7. Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Isabella crouched in front of me, the injector still in her hand. She traced the tip of it along the edge of my jaw and down my throat.
No panic showed on her face now. No worry furrowed her brow. Her eyes were no longer wide and nervous, searching mine for safety. The woman who had come apart in my arms and whispered thank you was gone, and the one staring back at me wore a satisfied smirk.
My stomach dropped harder than my body had.
She set the injector on the table and picked up my phone.
“Let’s see how observant I’ve been,” she said.
She leaned over me and held the phone in front of me.
“First, the face,” she said.
I tried to turn away. The command fired in my head and died somewhere before it reached my neck. The screen recognized me and opened.
She made a soft, pleased hum as Nik’s security app opened. A grid of dots filled the screen.
“And now, the pattern matrix.” She angled the phone so I could see it, picked up my hand, and dragged my finger across the dots. “Down the left side. Across the bottom. Back up through the center. Across. Up. Back across the top.”
The app opened.
She smiled down at me. “Too easy. Seriously, Lachlan, you couldn’t do better than that?”
I’d drawn that pattern in front of her twice without thinking. Once in the kitchen. Once near the sofa.
I’d been watching her face.
She’d been watching my hands.
Fuck me.
She had access now.
She smiled wider. “There we are.”
My tongue pushed against the inside of my mouth, fighting to shape words that refused to come. I couldn’t lift my hand. Couldn’t reach her throat. Couldn’t knock the phone away.
I could only watch while she typed from my account.
She’s packing a few last things. Give us 10.
She held the phone, waiting.
Rory answered.
Copy.
Nik came in right after him.
Five.
Isabella’s mouth curved. “Generous.”
She laid my phone on the sofa, then picked up the wallet and opened it.
“Driver’s license. Black card…nice. Cash. Another condom. Optimistic, aren’t you? Or was I just that easy to believe?” She flipped through the contents, then glanced at me, tsking. “So much restraint, and yet here we are.”
Her thumb brushed the edge of my license.
“Lachlan Kieran Byrnes,” she read. “Such a strong name for a man with such bad survival instincts.”
The rage came fast enough to choke me.
My body couldn’t act on the fury, but the image of my hands around her throat as the life faded from her eyes carved itself into me. I would spend the rest of my life hunting her for what she’d done.
She tossed the wallet beside the phone. “Don’t worry. I’ll leave both where your friends expect them to be. Location stable. No doors opening. No cars leaving. Nothing to attract attention to the beginning of your new life.”
She leaned closer, and her voice softened into the same tone she’d used when she was pressed against my chest.
“Nik is very good, isn’t he? But even good men can only watch the exits they know exist.”
My pulse hammered against the drug holding me down.
She stood and pointed toward the corner near the ceiling. “Smile for the camera, Lachlan.”
My gaze fought its way up.
A small black lens sat hidden near a light. Then she pointed to another one tucked above the doorway; the wire was painted the same color as the trim.
Bile burned the back of my throat.
Ciro and his men had watched her seduce me.
She had known they were watching while she’d climbed onto me, while she’d made me believe every breath, every touch, every broken little confession had been real.
A sick laugh slipped out of her. “Don’t take it personally. Papi likes to watch. And I like the fat paycheck.”
Her smile twisted as she crouched over me again. “But the money isn’t the best part.”
The way she looked at me then had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with ownership.
“Besides,” she said, dragging one nail down my throat, “you have no idea how beautiful men like you are when they stop believing they’re in control.”
A growl escaped from my chest.
She caught my hair in her fist, yanking my head back far enough to send pain down my neck.
“That’s the problem with honorable men,” she said. “They always step closer to the knife.”
I stared at her, violence burning through the fog in my head.
“You wanted me helpless.” Her grip tightened. “I needed you useful.”
I tried to lunge.
My body twitched and failed.
She saw it and laughed.
“You really did think you were saving me, huh?”
Her face moved closer, her mouth near my ear.
“I told Ciro your honor was a leash. Thank you for proving me right.”
A door near the kitchen slammed open—the one I’d dismissed as a closet.
Cold air rolled in, carrying the damp smell of the basement below. Then came the sound of boots moving fast beneath the house.
My body remained useless on the sofa, and fear crept up my spine. It was a sensation I’d rarely experienced. The worst part wasn’t that men were coming for me. It was that I could hear them coming and do nothing.
A staircase descended into the darkness beyond the threshold, and Spanish rose from below, low and harsh, men speaking over one another as they pounded up the steps.
By the time the first man reached the kitchen light, I already knew the truth.
They hadn’t broken into Isabella’s house.
They’d been inside it the whole time.
I knew how to take pain, but this helplessness was a whole different kind of mindfuck.
Two of the men reached me first. They had MS-13 written all over them, from the ink crawling up one man’s neck to the dead-eyed way the other grabbed my arms. A third followed behind them, older and cleaner, with a gun in his hand and the face of someone paid to keep mistakes from becoming disasters.
A fourth came through the door last with a coil of restraints in his hand.
