In My Heart (De Santis Family #3)

CHAPTER 1

DARIO

I slid my phone out and checked the screen again, clenching my teeth in irritation when I still had no notifications awaiting me.

I had told Arran and the head of the team I sent to meet them all off the plane from Chicago to let me know as soon as they got back to the house and Cara was safe.

By my estimation, that should have happened by now.

In fact, they should have returned home an hour ago, but still I’d heard nothing and I was getting antsy. Something felt off.

“I can’t believe the police didn’t show up,” Rafe puffed out as he walked over to where I stood.

It was late and fucking freezing. We were at the docks, having been called there by our men after a shipment they were overseeing the unloading of exploded just as our client’s team had gotten close enough to start the transfer.

Two men had been killed and two others were injured.

Our clients—a one percenter MC we were importing guns for—were less than pleased.

“Did they find anything we can use to narrow down who’s responsible?” I asked.

“Our men are still looking through the debris, but I don’t think they’ll find anything. This is happening too often. We need to tighten up security down here, and maybe even send some escorts with our cargo for the time being,” he sighed.

I knew he was exhausted. We both were. We’d barely slept in the last two days as we worked to find Gia and where the hell she was, and had been, for the ten days she’d lied.

She hadn’t touched any of her bank accounts, and her phone records showed only the phone calls and messages between her and Rafe since the day she left.

If any of her friends knew about her plan, they weren’t saying anything, and we literally had no leads to try and find her.

I fully planned to search her room when I got back home.

She had lost her right to privacy, as far as I was concerned.

Rafe needed to find her, and I’d do all I could to make that happen.

“I’ll see it’s done,” I agreed easily.

“Have you heard from Arran?”

“No, and I’m getting worried. They should be home by now. I’m going to give him a ring,” I explained, my phone already in my hand.

“Maybe they just crashed when they got in. Two long flights in four days. They must be exhausted.”

I tried Arran first, and when his phone went right to the voicemail, I tried Callan. His didn’t even go to voicemail. I tried Cara next, and it just rang and rang, until that eventually switched to voicemail too.

“Rafe!” I called as I turned to look for him, and found him directing the team of guys who had arrived to help clean up the mess. He looked over to me, and must have sensed my worry as he rushed closer.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but Arran, Cal, and Cara aren’t answering their phones,” I explained as I hit Brax’s contact and listened to it ring. “Find out who went to meet them at the airport, and start making calls.”

“We’ll do that on the way. Let’s get to the airfield!” Rafe called as he started running to the car.

I called for two of the three teams who were now at the docks, to follow us, and watched as they ran for their cars, before I jumped in with Rafe.

“I should have gone to meet them!” Rafe cursed as he sped away from the car park and onto the quiet London roads. “This was probably a fucking distraction!”

“Probably,” I agreed, ending the call on Brax’s voicemail. “Brax’s phone rang out too. I’m trying the others.”

I continued making calls as Rafe drove like he had a death wish, towards the private airfield, which the plane had been due to land at.

We made the forty-minute drive in just over twenty, and by the time Rafe pulled onto the tarmac, I had tried every one of our guys who were either on the plane with Cara or had gone to meet them at the airport, and not one of them had answered.

“Fuck!” I cursed as Rafe brought the car to a stop abruptly.

Ahead of us I could see the company plane, and surrounding it were at least a dozen police cars, the blue lights lighting up the area. We were too far away to make out specifics, but there were bodies on the ground, and the SUVs, which our guys would have used to drive there, sat amongst the chaos.

“Dario…” Rafe said as he turned to me with a mix of fear and rage on his face.

“She’s not there. Cara is not there, Rafe! Whoever did this, they’d want her alive. She’d be no use dead. They took her and they’re going to contact you,” I rushed to tell him. I had to believe that just as much as he did, because I would not consider the alternative.

“We need to find out.” Rafe put the car into gear and started to move towards the scene before us, but the car had barely moved when his phone beeped from the cup holder between us.

Rafe braked again, and looked to me as I picked up the device. There was a notification for a message, and I clicked on it.

“Unknown number,” I told him as I held the phone between us, so we could both see the screen.

A video started to play, and instantly it was clear what we were seeing. My blood ran cold as my heartbeat thudded through my whole body.

“That’s not her!” Rafe snapped. “I can’t see her face. It’s not her!”

“It’s her, Rafe.” I had to force the words through my too tight throat. “Her leg…I’ve seen those scars before,” I added.

I think I had noticed everything about Cara in the time she had lived with us.

I knew how she liked her coffee, that she liked bright, colourful socks, that she liked smaller, safe spaces when she was scared, and that she only ever really laughed, with her whole body, when she felt truly safe.

I had seen the scars on her too, two on her face, one just below her left ear, which was newer than the others, and one on her forehead, just below her hairline on the right side.

The one on her leg, made up of two jagged looking lines, I had noticed when she was in the gym the other week in short leggings.

It was old and faded, but still noticeable.

And I saw it now, her bare leg laid on a concrete floor as some fucker lay over her, raping her. He was huge, with dark hair and a tattoo on his right forearm that I could clearly see and would never forget until the day I had gutted the bastard for what he was doing.

Cara’s body was bruised and bloodied, her arms held tautly at her sides with her fists clenched so tightly I could see how white her knuckles were. She was shaking, but she wasn’t making a sound, and her head was turned to the side, away from us.

“Who sent this?!” Rafe snapped as he ripped the phone from my hand and cut off the video to investigate the number. “We have to find her now, damn it! Call whoever you have to! I want to know where that message came from!”

