Chapter 27
Dmitri
Luca arrives at my penthouse right on time.
I wave him inside before shutting the door. “Do you have the list?”
“Yes,” Luca replies as he pulls a sheet of paper out of his jacket pocket and slaps it down on my kitchen island.
His scribbled handwriting in black ink fills the page.
“All these people hate my guts so much that they may be willing to come after you just for talking to me. They’d probably shoot the barista taking my coffee order if it wasn’t too big of a mess to clean up. ”
“I don’t recognize any of these,” I murmur as I strain my eyes to read the first several names. “Your handwriting is shit.”
“Don’t worry, my hand is very steady with a gun in it,” Luca assures me before walking over to my coffee pot to help himself.
The farther down the list I go, the more frustrated that I become. “I don’t know any of these people. Maybe we’re—”
I freeze at the sight of Enrico Ferro’s name at the bottom. I know that son of a bitch.
Luca looks over his shoulder at me as he stirs some sugar into his coffee. “See someone you recognize?”
“Enrico Ferro,” I tell him. “I captured him and tortured him not long ago.”
Luca loses his grip on the spoon in his hand, making it clatter on the floor at his feet. “Enrico? Are you sure about that?”
I nod. “I thought he was behind a shooting that almost left me dead. Cara could’ve been killed too. So, I…questioned him.”
“You probably beat him half to death. He’s probably as pissed at you as he is at me!” Luca says, looking and sounding more serious than usual as he walks toward the island.
“How well do you know him?” I ask.
Luca frowns. “His uncle is the don of the Italian mafia in Vegas. I was supposed to marry his sister and well…I think she’s dead.”
My eyes widen. “Dead? What the hell happened?”
Luca throws his hands up. “I don’t know! She disappeared. I thought my family had something to do with it. After all that mess, I came to Vegas to start my life over and move on. I knew Enrico was here, but he hasn’t had the balls to confront me face-to-face.”
I run my palm over my face, uneasiness creeping up my spine. “He must be behind all of this. He has the most motive. He not only hates you, but he hates me too. That’s more than enough reason to kidnap Cara and make me trade you for her.”
Luca gives me a wary look. “You’re not going to hand me over, right?”
“No, I need your help,” I reply. “We need to find every property that Enrico or his uncle own around here. She can’t be that far away.”
Luca nods. “I might have a little mouse in my family who feeds me information every once in a while. She could probably get me that information.”
“Contact her now. I need to let the others know so that we’re ready to go. We’re running out of time,” I tell him.
“The others? Who all are you working with?” Luca asks me.
“A Bratva friend and his men and Sean O’Malley,” I reply, seeing Luca’s face contort in shock.
“You’re working with the Irish?” he questions me.
“Right. You’ve missed a lot.” I sigh before telling him. “Cara is Sean’s daughter. He ordered her to be a spy and infiltrate my life to convince me to call off my marriage to Annika Suyunov so that the Russian families would fight among each other.”
Luca blinks at me in shock. “And you…fell in love with her?”
The side of my mouth turns up a little. “I did. Now, we’re going to rescue her.”
As I walk away from Luca, I hear him let out a slow, long exhale. I’m sure that’s one of the craziest things he’s ever heard, but he can marvel at our story later. Right now, the clock is ticking, and we have a lot of work to do.
After a few hours of pinpointing every property that Enrico’s uncle owns and gathering everyone who is willing to fight for this cause, we’re finally ready to go.
We’re going to storm every single property on the list we made.
“We should split up,” Andrei says as he, Luca, Sean, and me stand outside the warehouse where all our men are gathered. “We’ll cover more ground that way.”
I don’t like the thought of being at a different location if someone else finds the right one. “We stick together. We don’t know how many enemies we’re going to face. We just need to move fast.”
“Time’s running out,” Sean reminds me.
“We have enough,” I say firmly, my eyes darting to each of them.
