CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RAFAELLE
If I hadn’t decided to keep an eye on Liliana and make sure she was safe. I would have never known something was wrong. If I hadn’t asked Raul to follow the SUV heading out of the Navarro estate, I wouldn’t have been able to catch sight of her getting abducted.
It all happens so fast. One minute the car is ahead of us, heading for God knows where. The next it’s been derailed and surrounded and by the time we stop behind them. Her guards are dead and she’s gone.
Thankfully, we were able to track her phone and find out where she was taken, right before we lost the connection.
Raul and I are the only ones in the car as we come to a stop in front of a residential area, swarming with half a dozen men on the outside and we have no way of knowing how many are inside.
I share a look with my second in command. We’ve faced worse odds.
After sending out a text asking a couple more men to join us, I reach for the gun in my jacket. The smart thing to do would be to wait. But they have her in there and I’m not letting her stay there for a second longer.
“Let’s go.”
As soon as we step out of the door, I’m firing. They’re surprised by the assault and because they don’t see it coming, Raul and I are able to take down five of them who drop down dead. The last one goes running into the house.
Raul and I are right behind him. My pulse pounds in my ears. Every second feels like an eternity.
Then I hear it.
"Help!!!”
Liliana.
The sound tears through me. Raw and terrified. Desperate. Something inside me snaps and I’m running soon enough.
The scream came from the last room at the end of the hallway. I reach the door first. Then drive my boot straight through it. The wood explodes inward. For a moment everything freezes.
Amber eyes meet mine, wide and so full of terror, it robs me of breath.
Relief crashes into me in the next breath. She's alive.
And that’s all that matters.
"Liliana,” I say roughly.
Then I see the gun. Pressed against her head and everything inside me goes cold.
The man holding her is familiar. Fucking Carlos Villareal.
The memory of two of his severed fingers hitting concrete flashes through my mind. I remember his screams. Looks like I should've taken the whole fucking hand.
It doesn’t matter though. Today, he loses his life.
Carlos smiles. It's a nervous thing. The smile of a man who knows he's already dead.
"You shouldn’t be here, Rafaelle."
I barely hear him. All I can see is Liliana. Tears staining her cheeks. Fear etched across her face. The way she's clutching the arm holding her. Trying desperately not to shake.
"You never should have gone near her,” Carlos says, his voice enraged. “This is your fault.”
I truly don't care. The only thing that matters to me right now getting him away from her.
My hand moves. The knife is already there. One of my favorites. Balanced perfectly.
Carlos notices too late. His eyes widen and I throw.
The blade spins through the air. Liliana reacts instantly, dropping to the floor.
The knife buries itself in Carlos's forearm and the gun discharges. Thankfully, the shot slams harmlessly into the ceiling.
Carlos begins to scream, I hit him before the echo dies.
One second he's standing. The next he's on the floor beneath me. I don't remember crossing the room. I don't even remember tackling him.
My fist crashes into his face, once, twice, until I feel bone crack beneath me. Blood sprays from his nose. He tries to raise his other arm and I break that too.
“How dare you fucking touch what’s mine?!”
He screams again. Raul says something but I barely hear him over the haze of violence. My fists continue its assault.
The only sounds are Carlos's choking breaths and my own ragged breathing.
"Rafaelle, stop. No! Don’t kill him. And, he has her,” Liliana screams. “He has my baby girl.”
My arm goes stiff and I turn to her with questions in my expression. She’s sobbing now, tears falling down her cheeks and the sight is enough for my emotions to cool. I suddenly want nothing more than to hold her to me, wiping away all that causes her hurt.
But her words are so confusing I stay put.
“What are you talking about, Liliana?”
Her voice is shaky as she speaks, “Mila. He has Mila.”
I rise to my feet, stepping over Carlos’s bloodied body and moving to stand in front of her, my steps as light as I can make them, my heart thudding in my chest.
“And who is Mila?”
“My daughter. My baby girl.”
My stomach clenches and I fight to keep my voice light and steady, “You have a daughter.”
She wipes at her face, her eyes wide and terrified. She’s still crying and now I’m starting to get really worried.
“W- we have a daughter, Rafaelle,” she whispers. “I gave birth to her 9 months ago.”
Splat. That’s the sound my stomach makes as it drops. The air in the room grows chiller and I need something to center myself as the magnitude of what she’s saying hits me.
I try denial first, “That’s not possible.”
“It is, Raf. I was pregnant. That night. The night we met, I got pregnant. And I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. So I disappeared. That’s why I left. To hide my pregnancy.”
“From me,” my voice sounds unlike mine. It’s like someone else is speaking through me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says through tears. “I regret it so much. There are so many things I did wrong. I’ll explain everything, I promise and you can do whatever it is you want to do to me.
I’ll accept any punishment. But please, Rafaelle.
I need your help. We need to get Mila back.
She’s only a baby. She did nothing wrong. ”
My heart pounds in my chest. I shut my eyes trying to make sense of the tornado of emotions that begin to whirl through my chest. In the end, I settle for anger. My old, familiar friend. It grips me, running through every inch until it’s all I can see.