I forced every bit of will I had into my arms and legs.
Nothing.
The man with the restraints rolled me hard, dumping me onto my stomach on the floor. “Keep him alive,” the cleaner man ordered in English. “Senor Delgado wants him talking.”
One of the others laughed. “He will talk.”
They wrenched my arms behind my back and bound my wrists tightly. My shoulders screamed. My chest pressed into the floor, and my lungs worked too slowly to keep up with the panic trying to tear through me.
Isabella stepped around my head. Her black boots stopped in front of my face.
“Don’t damage him too much,” she said. “I want him to be conscious when he learns what obedience feels like. Angry enough to hate me. Awake enough to feel every second of it. And pretty enough on his knees that I can enjoy watching him break in my hands.”
The older man barked, “Move.”
They hauled me up under the arms. My legs dragged uselessly beneath me, boots scraping across the hardwood, then catching on the edge of a drop cloth. The world tilted; everything slid past in pieces.
My men were outside watching a lie.
The basement stairs dropped beneath us, narrow and steep. They didn’t bother with care. My shoulder slammed into the wall. My boot hit the railing. My cheek struck a concrete edge at the bottom, and pain raced across the right side of my face. Warm blood slid toward my jaw.
Good.
Pain meant some part of me still functioned.
One of the men cursed as they dragged me across the floor toward a steel door.
The house was never the extraction point.
It was the mouth of the trap.
The man with the gun in his hand opened the door, and the odor of damp earth hit my nose. Beyond it, a low utility passage stretched into the dark with old concrete walls, rusted brackets, dead conduit, and pipes that hadn’t carried anything useful in years.
Someone shoved a utility cart toward us.
“Get him on it.”
They slammed me onto the cart. My ribs hit the metal edge, and a grunt tore out of me. One man grabbed my legs, another my shoulders, and together they strapped me down across the frame.
“Careful. He’s heavy,” one muttered.
The cart started moving.
Cracks in the concrete bumped the wheels. Each jolt traveled up my body, but I couldn’t brace for any of it. Sweat dripped from my face. Boots moved quickly around me.
“A few more blocks and we’re clear,” one man said.
“His men haven’t even entered the house yet,” another said, chuckling. “Idiots.”
The tunnel grew darker, and the cadence of the men’s steps fell into line.
“After he gives up The Syndicate’s secrets, Senor Delgado will reward us for this job.”
The cart’s wheels hit a deep crack, and my head banged against the metal, sending a sharp ache through my skull.
The realization that no one would reach me in time spread through me worse than the drug. Nik had built a cage around the property, and Ciro’s men were moving me under it through a route no camera, tail, or man above would see.
My phone was upstairs, telling them I was still inside with a panicked woman I’d refused to leave in danger.
Then I remembered the tracker in my arm.
Nik had insisted that everyone close to him get one implanted under the skin.
I’d called him paranoid. He’d told me paranoia was just foresight with better funding.
I’d let the doctor put the damn thing in my arm because arguing with Nikolai Volkov was a waste of breath and because, in our world, his ideas usually saved lives.
If the tracker was still signaling, Nik would find me.
If it wasn’t, I had to stay alive long enough for Lucian to tear the world apart.
That thought gave me something to hold on to.
Not comfort.
Not peace.
But enough, because I knew without a doubt he would.
The tunnel opened into a garage. A motor groaned overhead as the garage door lifted, and frosty night air swept over me. They moved fast. Cart to van. Van door sliding open. Hands under my arms again.
My body hit the van floor hard.
“Let’s move,” the handler said. “Hudson Air Services is waiting.”
Within seconds, the van lurched forward.
I tried counting turns, but failed after the third. The drug blurred the edges of my mind, but I held on to sound because sound was all I had left. Tires over pavement. A hard right. Jet engines. The van braked hard and stopped, jostling me from one side to the other.
The side door opened, and lights hit my face.
A black SUV waited near an expensive-looking jet. Beyond it, a building displayed the words Hudson Air Services in clean, navy blue letters.
They hauled me out of the van.
My knees buckled, and two men yanked me up. The cold froze the sweat on my skin, and for a moment, the world cleared enough for me to see him.
Ciro Delgado stood near the SUV in a dark coat, a cigar between his fingers, his scarred face turned toward me with smug satisfaction.
Isabella came up from behind us and passed quickly, her boots clicking on the concrete.
She went straight into his arms and kissed him, one hand sliding up the front of his coat while her eyes stayed on mine.
There it was.
The truth.
No fear. Not a woman trapped with no way out.
Just a black widow crawling home to the man who owned the web.
Ciro’s hand closed on the back of her neck, forcing her attention away from me. He kissed her roughly, then looked over her shoulder at me.
“Welcome to the part of the war your brother and Volkov cannot buy their way out of.”
A man grabbed my arm.
Another needle went in, this one colder.
A hood came down, cutting off the tarmac lights, Ciro’s face, and Isabella’s smile.
My body wouldn’t move. My mouth wouldn’t work. Then whatever they’d put in me dragged the rest of me under.