Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I'm furious that I have to leave.
Not at Rafael. Not at the situation. Just furious at the universe for giving me this night, this moment where Isabella finally chose me, where she said the words I've been waiting four years to hear, and then immediately ripping me away from her to deal with O'Rourke bullshit.
I'm driving too fast and I know it, my hands tight on the wheel, my mind half in the car and half back at the compound with her still in that bathroom, still marked from my mouth, still looking at me like I'm the only thing that matters.
"Slow down before you kill us," Rafael says from the passenger seat.
I don't slow down.
Dante is in the back and doesn't comment, just checks his gun with the methodical focus he always has before we walk into something that might go sideways.
The factory appears ahead, dark and silent, and something about the silence feels wrong immediately.
I pull into the lot and kill the engine and we all sit there for a moment, looking at the building, reading the same wrongness in the air.
"Thoughts?" Rafael asks quietly.
"It's too fucking quiet," Dante says. "Attack was an hour ago. There should be sirens. Police. Something."
"Unless someone cleaned it up fast," I say. "Or unless it wasn't actually an attack."
"You think it's a trap."
Well, fuck yeah.
"I think the O'Rourkes have been one step ahead of us for weeks and showing up exactly where they want us to be is a bad idea."
Rafael pulls his gun and checks the chamber. "So what the fuck do we do?"
"We go in. Carefully. And we don't separate for any reason."
We get out of the car and approach the building with weapons drawn, moving in formation, covering angles the way we've done a hundred times before.
The front entrance is unlocked.
That's the second thing that's wrong.
I push through and the interior is dark except for emergency lighting casting everything in red, and the silence is so complete I can hear my own heartbeat.
"Spread out or stay together?" Dante asks.
"Together. Always together when it feels like this."
We move through the main floor, checking corners, clearing rooms, and everything is exactly as it should be except for the wrongness underneath it all, the feeling that we're being watched, that we're walking into something deliberately.
We're halfway across the factory floor when I hear it.
The smallest sound. Metal on concrete. A scuff of a boot.
"Down!"
I drop and pull Rafael with me and the bullet passes through the space where his head was, slamming into a support beam behind us with a crack that echoes through the building.
Then chaos.
They come from everywhere at once, from behind machinery, from the catwalks above, from doors we'd already cleared, and there are too many of them, at least eight that I can count in the first three seconds, and this was absolutely a trap and we walked right into it.
I fire twice at the closest attacker and he goes down but two more are already moving to replace him, and beside me Rafael is engaging with someone who came from the left, their bodies locked together, struggling for the control of a knife.
Dante is pinned down behind a piece of machinery, returning fire, keeping three of them occupied, and I move toward him because separated is how we die, separated is how they win.
A man comes at me from the right with a crowbar and I duck under the swing and put two bullets in his chest before he can recover, and then someone tackles me from behind and we hit the concrete hard enough that my gun skitters away across the floor.
He gets his arm around my throat and starts squeezing and I drive my elbow back into his ribs once, twice, three times, until something cracks and his grip loosens and I roll and get on top of him and finish it with my hands because I don't have time to find my gun.
Rafael shouts something I don't catch and I look up to see him surrounded, three men closing in, and Dante is trying to get to him but there's someone between them with a shotgun and it is all falling apart faster than I can process.
I grab my gun off the floor and move toward Rafael, firing as I go, dropping one of his attackers, then another, and he takes advantage of the opening to put a knife in the third one's throat.
"Behind you!" Dante's voice, urgent and sharp.
I turn and there's a man with a pipe swinging at my head and I get my arm up just in time to block it but the impact sends lightning up my forearm and my hand goes numb and my gun drops again.
He swings a second time and I duck and drive forward, getting inside his reach, my shoulder slamming into his chest, driving him backward into a support beam, and I hear the air leave his lungs in a rush.
I get my hands on the pipe and wrench it away from him and bring it down on his head and he drops.
I feel movement to my left and I spin with the pipe and catch someone in the ribs, the impact solid and satisfying, and he folds and goes down gasping.
"Enzo!" Rafael's voice, warning.
I look and there's someone on the catwalk above us with a rifle and he's aiming at Dante who's still pinned down, still exposed, and I'm too far away to reach him and too far away to shoot and I watch the trajectory and I know exactly what's about to happen.
I move before I decide to.
