Antonio
“Where is he?”
I grit the words out as soon as I step out of the car, voice boiling with a fury that even I can hear. My fists are clenched, gun pressing into my hip, and right now, the only thing I can think about is revenge.
“In there,” Cesc tells me as he strides up to the car, intercepting me before I can go barging into the large office building where he’s holding Salamanca. “He’s in a bad way, but he’s awake. Hasn’t spoken to any of us, but…”
“Trust me,” I mutter as I stride past him. “He’ll talk to me.”
And with that, I shoulder past Cesc, and make my way toward the door.
My arm is throbbing with every movement, a reminder of what Salamanca allowed his new protégé to do—and that fucker is going to pay, I’m going to make certain of it.
No matter what it takes, by the time I’m done with him, he will wish that he had never tried to make a move against me.
Just like everyone else who has dared try.
My men have been tracking him for days, and eventually intercepted him when he tried to make a return to the city a few hours ago. With no information on Andreo, we need to squeeze Salamanca for anything we can get—like safe houses where Andreo could be keeping Julia locked up.
It has already been far, far too long for my liking. It makes me sick to think of what he might be doing to her, especially because he has no doubt convinced himself that he’s not going to face pushback from me, probably thinking that he executed me back at the house.
The idea is surreal, even to consider. My own son, pulling the trigger on me with the intention of snuffing me out of existence. I’d call him ungrateful, but that doesn’t even begin to cover what he did to me.
But now, I have Salamanca in my grasp, and I intend to make him pay for what he has done.
I storm through the building and up the stairs, where two guards are waiting on the door.
I roll my shoulder before I step in, gripping the gun tight, reminding myself that, as tempting as it will be to blow this fucker’s head off his shoulders, I need information more than anything else right now.
I push the door open. Inside, Salamanca is looking rough, just as Cesc warned me.
Blood drips from one side of his mouth, and his head lolls dangerously to one side, his lips parted and his vision unfocused like he can barely stand to keep himself upright.
His hands are bound behind him, thinning hair matted with blood and sweat, and a black eye is already forming around one side of his face.
But when he looks up at me, I swear I can still see his skin turn pale.
“Antonio,” he greets me, his tone placating, as though there’s anything he can do to soften the upcoming blows. “I—”
Before he can finish, I lift a hand and backhand him across the face, sending him nearly tipping out of his chair. I catch him before he can crash to the ground, pulling him up in front of me.
“You turned my son against me,” I hiss to him, suddenly overwhelmed with a blinding rage that pushes out every logical thought from my mind. “Don’t talk to me unless I talk to you, you hear me?”
He gazes up at me again, and I can see the fight in him—good. I want him to think that there’s a chance he’ll get out of this alive. It’s the only way I’m going to be able to coax all the information I need from him. Even if I have no intention of letting him get away with the shit he pulled on me.
“There’s something I want to know,” I tell him, pacing before him, letting the sound of my footsteps fill the room. “About your safe house locations.”
He shakes his head, spraying blood this way and that. “I can’t—”
I turn, letting him see the gun resting on my hip. His eyes widen. Did he really think I wouldn’t do something like that? Think that we were equals, after what he did to me? It’s almost funny, or would be, if it wasn’t for everything he had done.
“List them,” I order him firmly. “And you might walk out of here alive.”
He flicks his tongue over his cracked lips, eyes darting back and forth, like he’s trying to parse what he can get away with.
I lean a little closer, not taking my eyes off him. “And I have my men ready to travel to every address you give me,” I tell him. “So if you lie to me…” I rest my finger on the trigger of the gun pointedly.
He shifts in his seat. “There are so many, I—”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I snap back. “You gave Andreo access to some of them, didn’t you? Tell me the names of the ones he can get to. All of them.”
“Andreo?”
I take a deep breath. He’s playing dumb, but it’s not going to work.
I lift the gun from my belt and rest it against his leg, letting it aim toward his guts.
One shot, and he’d be dead. He knows it.
I can see from the terror in his eyes, the expression on his face, like he’s barely holding back vomit right now.
“You have five seconds,” I tell him. “Five, four—”
“There was—this place, on the edge of the city,” he blurts out at last. “East Side. Some old apartment block that I gave him keys to. I was going to convert it into housing, so I could—”
“Hire it out to people who didn’t have access to any better?” I fill in the blanks for him. “Yeah, I’ve heard about your slums, Salamanca. I don’t need you to explain those to me.”
I push my face close to his again. The metallic scent of blood is coming off him in waves. “Now, tell me exactly where it is,” I hiss. “Describe the building. And I’m going to send my men there, and if it matches…” I lift the gun to his temple, stilling it there for a moment.
I can see him shaking. I’m surprised to find that I don’t care.
Normally, I would leave this side of things to my guards, my soldados, my men.
I don’t have the urge to this kind of violence, not normally, unlike so many men in my position.
