “We’ve got you.”
Mikayla’s relief hit her in slow waves, like her body was only just catching up to the truth of what was happening.
I could see it in the way her shoulders dropped, in the way her breath came out uneven.
She was glad to see us. More than that—she was safe.
No bruises. No shaking hands. No distant, hollow look that said someone had touched her where they shouldn’t have.
Whatever Archie had planned, he hadn’t had the chance to do it.
We did not linger.
We moved fast through the service corridor, boots striking stone in sharp, echoing beats. Cold air rushed at us as we pushed out into the night, the mountain looming above like a dark witness that had seen too much. The forest pressed close, thick and waiting, as if it was listening.
Mikayla slowed only once.
She turned back to look at the fortress, its narrow windows black and empty, the whole thing sitting there like it was pretending to be harmless. It wasn’t. She knew that now.
I caught her arm gently and steered her toward the car. There was no time to slow down.
I got her into the back seat, pulled the door shut, and swung around to the driver’s side as the rest of the team peeled off into their vehicles. Engines started. Gravel crunched. We began the descent down the mountain, headlights cutting narrow tunnels through the dark.
“Dunn?” Her voice was unsteady, but her eyes were clear when she met mine in the rearview mirror. “Where’s Gianni?”
“He had to deal with Archie,” I said.
I did not tell her the rest. I did not tell her that Gianni had refused to be the one to come for her because he did not want to drag her back to him by force. He had already done enough damage. He had wanted her choice, not her gratitude. Even I could see how much that mattered.
She studied me, searching for something. Doubt. Truth. Permission to hope.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Anywhere you want,” I said. “Archie’s dead. Gianni told me to get you out and take you wherever you decide.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed, emotion catching in it like a thorn.
“Is that all he said?”
“Pretty much,” I replied.
It was not all he had said. But it was the part that mattered most.