Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The leather seats swallowed her, too soft for the panic that sat tight in her ribs.
Mia folded her hands in her lap and stared at the rain streaking the window as trees blurred past in dark silhouettes.
The farther they drove, the harder it became to breathe.
The car’s silence pressed on her like a weight.
“Where are we going?” she asked, voice thin.
Carlos didn’t answer. He drove with quiet, efficient intent. She watched his reflection in the rearview: jaw set, sunglasses still on though the sky was bruised and gray.
“You’re usually not this quiet,” she said. He said nothing. Her stomach dropped. “Why won’t you let me go? I’ll only keep running.”
“I am not taking you to him.”
The words were meant to reassure. They did not. A cold certainty unspooled through her like ice. The shock stole her breath; the pain in her chest doubled her over. I love you, she thought, and the thought broke her. But you could kill me.
“If you’re going to kill me,” she said, forcing the words out, “then at least tell me so I can say my prayers.” Her voice shook.
Carlos’s grip tightened on the wheel. The small twitch at his jaw told her everything. Her palms slicked; her breath came shallow.
“Did he leave any other message?” she asked, clutching at the last thread of hope.
Carlos’s voice was low, bitter. “No. I like you, Mia. But this is the life. You can’t just walk away from it and expect to live. That only begets trouble.”
She pressed a hand to her belly as if to anchor herself. “Carlos—please. I’m not a threat to him.”
The car veered onto gravel, the tires kicking up a fine cloud. They were off-road. Dread pooled in her stomach.
“You’ll have to shoot me face-to-face,” she snapped, forcing steel into her voice. “I won’t die like a frightened animal in the dark.”
Silence stretched until Carlos’s phone burst to life with a string of clipped tones. He pressed the answer button; his voice came over the Bluetooth, clipped and professional.
“Boss,” he said. “I found her.”
Mia’s throat tightened. She bit her lip to stop a cry. Waited.
Luc’s voice, flat and quiet through the speaker, answered. “Let her go.”
Carlos’s eyes widened. “Boss—”
A mirthless chuckle leaked through the line. “Do you think I lost my senses? Since she left, I cannot think of anything else. She is a weakness I never expected.”
Mia leaned forward despite herself, tears slipping down her cheeks as she stared at the dashboard, wanting to speak, to beg, to beg him not to do anything rash.
“I don’t want her dead,” Luc continued, voice breaking in a way she’d never heard before. “I want her to live—to live a long, good life. Maybe when she is old, she’ll think of me kindly and go to sleep. Let her go.”
Carlos inhaled sharply. “Boss, I can’t—”
“You defy me?” Luc asked. The single question held a steel so cold it could cut.
Carlos closed his mouth. The Commission’s rules hummed between them—no one simply walked away; there were consequences.
“If they hunt her down because she left,” Carlos said carefully, “the Commission will judge the Valachi family.”
Luc’s voice dropped, lethal and unimaginable. “If they dare, I will slaughter the Commission. Now let her go. Let her be happy.”
The call clicked off. Carlos sat frozen, the rain drumming a steady, indifferent rhythm on the roof. Mia felt the words land inside her like something impossible and miraculous at once—Luc would renounce power to keep her safe.
She pressed her hands flat to her knees as her shoulders shook.
Relief and terror and a grief she couldn’t name tore through her at the same time.
The car slid through the dark, the hiss of rain filling the space where words could not go, and her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped thing.
“I love him,” she said, laughing and sobbing at the same time. “Before you found me, I kept thinking how empty life felt—without him, without Gabriella and Rosina, without Antonio, even you. I found a family and I left them, and everything in me ached to go back.”
Carlos twisted, the look in his eyes suddenly almost feral. “Do you mean it?”
He lifted the gun and levelled it at her. “I am willing to defy Luc—even if it costs me my life. I’ll do this to protect Gabriella. If the Commission answers with war, it will be bloody, and we will lose people.”
Mia’s throat tightened. The house hadn’t been a prison.
It had become her life. Her strange, flawed, terrifying life.