But right now, I know I mean every fucking word coming out of my mouth, and I’m not going to let him mislead me without paying the price.
“It’s on Devos Avenue,” he tells me, not moving an inch, eyes fixed on the gun pressed against his head. “I—it’s an old building. Gray brick. Red door. I gave him the keys to the whole place, so I don’t know where he’ll be staying, but…”
“I’ll find out.”
I withdraw the gun, and he gasps a strangled sigh of relief. He thinks he’s safe now.
And he is—as long as it takes for me to confirm that what he told me was true. I’m not going to just ease up, let him walk out of here, not after everything he’s done. But I have a lead now, somewhere I might be able to track Julia to, and I will take whatever I can get.
For a moment, I swear I can almost sense her, so close to me that I could reach out and touch her. I’m coming, Julia. I’m coming.
I turn my back on Salamanca again, running through everything he said to me another few times to make sure it has stuck.
The thought of Julia locked up in some place with Andreo, not sure if I’m coming for her, not even sure if I’m alive—it makes me sick to my fucking stomach.
Anything it takes to get her out, I will do it, and I swear to myself in that instant that I will not let a damn thing keep me from her.
I step out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me, and stride toward Cesc, who’s watching with an expression of some concern from where he stands.
I don’t blame him. This side of things is normally his purview, and he’s not used to me getting involved like this, stepping in to bloody my own fists. He knows that it’s serious.
And that my feelings for Julia might go deeper than even I am ready to admit to.
“He gave me a location,” I tell him, and reel off the information that Salamanca spilled to me.
Cesc nods, tapping something in his phone, and then lifting it to his ear. He steps away to speak to whoever’s on the other end of the line, and I turn my gaze back to the door, flexing my hand, longing to deliver more punishment to Salamanca for everything he has done to me.
It’s more than just Andreo. That would be enough to make him pay, of course, but it goes deeper than even my son.
This is about my other child—the child who hasn’t even had a chance to draw breath yet, the child who deserves the opportunity to live out their life, a child who might be different than the one I raised before.
This is my second chance to make things right, and I refuse to let it slip through my fingers.
And more than that—it’s about Julia. The woman I married so I could keep her safe, and now it feels like all I’ve done is force her into an even deeper risk as a result.
I’ve been replaying the moment Andreo shot me in the mansion over and over again, seeing the look on her face as he dragged her away.
Something close to resignation, as if she knew there would be no way out of it for her.
I can’t let her think like that. No matter what she has been through, she needs to know that there’s always a chance to do better, no matter how distant it might seem.
Cesc returns a few moments later, dropping his phone back into his pocket and nodding. “Looks like there’s a building out there that matches that description,” he tells me. “Can’t guarantee that Julia and Andreo are in it, but…”
“I’ll find out myself,” I growl. I look back over my shoulder to the room where Salamanca is being held, and wonder, for a moment, what I should do with him.
I could just let him go, leave him to flee with his tail between his legs to whatever hole he crawled out of.
After all of this, I doubt he would dare make a move against me again, probably cutting off all contact with Andreo in the process just to be on the safe side.
But there’s something vengeful in me that will not allow it. A man like that has shown himself willing to undercut me, to attack me, to take what is mine in every way he can. And a man like that, in this business, doesn’t deserve to live.
“Keep guards on him,” I order Cesc. “And stay in touch with them while we go to the building. If Julia’s really there…” I flick my tongue over my lip. “Kill him.”
I don’t know if Salamanca can even hear me.
Some part of me hopes he can. It’s cruel, but I want him scared, want him terrified, just the same way he terrified Julia by lending Andreo enough forces to attack the house.
He has caused too much pain in the lives of the people who are unlucky enough to encounter him, and that ends here, ends now.
“Don,” Cesc calls after me, as I make my way down the stairs. “You should rest. Your arm—”
“I can handle it.”
“You might get hurt—”
“I said, I can handle it.” This time, my voice is sharp enough to leave no room for argument. I look over my shoulder at Cesc, who comes to a halt just behind me, eyeing me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
And it might be a shock, coming to know this part of me.
But this is the part of me I need right now, the one willing to fight for what is right, the one willing to kill if it means giving my child a chance at life.
I might not have expected to be a father again, not after everything that happened with Andreo, but now that the chance has arisen, I’m not going to fumble it.
I refuse to. I have a glimmer of hope for a future that I would never have been able to imagine, and I will not let anything in the world stand in the way of it.
I step out into the cold, clear air and make my way back to the car, already planning my attack. I know I have the element of surprise on my side, which is something, but I have no idea if it will be enough to stop Andreo.
There’s still a part of me that wants to believe I can get my son out of this alive, but I know I have to let go of that if I stand a chance in taking him down.
It might be hard to wrap my head around, but my son is gone, at least the one that I raised as a worthy heir to my business, the one that I have poured all my care and attention into.
And the man who remains?
The man who remains is in my fucking way.