Chapter 15
Alessio
Domenico's phone rang.
We were mid-sentence—arguing about perimeter rotations for the trial—when the sound cut through the diner's ambient noise. He glanced at the screen, and his face changed.
"Dario." He answered, listened for three seconds, and was already standing. "We're moving."
I was on my feet before he finished. "What?"
"Safe house breach." He threw cash on the table, phone still pressed to his ear. "Multiple hostiles. Heavy weapons. They have Valentina."
The words hit like a bullet to the chest.
We ran.
Domenico drove. I couldn't. My hands were shaking too hard to grip a wheel, and I hated myself for it. He floored the SUV out of the parking lot while I sat in the passenger seat, useless, every muscle locked tight.
"Tell me everything." My voice came out dead calm. The kind of quiet that meant I was going to kill someone.
He relayed what Dario had reported between bursts of gunfire before the line cut out. Professional extraction team. Smoke grenades. Flashbangs. Simultaneous breach from multiple entry points. FBI agents were overwhelmed in seconds.
"Sofia?"
"Down. Critical. Dario didn't know more."
"Who has her? Who took Valentina?"
Domenico's jaw tightened. "Caldwell."
The name landed like gasoline on a fire.
"He was there personally," Domenico continued. "Dario saw him before — " He stopped. Before the line went dead. Before we lost contact. Before everything went to hell.
Caldwell. The senator. The man who'd threatened to marry her, control her, destroy her. The man she'd run from in terror.
He had her.
Valentina.
The name was a pulse in my skull. A drumbeat. A prayer.
My chest felt like someone had reached in and squeezed—I couldn't breathe, couldn't think beyond the image of her in danger, hurt, dying while I was too far away to stop it.
Smoke rose in the distance, a dark column bleeding into Arizona's too-blue sky. Ten minutes away. The safe house.
Ten minutes might as well be ten hours.
"Call the team." My voice came out dead calm. "Now."
Domenico tossed me his phone without taking his eyes off the road. "Speed dial three."
I made the calls while he drove—sixty, seventy, eighty. The speedometer needle climbed, and my chest tightened with each tick. Every second at this speed was another second she was in harm's wayspent with Caldwell. Another second, he could hurt her, kill her, make good on his threats.
The traffic light ahead flared red.
Domenico didn't slow down.
The SUV shot through the intersection like a bullet. Horn blaring. Tires screaming. A sedan swerved left—missing us by inches, the driver's horrified face a white blur. A truck on the right locked its brakes, black smoke pouring from its tires as it fishtailed.
Let them call the police. None of it mattered if I didn't reach her in time.
Nothing mattered except Valentina.
Updates came through in fragments as I worked the phone—our people reporting in, piecing together the chaos. Four FBI agents down. Three wounded, including two of ours. Sofia being stabilized and airlifted to Phoenix Memorial.
Then the update I needed.
"Black van, heading east on Highway 60," Luca's voice crackled through. "We have eyes on them. Two miles ahead, maintaining distance."
Something in my chest loosened—barely enough to notice, but enough to let oxygen back into lungs that had forgotten how to expand.
"Stay on them. And get every man we have converging on that highway."
I relayed orders through the phone while Domenico pushed the SUV harder—ninety-five, the desert landscape streaking past like footage on fast-forward.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I grabbed it—Morris. FBI. Wanting to know if we were pursuing.
Agent Morris. The federal bureaucrat who'd promised me Valentina would be safe in their custody.
I declined the call.
The FBI had lost Valentina. Now, it was on me.
Highway 60 stretched ahead like a black ribbon cutting through the Arizona desert, heat shimmering off the asphalt in waves.
"There." Domenico's finger jabbed toward the windshield.
Quarter mile distant, a black van cut through traffic with aggressive confidence.
She's in there.
The thought hit like a physical blow. Valentina was inside that metal coffin—bound, terrified, hurting. With Caldwell.
My jaw ached from clenching.
Two of my vehicles flanked the van—far enough back not to trigger defensive maneuvers, close enough to maintain visual.
I wasn't feeling professional or careful.
"Close the gap," I told Domenico. He pushed the SUV harder—one hundred, one-ten. . The world outside became an abstraction—brown desert, blue sky, black asphalt all blurring into streaks.
The van grew larger in my windshield. Closer. Almost within reach.
Hold on, principessa. I'm coming.
"I'll coordinate with the team," I said. "Canyon Point. Three miles ahead. We box them there."
I made the calls while Domenico calculated angles, speeds, and timing.