She pictured Luc’s face—the cold mask he wore for the world, and the man she saw underneath it.
“Love isn’t about safety,” she murmured.
“It’s about choosing someone even when it’s hard. ”
And she chose him.
Carlos slowly exhaled, relief flickering across his face. The sound came first—a sharp crack that split the air like thunder. The windshield shattered, spraying glass like rain. Carlos jerked forward, a choked grunt escaping him as crimson bloomed across his shirt.
Mia screamed, throwing her hands over her face as shards rained down.
Her door wrenched open. Cold rain and chaos rushed in.
Rough hands grabbed her arm, dragging her from the seat.
She kicked, twisted, panic clawing through her chest. Her elbow shot up hard, connecting with a throat. The man gagged, stumbling back.
She turned to run. Another hand clamped around her wrist, iron-strong. She spun and froze. She knew that face—he’d been at Luc’s estate more than once, quiet, respectful, always standing just behind the older guards. A familiar man from Luc’s world. Her mind raced. Why is he here?
“John?” she asked, trying to recall if the name was accurate.
He didn’t answer. His expression was grim, eyes empty of mercy. Her heart stuttered. She tried to jerk away, but his hand tightened painfully. “Don’t—” she started.
The sting hit before the words finished.
A needle, fast and precise, pricked the side of her neck.
Her gasp caught in her throat. The world tilted.
Her knees buckled as everything—rain, light, sound—blurred together.
Mia felt her ribs tighten, constricting her lungs.
John’s face swam before her eyes, the edges of his features dissolving into darkness.
Then nothing.
Luc stared at the empty glass on his desk.
The hearth had burned down to dull embers hours ago, leaving the room cold and echoing.
He had told Carlos to let her go—an order that should have been impossible for any man in his position.
Carlos would still watch her, of course; men like theirs never truly let anything go.
But Luc could not bring himself to take her life.
He closed his eyes and imagined the moment the truth leaked out.
The Commission would not tolerate a deserter; they would demand a body to seal the lesson.
And his answer to that demand would be simple and terrible: he would burn their world down, drag them into a war the city hadn’t seen in decades.
Mia was his fault and his salvation. She had wormed into the small, human places inside him that he’d thought long dead. He wanted her to live—truly live—even if that meant letting her walk away. The thought should have been surrender; instead, it sharpened something in him.
His phone shrilled. Luc reached for the phone before it even finished ringing, thumb finding the answer key. “Carlos.”
“No, someone far worse. I have your precious woman,” John said. “She’s alive. For now. You want her back alive and in one piece? I want the chip Bonino left behind. I will call with more information on how we trade.”
The line went dead.
For a breath, Luc held the phone to his ear, listening to the silence.
Then the room began to tilt. Shock slammed into him first—a cold, disbelieving animal—and immediately under it came a black, wordless fear.
John. Ruthless, precise, the sort of man who delivered choices like verdicts.
The image of Mia in John’s hands detonated in his chest, a physical hurt so sharp it was almost laughable.
Rage followed, low and hot. He pictured John’s face—calm, unhurried—and for a second, the world narrowed to a single blade of intent. Luc put the phone on the desk and breathed through it once. No time for hesitation.
Luc thumbed Antonio’s number. “Get me the last ping on Carlos’s phone,” he said the moment Antonio answered. “Where was he last? Then send teams to every route out of that city—airports, marinas, bus stations. Someone finds Carlos, they find us a location.”
“Right away,” Antonio replied, voice already switching into operations mode. “I’ll have the tracker up and teams mobilized.”
“Meet me at the compound in thirty minutes,” Luc said. “Bring two dozen men who can hold a perimeter and four drivers. Armory prepped. No questions.”
“Understood. On my way.”
He ended the call and stood there a long moment.
He told himself facts: John wanted leverage; John had taken her to force a trade.
Carlos was likely dead or dying. Time was the enemy.
Luc paced once, then twice. The embers in the hearth glowed like coals in his chest. He pulled on a jacket, slid a compact pistol into the small of his back, and walked out into the cold night with Antonio already at the gate.