“But we can have some men stay in the cars and immediately head to the next location once one location is cleared. We’ll constantly keep on the go until we find the right one.
We just don’t need to be more than twenty miles away from each other at a time. ”
“Sounds good to me,” Luca replies as he crosses his arms over his chest. “So, who am I riding with? I don’t have a team.”
“Sounds like an unfortunate consequence of being a traitor to your own family,” Andrei comments as he eyes Luca suspiciously. He’s not a very trusting guy.
Luca smirks at Andrei. “Spoken like a good little lapdog. I hope you get an extra cookie for being such a loyal pup.”
Anger lights up Andrei’s eyes. “You—”
“Okay!” I bite out as I wedge myself between them. “We can kill each other later. We need to focus right now! Cara’s life depends on it.”
Andrei huffs but nods. “Let’s get started then. We have a bunch of properties to hit, and we need to be fast before word spreads.”
“My men and I are ready,” Sean tells me. “We’ll follow you.”
With a nod, I head into the warehouse and gather my men, splitting them up between three different black vans before hopping into the passenger’s seat of the first one. Sean follows with two SUVS, Andrei has two as well, and Luca rides in the back of my van with some of my other men.
The first location is a laundromat with a whole back section where their other business is run. We kick down the back door and storm the place, checking every single room and tying up every Italian and worker in the entire establishment.
“She’s not here,” Isaak reports to me once we all meet in the alleyway again.
“On to the next,” I say before rushing back to the van.
We do that over and over again, going all across the city and knocking down door after door.
We suffer a few injuries on the way, including a bullet wound to one of my men’s shoulders, but we’re so quick and determined that no one sees us coming.
Not until we’re already on top of them and around them.
As the hours fly by and every building comes up empty, my frustration rises while my hope dwindles to an all-time low.
“Where the hell could she be?” I snap as we drive away from yet another empty location.
“We still have one more place to check,” Luca tells me as my driver takes us outside of the city limits.
“So many of these locations made sense for them to keep her at.” I sigh as I drag my hand over my head, exhaustion and frustration weighing down on me.
“Don’t give up hope yet,” Luca urges me. “This last location makes sense too.”
“It’s in the middle of damn nowhere,” I mutter as I glance in the side mirror, watching the city get farther and farther away.
“But getting there requires taking the same highway that you told me about. Where she was taken,” Luca points out.
My brow furrows in thought as I glance around, realizing where we are and where we’re heading to. We’re going in the same direction that Cara was when she fled town.
“She could be there, amico,” Luca tells me.
“Maybe.” That’s all I can muster.
It takes more than an hour to even get close to the property, and by the time that we turn off the highway and find the road that leads to it, darkness has fallen.
“Shut off the headlights,” I tell Mark.
Mark does so, making all the other vehicles behind us follow suit as we slowly drive down the back road that leads to the property. Eventually, the full moon illuminates a field up ahead, along with an old farmhouse surrounded by long grass and a handful of vehicles parked in front.
“Stop,” I say before grabbing my phone and calling Sean. He picks up on the first ring. “This is it. Let’s surround the place and break in at the same time.”
“Got it. We’ll take the back,” Sean replies before hanging up.
I quietly exit the van with Luca and some of my other men.
Slowly, we creep through the wispy grass, which is nearly up to our knees.
We filter right, using the cars as cover until we reach the right side of the front porch.
I glance around to see Sean and Andrei heading toward the back together with their men.
“I’ve got Andrei on the line,” Luca whispers to me as we slowly make our way onto the wooden front porch.
I open my mouth to answer, but the board under my foot suddenly creaks loudly, making every single one of us freeze. We stay silent, listening for any sign of someone approaching, but all we hear is the breeze rustling the grass.
Breathing in deeply, I continue on, placing one foot in front of the other as I head toward the front door.
“They’re at the back entrance,” Luca whispers to me as he stays close to my back. “They’re waiting on us.”