Rafe slammed his phone down in the cup holder again and started the car, swinging it around violently until we were racing back the way we came, the teams behind us scrambling to catch up.

I hit the number for a hacker we had occasionally worked with and listened as it rang.

“Where are you going?” I asked Rafe.

“This is either the Russians or Adamian. I’m going to find them and kill them one by one, until someone tells me what I want to know!” he spat.

When my call rang out, I called again. Usually, Dante and Arran dealt with our hacking and computer crap, but since we had no idea where either of them were, we needed help.

“Get a hold of Killian. See if any of Adamian’s men are at his strip club again tonight.” Rafe demanded, so I ended the call and tried Killian instead.

The call had just started to connect, when Rafe’s ringtone rang out loudly in the car. Instantly I ended my call and grabbed Rafe’s phone.

“Who is it?” Rafe snapped.

I shrugged as I glanced at the number, then answered the call.

“Boss?” The word was gasped and breathless.

“It’s Dario. Who is this?”

“Brax. I…I managed to follow one of the c-cars,” he gasped.

I switched the call to speaker so Rafe would hear too.

“It’s Brax,” I told him.

“Brax? Do you know where Cara is?” Rafe asked urgently.

“Yeah…fuck. I…I followed the last car that left the airfield. They m-must have thought I was dead. I…I’m outside the city, in an industrial area. They took Arran, Callan, and your sister inside about an hour ago.”

“An hour ago? Why are you only calling me now!” Rafe raged.

“I…I got shot. Lost consciousness, then I had to get a phone from one of their cars. Sorry boss,” he breathed, his words barely audible.

“Can you drop a pin and send it to us?” I asked anxiously. We needed to get his location before he passed out, which he sounded on the brink of.

“Yeah. The building…it looks empty. Two men guarding front and back doors. I counted five go inside, but I….like I said, I passed out. Could be more,” he panted. “I n-need back up.”

“Just hold tight,” Rafe told him, after his phone pinged with the pin. “Cavalry is on the way. The Doc will meet us there too.”

“Appreciate that, boss.” The call ended with those words and I feared it would be too late for Brax by the time we got help to him.

Judging from what we saw back at the airfield, we were facing some major losses that night, and they would hit us hard.

The men who worked for us were loyal, and like family for the most part.

It had been a long time since we lost anyone, let alone the number of guys that had been taken down that night.

“Call the doc and have him meet us there. Let the others know what we’re walking into too,” Rafe directed as he loaded the location on his in-car map, all while speeding in the direction we needed to head.

If I weren’t already sure he was driving the car as fast as he could, I’d have pleaded with him to go faster.

We had to get to Cara. We were already too late to stop her being hurt, but I couldn’t lose her, and I would sure as hell make sure every single bastard that had a hand in taking her, touching her, died a bloody and violent death.

The image of her being torn apart by that fucker, her taut body clearly in so much pain, and just imagining how much agony she had to be in, in her head too – it was making me wild.

The monster, who lived within me, was going to get his chance to come out that night, that was for sure, and no one better try and stop it.

CARA

I didn’t know when I passed out. Everything had been a blur of devastating loss, pain, fear, my fight to remain silent, and acceptance that there was nothing I could do but lie there and allow man after man to tear me to pieces over and over.

After the monster fired those shots, I didn’t have it in me to care about anything anymore.

I guessed at some point the pain had become too much and unconsciousness had taken me.

But the peaceful darkness hadn’t lasted for long, and as consciousness returned, so did the thrumming agony drumming through every inch of my body, and the heart clenching devastation of knowing what I would see if I turned my head.

But I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to face the truth again.

No one was on top of me now, and around me the room was quiet and still. My entire body was vibrating, but whether that was because of the freezing cold, the pain, or my adrenaline still begging me to fight, I wasn’t sure.

There was no fight left in me though. I knew that. I had fought day after day, for so many years of my life, but I wouldn’t bother anymore. What would I even be fighting for? There was no part of myself left to try and hold on to.

Everything that had remained, had been stripped from me, right there in that warehouse.

The broken parts of myself that I had worked so hard to piece and stick together again and again through my life – they were gone, obliterated into dust. Any hope I had that I could find a new life and start over, that was gone too.

There would be no more hope after what I had lost that day.

“Move her back into the room and give her some water. I don’t want her dead, yet,” I heard Mikhail Kozlov command from somewhere behind me.

As heavy footsteps moved closer to me, I used everything I had to turn to the side so I could curl my naked limbs in against my body tight.

My hands were still bound together, and there was blood and other substances, which I wouldn’t allow my mind to label, all over me.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I pressed my face against the top of my knees, but still I didn’t let a sound slip out.

It was the only piece of control I had been able to hold on to, and for some reason, my mind wanted me to cling to that.

As rough and brutal hands grabbed the top of my arms and started to lift me from the cold and bloodied concrete, I closed my eyes and willed the darkness to just take me again. I couldn’t be there anymore. No more hands on me. No more pain or loss. No more.

I was ripped up to my feet, but my legs wouldn’t hold me up.

I was broken physically, as well as mentally - exhausted, bruised, and cut up, with a head that felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.

Movement made me lightheaded and nauseous, even with my eyes clamped closed.

For a moment as heat rushed up my body in a wave, I thought I might get my only hope and black out.

But that didn’t happen, because a door at the far end of the warehouse exploded with a deafening boom, which caused my adrenaline to surge and bring me back.

The hands holding me released me, and I just collapsed down to the ground again.

I didn’t even look up at what was going on as gunshots rang out around me.

I just curled up as tight as I could on my side, right there on the cold ground, and gave up once and for all.