Dante
"You think it's a trap," Rocco said quietly.
"There are easier ways to kill us,” Rocco said.
Lark looked up from the tablet. "What if he's telling the truth?" Both men turned toward her. "He has never protected me." Her voice was thoughtful rather than emotional. "Not once." She swallowed. "So why start now?"
The operations room buzzed as Avery enlarged the coordinates on the main monitor. A satellite image filled the screen of an old church with weathered stone and a collapsed bell tower. Overgrown trees swallowed most of the property.
Rocco leaned closer. "I know that place."
Avery looked over. "You've been there?"
"Once,” Rocco admitted. He frowned. "It was abandoned."
The technician typed rapidly. "Property records show it hasn't had an owner in almost thirty years. There are no tax records, and utilities haven’t been run to the building in all that time.
Dante studied the image. "Which makes it perfect." Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. "For hiding something."
Rocco nodded slowly. "Or someone."
The room grew quiet again as Lark stared at the photograph. "My mother—” No one interrupted her. "If she hid the ledger—" She traced the outline of the church on the screen. "She would've picked somewhere meaningful."
Avery looked at her. "Did she attend church?"
"I don't know,” Lark admitted. The answer hurt more than Lark probably realized. She knew so little about the woman who had given birth to her, and that had everything to do with Rafael—he was sure of it.
Dante stepped away from the group. He needed space to think. His phone vibrated, and he pulled it from his pocket to find an unknown number on the screen. He almost ignored it, but something told him not to.
He answered without speaking. "Dante." His blood froze when he heard Sofia’s voice on the other end of the call. He hadn't heard it in over three years.
"Sofia?"
She was crying. "I don't have much time."
His knees nearly gave out. "Where are you?"
"I don't know,” she cried.
"Damn it, Sofia,” Dante growled.
"I escaped."
His heart stopped. "What?" he asked.
"Only for a little while." Her breathing came in short, frightened bursts. "I stole a phone."
Tears stung Dante's eyes. He hadn't cried since the day their parents died. "Sis.”
"They know where I am," she said. His stomach dropped. "They're coming."
"Tell me where you are,” Dante shouted.
"I don't know,” she whispered. Sophia sounded panicked. "They moved me again."
He forced himself to stay calm. "Listen to me."
"I'm trying."
"Look around and tell me what you see,” he ordered.
"I—” Metal clanged somewhere near her, and a train horn echoed in the distance. If he wasn’t mistaken, he also heard church bells ringing. Dante's head snapped toward the satellite image still displayed across the room. She had to be at the abandoned church.
"Sofia,” he breathed, staring at the screen.
"I'm scared,” she sobbed.
"I know,” he said, trying to soothe her.
"I don't want to die." His chest physically hurt at the thought of her dying.
"You won't." He was making her a promise that he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep unless they found her. Footsteps echoed through her phone, and voices shouted in the background.
"Dante—" The line filled with static, and he knew that she was gone.
"Sofia!" he shouted. "I'm sorry." He knew that his apology wouldn’t ever reach her ears, but he had to say it nonetheless. His sister deserved at least that for his inability to keep her safe.
"Dante?" Lark breathed. He looked up to find that everyone in the room was staring at him. His face must have given everything away.
Rocco crossed the room first. "What happened?"
He handed over the phone. "My sister called."
Rocco's expression hardened. "What about her?"
"She’s being held by Santos, and she said that she escaped and stole a phone to call me. It’s why I’ve been working for him all these years.” Lark gasped softly. "She called me, and I can’t do anything to help her." His voice broke.
Avery immediately took the phone. "Can we trace it?"
The technician was already working. "Trying."
Dante paced as he tried to remember every detail from their call. "I heard a train."
"What else can you remember?” Rocco asked.
"The sound of metal clanking in the background,” Dante said, closing his eyes. “And I heard bells.”
Everyone stopped around him. "What kind of bells?" Avery asked.
"They sounded like church bells," he said.
Rocco slowly turned toward the satellite image. "No, it couldn’t be that easy." Dante followed his gaze to the abandoned church where his sister was possibly being held. Everything felt as though it was crashing together.
Lark whispered the thought none of them wanted to say aloud. "What if she’s being held at that church?"
The technician suddenly stood. "I've got the call." Everyone rushed over. "It bounced through multiple towers." She enlarged the map and then froze. "Oh—” Rocco looked over her shoulder.
"Damn,” he breathed. The blinking location marker settled directly on top of the church from Rafael's message. Dante couldn't breathe because everything seemed to be connected to one location.
Avery looked around the room. "We leave in ten minutes."
"No." Everyone looked toward Dante. "I'm leaving now."
"You'll get yourself killed,” Avery said.
"Maybe." He grabbed his rifle from the table. "But I'm done waiting."
Rocco stepped directly into his path. "I'm coming with you."
Dante looked at him. "You don't have to."
"I know." Rocco smiled grimly. "But your sister needs help, and I have a feeling that you will too."
Lark walked toward both men. "I'm coming too."
"No." The word came simultaneously from Dante and Rocco.
She folded her arms over her chest and scowled at them both. "There you go again, telling me what to do."
Dante sighed. "Lark?—"
"My mother hid that ledger." She looked between them. "My father sent me those coordinates." Her green eyes burned with determination. "If we're walking into whatever waits inside that church—” She reached for the rifle Avery had left leaning against the table. "Then we're walking in together."
Dante looked at Rocco, and Rocco looked back at him. Neither man liked the idea, but both knew one thing. Trying to stop Lark Santos from making her own choice was exactly what Rafael Santos would have done, and neither of them intended to become the next man who caged Lark.