Canyon Point approached—rock formations rising on both sides, natural walls narrowing the road into a perfect choke point.
My lead vehicle accelerated, closing until it pulled even with the van's front quarter panel. The second vehicle mirrored the movement on the opposite side.
Domenico hung back, waiting, watching the geometry align.
The van driver realized too late—brake lights flaring red.
My vehicles closed in, squeezing the van toward the shoulder. Gravel sprayed. Metal shrieked as the van's side scraped the guardrail, sparks trailing like fireflies.
The driver overcorrected—yanked the wheel too hard.
The van lurched, fishtailed, and slid off the road at a bad angle.
It hit the embankment sideways, momentum carrying it down the rocky slope in a grinding skid of dust and torn metal.
A boulder caught the front end and spun it hard.
The van slammed to a stop against an outcropping, crumpled on the driver's side.
Smoke poured from the engine compartment. One wheel still spun uselessly..
Silence.
Then screaming. Someone inside was screaming.
Valentina.
I was already moving—door open, boots hitting pavement, Glock in hand. Domenico shouted something behind me, but the words dissolved into white noise.
The embankment was steep, loose rock and scrub brush shifting underfoot. I half-ran, half-slid down it, gravel tearing at my hands when I caught myself.
Every second she screamed was a second too long.
A figure stumbled from the wreckage, blood streaming from a scalp wound.
He saw me. Tried to raise his weapon.
I put two rounds in him before he dropped.
The second one appeared through the smoke, weapon tracking me.
I dove as his shot cracked past. Rolling, I came up firing. Double-tap. Another man down.
The third one tried to flank. I spun and caught him in the shoulder. He went down screaming.
"Clear right!" Domenico's voice came from behind me.
I reached the van, lungs burning, chest tight.
The side door hung open, shattered glass framing the darkness inside. Smoke poured from the engine, thick and chemical, making my eyes water.
"Valentina!"
Silence. Just the hiss of escaping fluids, the tick of cooling metal, the distant wail of approaching sirens.
No answer.
Terror clawed up my throat. What if I was too late, what if the crash killed her, what if—
I climbed into the wreckage, Glock raised but not steady. The interior was a chaos of dislodged seats and bent metal glass everywhere catching light like scattered diamonds.
In the back, a shape. Small. Still.
My heart stopped.
Then she moved.
"Valentina." Her name came out broken.
She looked up, and I saw it all in flashes—blood down her face, bruises blooming across her cheekbone, zip-tied hands.
But alive.
Those green eyes found mine—wide, terrified—and something in my chest unlocked.
She was alive.
And then, I saw Caldwell. He was pressed against the far wall, gun shaking in both hands. It was pointed at Valentina's head.
"Stay back!" Caldwell's voice cracked. "Stay back or I'll—"
I didn't let him finish.
The shot was instinct—muscle memory, training, years of violence compressed into one pull of the trigger.
The bullet took out his gun hand. Bones shattered with a wet crack. He shrieked—high and animal—and the weapon clattered away across the van's floor.
I was on him before it stopped spinning. I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the van wall. His eyes bulged, his mouth working soundlessly, trying to breathe past my grip.
"You put your hands on her." Every word tightened my grip. "You took her. Threatened to kill her."
His face turned purple. Veins stood out on his forehead. He clawed at my hand with his good one, fingernails raking skin.
I didn't feel it.
My finger found the trigger, my Glock pressing against his temple now. So easy. Just pull it.
Do it, part of me screamed. He deserves it. He kidnapped her, hurt her, would have killed her—
"Alessio."
Valentina's voice cut through the rage like a knife.
"Don't."
I didn't look at her. Couldn't take my eyes off Caldwell, couldn't release the pressure on his throat that was ending his miserable life.
"He deserves it."
"Yes." I heard her shift, heard the pain in the movement. "But I need you. Not—" Her voice broke. "Not like this. Please."
My finger stayed on the trigger. One pull. That's all it would take.
End the threat. Permanently.
"He would have killed you." The words came out strangled, raw. "Slowly. Would have made me watch—"
"But he didn't." Her voice reached me—gentle, trembling, grounding. "I'm here. I'm alive. You saved me. That's enough."
"It's not enough."
"Alessio." Just my name. But the way she said it—desperate, pleading, certain—made me turn my head.
Our eyes locked.
Blood tracked down her temple from a gash in her hairline. Red marks colored her cheeks, sure to bruise. Split lip. Terror and exhaustion and pain written across every feature.
But alive. Breathing. Looking at me like I was the only thing anchoring her to this world.