Chapter 12
12
ASTON
“ W here is the Manet now?” Rafa asked, leaning back in his desk chair.
“In the underground vault at Vellum & Vine. I didn’t want it at the gallery in case Ellis tips off the police and they decide to search it. I doubt they’d find the vault there either, but I decided to hedge our bets.”
“ Bene ,” Rafa murmured before he set the papers down and looked up at me. “What about?—”
My phone rang.
“ Désolé ,” I apologized as I pulled it from the inner pocket of my suit coat, intending to turn the device off. But Melanie was calling. Kerrigan had misplaced her phone a time or two, so I’d insisted she give my number to her best friend.
“It’s Kerrigan’s roommate,” I told Rafa with a deep frown.
He nodded his understanding and waved a hand, indicating I should pick up the call.
“Melanie,” I answered.
“Is Kerrigan with you?”
“No. She should be at work by now.”
“I know, but we were supposed to have lunch later today, and I called to see if we could move the time. They said she never arrived.”
My heart skipped a beat, but I tried to remain calm and not overreact. “You tried her cell phone?”
“It went straight to voicemail.”
Now, my pulse was racing.
“Have you checked to see if her car is in the parking lot at your apartment?”
I heard the sound of flesh being smacked, probably when she slapped a palm to her forehead. “Oh duh! I’m sure she just ran out of gas or something and walked to the station up the road.”
Her tone said she didn’t believe it any more than I did. But she was hoping.
After a minute, she gasped. “Oh no!”
She started to cry, and I became impatient.
“Melanie,” I growled. “Tell me what you’ve found.”
“Her car is here, but…her purse. It’s”—she hiccuped before crying harder—“it’s on the sidewalk by the curb.”
“ Putain! ” I cursed, fighting the urge to throw my phone at the nearest wall. But I took a deep breath, and though I was feeling anything but calm, I fought to keep the emotion out of my voice when I spoke again. “Don’t worry. I’ll find out what happened and take care of it.”
“Should I call the police?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I will handle everything. I promise, I will get her back.”
Then I hung up, my mind already shifting to possible plans.
“Kerrigan has been taken?” Rafa clarified, having only heard my part of the conversation.
I nodded, placing both fists on his desk, my head hung low as I breathed evenly, trying not to fly into a rage.
“Do whatever you need to get her back.”
My head flew up, and I met his gaze. It wasn’t his usual blank stare, instead, his eyes were full of determination and understanding.
“Do you love her?”
“ Oui ,” I croaked out of my bone-dry mouth.
“If she is as important to you as Vivienne is to me, then you have my permission to do whatever it takes to get her back.”
My shoulders drooped as relief swept through me. “ Merci .”
“Take one of the enforcers for backup.”
“ Oui. ”
He pointed at the door and raised his brow. “Don’t just stand here. Andare .”
I did as he ordered and hurried out of his office, sending a text to Marco, Rafa’s brother. He was a fucking genius, especially when it came to technology. If there was anything to be found, he would dig it up.
Then I reached out to Damiano Caruso, one of our enforcers. He was also an assassin for The Family. He agreed to meet me at Kerrigan’s apartment. We’d figure out what to do from there.
By the time I arrived, Marco had already reviewed the feeds from every security camera with a view of the parking lot. The van she’d been taken in was white, without any distinguishable markings, and one of the most common makes and models on the market. It was also stolen. However, he’d caught a glimpse of one of her kidnappers.
“His face was covered, but I’ve been following this guy for a while. I’m pretty sure he’s a hired gun named Bill Hickens. I’m sending Domenico the home address so he can check it out with Alec. You and Damiano can head over to the few random buildings he has a lease for.”
Odds were good that the guy wouldn’t take his kidnapping victim to his home, but it still needed to be checked. I was relieved that Alec and Domenico would take care of that while Damiano and I went to the first building in the direction the van had gone.
When we pulled up outside, I made sure my gun was loaded and put it in my hip holster. Then I wrapped a small sheath around my ankle that had a very sharp, wicked-looking knife in it.
Damiano had the same type of weapons, plus some others that he preferred to carry.
Once we were ready, we exited my car and stalked up to the front door. Damiano silently counted to three on his fingers, then kicked the door in, allowing me to enter first. The building looked empty, but then I heard muffled voices down a hallway on my left. We crept up on a room that had four men sitting around a table playing poker.
One of them stood and informed the others that he had to piss, then left the room. How convenient. The second he walked into the hall, I slit his throat and passed his limp body off to Damiano. Then we casually strolled into the room, Damiano’s guns trained on two of the remaining men, and mine on the other.
“We’re looking for Bill Hickens,” I growled. “I’m in a hurry, so I’m going to count to five, and if I don’t have an answer, one of you is going to die.”