I nod and stop in front of the screen door that separates me from the front door. With a grimace, I pull it open, hearing it creak low before finally quieting down. “Hold this open, Isaak.”
Isaak quietly grabs the edge of the screen door, propping it open so that I have enough room to kick down the front door.
“We’re ready,” I tell Luca. “Do a three count.”
Luca nods and holds the phone closer to his mouth. “On three. One…two…three!”
I slam my foot against the front door, making the wood of the doorframe splinter. With my gun drawn, I storm inside, hearing loud noises from the back of the house and a chorus of shocked shouts and yells from different rooms.
Luca steps in front of me as one of the Italians rushes out of a nearby room with a knife in his hand. He lifts his gun and fires once, sending a bullet through the man’s heart.
The man grunts and grabs at his chest when he crumples to the floor. Blood quickly pools beneath him.
I glance over at Luca, expecting to see regret or shame on his face. Instead, he looks alive. He’s a man on his own mission.
“Upstairs or downstairs?” Luca asks me.
“There’s a downstairs?” I ask him.
“Most likely,” Luca replies. “Find it!”
I nod, hearing gunfire erupt throughout the farmhouse. I hurry forward, my eyes darting around as brawls and standoffs happen in every room. As much as I want to bury a bullet in every single one of these bastards, my main concern is finding Cara and getting her out of here.
I just hope that she’s actually here.
With my gun raised, I turn a corner to see a bigger man rushing through a door and down a flight of stairs. Luca was right. There’s a basement.
I start to run after him, but a shadow darts in front of me and pain erupts throughout my face. I stumble backward, blood spilling from my hurt nose. My vision blurs for a few seconds as I blink a few times, trying to focus and make out who just hit me.
“You should’ve killed me when you had the chance instead of dumping me in the middle of the desert!”
My vision sharpens, and my breath catches in my throat as I stare ahead at Enrico Ferro. “You’re right.”
Enrico lunges at me before I can lift my gun, knocking me to the ground. He strikes downward, hitting me in the cheek and making blood fill my mouth.
I try to slam the handle of my gun against his head, but he manages to duck out of the way in time. I hit air, my shoulder aching from the overreach.
Enrico pulls a knife out of his back pocket and stabs downward toward my face.
I thrust my arm upward to knock against his wrist, blocking him. The tip of the knife lingers just inches above my eyes, my muscles screaming and aching as I hold him off.
Enrico grits his teeth and rears his arm back to try to stab me again.
Big mistake.
I point the gun upward and fire, the bullet tearing up through his chin and out the top of his head. His blood rains down on me, making me grimace and squeeze my eyes shut as the smell fills my nose.
Enrico’s body topples off me, hitting the ground with a loud thud.
“Fuck,” I breathe out as I push myself to my feet. His blood is hot and sticky on my skin as it rolls down my face and arms.
But all I’m thinking about is getting down into that basement.
I rush to the door and peer down a flight of stairs that leads to a basement. My ears pick up the man’s voice.
“What did you do, you little bitch?”
My throat tightens. She’s down there.
I storm down the stairs, skipping more than the amount I actually step on. I make it to the bottom in record time just as I see Cara rise from a chair, a cut rope falling onto the floor behind her.
With a shout, she pulls out a shard of glass from behind her back and stabs the man in the crook of his neck and shoulder.
He shouts in pain and claws at his neck, blood spilling from the cut. It’s probably a survivable injury if he puts pressure on it, but he won’t get the chance to. I lift my gun and fire, making the guard hit the floor. Silent. Still.
Cara whips around toward me, her eyes meeting mine. Shock and disbelief ripples across her face as she stares at me like she doesn’t know if I’m even real or not. “Dmitri…”
There’s so much that I want to say to her right now, but I can still hear gunfire upstairs. This place isn’t safe for her. I’ve got to get her out of here.
Without a word, I stride toward her, pick her up, and carry her out of the basement.