The engine of the armored SUV rumbled beneath him as they sped through the sleeping streets of Chicago. Rain had started sometime after they left the warehouse. It streaked across the windshield in silver ribbons, blurring the city lights into smears of gold and white.
Dante sat in the front passenger seat, his rifle resting between his knees while he watched every intersection they passed.
He wasn't looking for Keller's men. He was looking for Rafael Santos, because if the coordinates were real and if Sofia had somehow managed to call from the same location, then Rafael had sent them into the middle of whatever game he'd been playing for the last twenty-five years.
And Dante hated games because games got innocent people killed.
"You've checked your phone six times.” Rocco's voice came from the seat behind him. Dante looked down at the black screen. He had no new calls, no messages—nothing. He slipped it back into his pocket.
"I know,” he breathed.
"You'll hear it if it rings,” Rocco said.
"I know,” Dante insisted.
"You aren't convincing anyone,” Rocco said.
Dante rested his forehead briefly against the cool window. "I heard her voice." The words came out rougher than he'd intended. "For three years, I thought she was dead." The SUV grew quiet, and even Avery, who rarely stopped talking, kept her eyes on the road.
"You know what bothers me?" Dante asked. No one answered. "I don't know what her favorite color is anymore." His hands tightened around the rifle. "I don't know if she still hates broccoli." He laughed once. "When she was twelve, she tried to dye our dog purple."
A small smile tugged at Rocco's mouth. "How'd that work out?"
"The dog stayed purple for a month." The smile faded almost immediately. "I've missed three years." Silence settled over the vehicle.
Lark finally spoke from the back seat. "You didn't choose that." He turned to find her watching him with an expression that made his chest ache. "You didn't abandon her."
"I still failed her,” he insisted.
"No." Her voice was quiet but certain. "The man who took her failed." He stared at her. "My father failed her. He failed all of us.” The words hit him harder than they should have. Maybe it was because she understood something most people never would—that victims always blamed themselves first.
The church came into view twenty minutes later. It sat alone on a hill overlooking an abandoned rail yard, its weathered stone walls barely visible through the rain. The bell tower leaned dangerously to one side. Several stained-glass windows had long since shattered. It looked forgotten.
Rocco studied it through binoculars. "I've got two heat signatures outside."
"Only two?" Avery asked.
"That's the problem." Everyone knew why—because there should have been more. Keller hadn't built an empire by leaving two men to guard something so important.
"They only want us to see those two," Dante muttered.
Rocco lowered the binoculars. "I was thinking the same thing."
"They're bait,” Avery said as she killed the engine a block away. "So what's the play?"
Rocco spread an old blueprint of the church across his lap.
"There are three entrances—the front doors, the crypt, and—” He tapped a faded section of the map.
"A maintenance tunnel beneath the cemetery.
" Dante immediately looked toward the graveyard at the rows of crooked headstones that disappeared into the darkness.
He hated cemeteries because there were too many places to hide.
"I'll take the tunnel,” Dante said.
Rocco shook his head. "No."
"I know underground fighting,” Dante assured.
"So do I,” Rocco said.
Dante looked at him. "I've spent years clearing cartel tunnels."
"And I've spent years clearing terrorist compounds,” Rocco countered. For a second, they simply stared at one another before Avery sighed.
"Can the two alpha males stop measuring their dicks?” she asked.
Lark cleared her throat, and both men looked at her. She folded her arms over her chest. "You're doing it again."
Dante frowned. "Doing what?"
"Making plans without me,” she said. Neither man answered as she walked over to the blueprint.
"My father sent me here,” she reminded as she tapped the church on the blueprint.
"If this is about my mother—” She looked at Dante.
"And your sister." She looked at Rocco. "And Keller.
" Her green eyes hardened with determination.
"Then we stop acting like this is three different missions. "
Rocco raised an eyebrow. "I'm listening."
"It's one mission." She looked between them. "We all go in—no splitting up, and no one playing the hero. If one person finds something, everyone knows about it. Dante hated how much sense it made, and Rocco looked equally unconvinced. "We move as one," Lark finished. "Or not at all."
Avery grinned. "I vote for the scary smart woman."
One by one, the operators nodded, and Rocco looked at Dante. "What do you think?"
Dante looked at Lark. The frightened woman he'd first guarded three years ago would never have spoken like that. She would have waited for permission or asked what she should do. This woman just took command of a room full of trained operators without even realizing it.
A slow smile spread across his face. "I think—” He looked directly at her. "That you're becoming exactly who your father was afraid you'd become."
Lark frowned. "What's that?"
He slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Free." The word hung in the rain between them, and no one spoke because no one needed to.
Avery checked her watch. "We've got movement." The two guards outside the church had disappeared.
Rocco immediately raised his rifle. "They know we're here."
Dante's instincts screamed. "No." He stared at the open front doors of the church.
"They're inviting us in." Lightning split the sky, and for one brief second, the interior of the abandoned church lit up through the broken stained glass.
Dante caught the unmistakable outline of someone standing at the altar, watching and waiting for them to make a move.
The figure simply stood there until darkness swallowed the church once more.
Then a single church bell rang, and Dante looked at Rocco.
"That's not Keller,” Dante said.
Rocco's expression had gone grim. "No." He chambered a round. "I think that's Rafael Santos." Dante wasn't sure whether seeing the man again would end with answers or with him finally putting a bullet through the monster who had stolen his sister and caged the woman he loved.