Men were coming alive at his orders—drivers, trackers, the hackers who could peel a phone’s skin open and light it up.
Tonight would be a hunt. Luc did not let himself think of Mia and what she might be enduring. All that tenderness folded inward and hardened into resolve. He would bring her back. He would make John regret the day he decided he could bargain with blood.
Exactly six hours had passed since John’s call.
Luc had taken his private jet to Florida and moved like a man with a single purpose.
Fifteen minutes earlier, he’d been told Carlos had made it through surgery and was awake.
The infirmary smelled of antiseptic and iron.
Luc stepped inside; the doctor, mid-sentence, fell silent the moment he saw him.
Carlos sat propped against the pillows, shoulder swaddled in thick gauze, dark blood seeping at the edges. He straightened when Luc entered, voice a rasp. “She was right in front of me. I lost her. I am so damn sorry.”
Luc closed the door and snapped the lock. The click sounded like a verdict. “Tell me everything.”
Carlos hesitated. That was all the invitation Luc needed. He advanced until the space between them was charged. “Don’t stall. Don’t think. How did he get the drop on you?”
Carlos’s jaw worked. “I was distracted.”
“By what?” Luc demanded.
Guilt passed over Carlos’s face like a shadow.
“I thought you’d made a mistake letting her go.
I thought it would start a war. I thought…
I could prevent it.” He swallowed. “I had a gun aimed at her, and then I was shot. I did not even notice that John was following me as I followed Mia’s trail. I was careless.”
Luc’s reaction was a blur. His hand struck the side of Carlos’s face—hard, precise. Carlos didn’t cry out; he tasted blood and blinked it away.
“You disobeyed me,” Luc said, quiet and lethal. “I told you to let her go. You hesitated. That’s your sin.”
Carlos looked up, expression flat, stripped of bravado. “I thought she made you weak.”
Luc’s voice dropped, softer than a blade. “No. She made me human.”
Regret flashed in Carlos’s eyes. “I’d pinned a tracker to her pocket long before she got in the car. If she still wears her clothes, you should be able to find her.”
Luc turned toward the door.
Carlos asked. “You’re not going to kill me?”
Luc paused in the doorway. “No.”
Relief flickered across Carlos’s features. Luc watched it die as Carlos held his stare. “But hear me,” Luc said, each word measured. “If she is harmed in any way, I will make your life a litany of pain before I give you death. You will understand fear and pain in every breath you take.”
Carlos went pale. Luc didn’t look back as he left the room.
Mia, I am coming… wait for me.
An hour later, Luc stood in a secured safehouse outside Miami. The inner circle had been summoned: captains, consigliere, enforcers—any man with a pulse and a gun in this city now filled the war room, eyes on him.
The tracker Carlos had slipped onto Mia had stopped blinking forty-five minutes earlier.
Either John had found it, or they were somewhere the signal couldn’t reach—underground, in a concrete bunker, or a place without towers.
Luc had a rough idea of the neighborhood, and he knew how men like John thought.
John hadn’t called; that silence told Luc everything he needed to know.
John was playing chess—waiting, testing, setting traps for every move Luc might make before the negotiation he expected.
“John has betrayed us,” Luc said, calm and cold. “The price of that betrayal is death. He took my wife to trade her for the Bonino chip—so he has a buyer. He thinks I’ll fold. He is wrong. I will burn cities before I ever fold.”
He let that land, watching faces go pale or harden.
“John is drawing a net to trap and kill me and anyone who would avenge me. I will not give him that chance. I want every contact John ever used. Every safehouse. Tear them apart. Find his men. All who are loyal to him will die. If he runs, he will have nowhere left to run to.”
He paused, and his voice softened for the single thing that mattered. “My wife’s life comes before everything, even killing John.”
A dozen voices answered in one, “Yes, Boss.”
Luc walked out of the room with Antonio at his shoulder. He carried his gun, his blade, and a hard, unforgiving rage that drove his steps. He did not let himself think of how terrified Mia must be, or how this raid would prove to her how brutal his life was and how right she had been to fear it.