Their eyes darted around, and Damiano tsked. “Attempting to go for weapons will negate the countdown, and I’ll go ahead and put a bullet in your skull.”
When I reached five the first time, I had already gauged the weakest link, so I shot the one with the stubborn expression right between the eyes.
The other two men paled and shifted nervously. “Do you think I’m fucking around?” I growled. “Bill has something I need, and I will kill every fucking person who gets in my way, so I suggest one of you gives me his location.”
I counted again, and neither of them answered quickly enough, so Damiano grinned and shot the man who looked the least likely to talk. First in the groin, then in the head.
“What the fuck?” the last guy screeched, his hands quickly covering his crotch. As though that would make a damn difference. Connard .
“Last chance,” I grunted. “One. Two. Three?—”
“Okay!” he shouted, crying like a little bitch. “I’ll tell you. But you can’t let him know it was me.”
“It won’t matter,” Damiano drawled.
“What do you mean?” he asked nervously.
“I don’t have time for this bullshit. Write down the fucking address!” I roared.
He quickly complied, and I snatched the paper from his hand and shoved it in my pocket.
“Okay. I did what you asked. You won’t kill me, right?”
I rolled my eyes and pulled the trigger.
“Stupid motherfucker,” Damiano muttered as we jogged out of the warehouse and over to the car.
I broke every speeding law in the book as I raced to the location the sniveling rat had given us. When we got there, I parked, and we checked our weapons again.
“What’s the plan?” Damiano asked.
“We take them out,” I replied in a stony voice.
“Everyone?”
“Every single fucker who dared to keep Kerrigan from me is going into the ground today.”
Damiano smiled sinisterly. “Excellent.”
Luckily, the door was unlocked, so nothing announced our arrival.
As we made our way into each room, Damiano or I slit the throat of anyone close enough and put a bullet in everyone else.
We cleared the main floor and then the second.
“What now?” Damiano grunted.
“There has to be a basement.”
He nodded, and we searched for the door, finally locating it in the back of a storage closet.
Quietly, we snuck down the stairs, stopping a few steps from the ground when I spotted a guy lounging against a wall just to our right. If he’d been paying attention, he would have been able to see us. But the asshole was absorbed by something else, the TV from the sounds of it.
While silencers did a great job at muffling a gunshot, there was still a sound when it was fired. But with the television and low murmur of voices, no one picked up on the danger when I shot the man in the back of the head.
I didn’t bother being stealthy as I descended the last steps. Several eyes turned to look at me in surprise, but before they could reach for a weapon, one by one, in quick succession, they fell to the ground or slumped over a table.
With that room cleared, I jerked my head toward another door. Damiano nodded, moving so that we were flanking it.
The knob creaked when I turned it, so I prepared to face someone with a gun. There were four of them in the room, but there seemed to be a trend of hiring stupid these days because none of them were able to reach their weapons before Damiano and I were inside and pointing our guns at them.
My gaze swept around, and that was when I spotted Kerrigan. She was huddled on the ground on the opposite side of the room, looking scared and tired. Rage like I’d never experienced flashed through me like a wildfire, leaving roaring flames in its wake.
One of them shouted, “You can’t?—”
Damiano fired, shutting the man up. One of the others charged me, but he paused when my shot hit him right between the eyes, then he fell forward.
The last two stared at us nervously, but I could tell they were trying to form a plan.
“Forget it,” I grunted dispassionately. “You signed your fucking death warrant the second you fucked with a DeLuca.”
Damiano sighed dramatically. “And taking his woman…wrong move, motherfuckers.”
The smaller of the two men looked at his companion with panic on his face. “You said Sterling wouldn’t?—”
“ Shut up , John,” the taller guy spat.
“Sterling Ellis?” I asked casually.
“Yeah,” John stuttered. “He?—”
“Shut the fuck up!”
Scowling, I decided to shut the man up for his friend and fired two bullets into his chest.
“I’m not gonna tell you shit, Couillens,” the last man snarled.
“You know who I am?” I surmised airily. “Good. Then you’ll know who to curse in hell when you get there.”
Kerrigan whimpered, distracting me long enough for the asshole to grab a knife and charge at me. But I was faster and a fuck of a lot more skilled. I captured his wrist and snapped the bone, catching the weapon when he dropped it. “I was thinking about sending you with a message to Sterling, but I’ll find another way.”
I shoved the knife into his gut, twisting the blade so blood began to pour from the wound. Then I yanked it out and swiped across his throat, making sure to hit an artery so he practically bled out before he hit the floor.
“Funny how no one ever suspects the suave Frenchman to be a stone-cold killer,” Damiano said with a snorted laugh.
My eyes were glued to Kerrigan, so I barely heard him when he excused himself to start cleaning up the mess.
“Kerrigan,” I rasped, filled with both dread and relief. She was safe.
But the fear I saw in her pretty green eyes ripped my heart to shreds.