I'm crossing the distance between us at a dead run and Dante sees me coming and his eyes go wide and I hit him from the side like a linebacker, both of us going down hard behind the machinery as the shot rings out and punches into the concrete where he was standing.
We hit the ground and roll and I'm already bringing my gun up to return fire at the catwalk when I feel it.
Cold. Sharp. Spreading.
I look down.
There's a knife buried in my side, just below my ribs, and the man I knocked Dante away from is still on the ground with his hand on the handle, and he pulls it out and I feel the hot rush of blood immediately.
"Fuck," I say, which seems inadequate.
Dante shoots him.
The man goes down and stays down and Dante is already coming towards me, his hands moving to my side, pressing hard.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough." I can feel the blood soaking through my shirt, warm and wet and too much. "Not fatal if we move fast."
Rafael appears, breathing hard, blood on his face that I don't think is his.
"Clear?"
"For now." Dante doesn't look away from my side. "But he's hit. Knife. Deep. We need to move."
Rafael takes one look at the blood and his face goes hard. "Can you walk?"
"I can do whatever I need to do to get out of this building."
They pull me up and the movement sends a fresh wave of pain through me and the world tilts slightly but I hold it, forcing myself to stay present, stay conscious, stay functional.
We move toward the exit and I'm leaning on Dante more than I want to admit and Rafael is covering our backs and I can feel the blood running down my side, soaking into my jeans, leaving a trail.
We make it to the car and they get me into the back and Dante presses something against the wound, a jacket maybe, and the pressure makes me grit my teeth but I don't make a sound.
Rafael drives and he doesn't ask if I'm okay because he can see that I'm not, just focuses on getting us back to the compound as fast as the car will go.
"Stay with me," Dante says, and his hands are still pressed against my side. "Don't you dare pass out, Enzo. Isabella will kill me if I bring you back unconscious."
Isabella.
I think about her waiting for me at the compound to come back so we can tell Matteo together, waiting to start the life we just decided we want to have.
"I'm not passing out," I say, and my voice sounds far away even to me. "I'm fine."
"You're bleeding everywhere."
"It's fine."
"This is not what fine looks like."
I close my eyes and focus on breathing, on staying present, on the fact that I promised Isabella I'd come back and I can't break that promise on the same night I made it.
The compound gates appear ahead and Rafael doesn't slow down, just blows through them with the guards scrambling to open them fast enough, and we pull up to the front of the house and there are people already coming out, already moving toward the car.
Matteo.
Alessia.
Isabella.
She sees me through the window and her face goes white.
The door opens and Dante helps me out and Isabella is right there, her hands going immediately to my face.
"What happened?"
"I'm fine."
"You're covered in blood."
"Most of it's mine. Some of it isn't." I try to smile. "It's fine."
"Stop saying you're fine." Her voice cracks and she looks at Matteo. "Get the doctor. Now."
He's already pulling out his phone.
They help me inside and I'm leaving a trail of blood on the marble floors that someone's going to have to clean and my vision is starting to blur at the edges but I keep walking because stopping feels like giving up.
We make it to the sitting room and they lower me onto the couch and Dante pulls the jacket away from the wound and Isabella makes a sound I've never heard from her before.
"It's deep," Dante says to Matteo. "Knife to the side. He's lost a lot of blood."
"The doctor is five minutes out." Matteo crouches beside me. "What the hell happened?"
"Ambush. At the factory. They were waiting for us." I look at him. "This wasn't random. They wanted us there specifically."
His jaw tightens and he looks at Rafael. "How many?"
"Eight. Maybe ten. All dead now."
"Good."
Isabella's hands are on my face and she's saying something I can't quite hear over the ringing in my ears and I reach up and catch her wrist.
"I'm okay," I say. "I promised I'd come back. I came back."
"You're bleeding everywhere."
"Flesh wound."
"That's not a flesh wound, that's a—" She stops and takes a breath. "The doctor is coming. You're going to be fine."
"I know."
I close my eyes and let myself drift slightly while I wait, and I can feel her hand in mine and I hold on because letting go feels wrong.
I have things I need to do.
I need to tell Matteo.
I need to make sure Isabella doesn't marry Vittorio tomorrow.
I need to—
The doctor arrives and there's movement and voices and someone asking me questions I answer automatically, and through all of it Isabella's hand stays in mine.
I don't let go.