In the blink of an eye, I’m advancing on her. My hands grip her throat as I push her back into the wall. Her cry of pain only has me feeling worse.
“Rafaelle,” she says in that voice.
The same voice that sang me to sleep and made me feel like I mattered. The same voice that said all those beautiful, sweet things. That made me feel human. I want to rip it out from her throat.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” I growl.
“Please,” she begs, the look in her eyes like an arrow piercing at my chest.
I rip my hand away like she scalded me and she falls to the ground. Guilt and regret chip away fragments of my heart. I look away, running a hand over my face and exhaling a ragged breath.
“You’re dead to me, Liliana.”
Her breath hitches and pain slashes across her expression with those words.
“Just help me get her back. She’s your daughter,” Liliana says desperately.
My daughter.
The words feel foreign and yet so right at the same time. My heart aches for this little girl that I haven’t even met. I feel a hole within my chest start to knit but it’s not closed yet. It won’t be until I find her.
With that resolution, I turn towards the man bleeding out on the floor of the room. His eyes are swelled shut as he lies down. But he’s not dead yet.
Death would be too easy, a mercy I won’t grant. A sharp kick to the rips has him jerking awake. My lips pull up in a sadistic smirk as I stare at him. A worthy target of all my rage and anger.
“My scythe!” I call towards Raul who doesn’t hesitate to leave and grab the weapon.
I crouch down and grab Carlos by the back of his head lifting him until we’re eye level.
“You’re going to tell me where she is and who you’re working for,” I say the rage in my voice palpable enough that my chest shakes.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” he says brokenly.
I was hoping he’d say that.
“There are worse things than death,” I state. “First I’ll take the rest of your fingers. Every single one of them. And then I’ll gouge out your eyes. Perhaps I’ll cut off the hands that dared to harm what’s mine. Eventually, there won’t be any pieces of you left and you’ll still be alive.”
He gulps, fear causing him to start to shiver in my hold.
“I won’t stop there though. I’ll find your family. Everyone you care about and then I’ll make them pay for what you did as well. I don’t usually touch innocents but I swear to God if you don’t tell me where she is, you’ll wish you were never born. Everyone you love will die.”
“I don’t know where she is!” he shouts.
“Alright then. Have it your way.”
Raul returns and I begin to make good on my promises. I work fast knowing every second that passes is another that my daughter spends alone and scared without her parents. Soon enough, I’ve reduced Carlos to a husk of a man.
He gives me what I want when I slice off his ear. The screams echoing through my eardrums provide me no pleasure or satisfaction. My heart continues to thump with the knowledge that I have a daughter I might never get to meet.
“Ignacio!” Carlos screams. “He’s the one responsible. He has your daughter.”
A gasp erupts in the corner of the room. I completely forgot Liliana was still there, her presence dulling in the back of my head. I wonder what she felt watching me torture him and then I tell myself to stop because I’m not supposed to give a shit about her and her feelings.
If she couldn’t stand watching, she should have left.
Carlos’s revelation about Ignacio isn’t shocking in the slightest. I knew the slimy old man had something up his sleeve. This is beyond my imagination though.
“He asked me to kidnap them. Liliana and her daughter. He was going to use them to extort your family and get back everything you took. He would have used the baby to lure you to him. He wanted to kill you.”
“Where is she!” Liliana asks, her voice hollow as she moves to stand beside me. There’s nothing but disgust as she looks down at the man bleeding out in front of us. “Where’s my daughter?”
“I swear I don’t know,” Carlos gasps, clutching his ear with the few fingers left on his right hand.
“Then you’ve expended your usefulness,” I murmur before plunging a knife into his chest.
He falls backward in the next breath.
Liliana turns to me in shock, “He could have been lying!”
I wipe the blood off my hands with a towel Raul hands to me.
“He wasn’t.”
I whirl around and leave the room. I can hear Liliana following me, but I don’t look outside. When I step out, there’s a hubbub of activity. Elio is barking orders at some men to secure the area. Relief brightens his eyes when he looks at me, and then his gaze shifts to the woman behind me.
My heart fucking aches right now. I’m surprised it’s even working.
“What’s going on, Rafaelle?” he questions as I approach.
“There’s no need to secure anywhere. I took care of all the men in the house but we’ve got a problem,” I inform him. “Ignacio Navarro has my daughter and we need to get her back.”
Elio’s expression turns to one of shock, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I want every exit in this city shut down right now,” I tell him before turning to Raul. “Get all our men on the phone, send them to the Navarro estate.”
“He’s not there,” Liliana murmurs behind me. “He left this morning.”
“Find Ignacio,” I continue speaking without looking at her. “I want the estate on lock down as well. Elio!”
My brother jolts in action and exhales a sharp breath before reaching for his phone to make the calls needed to put the city on lockdown.
My phone buzzes in the pocket of my pants and I pull it out to view the incoming text.
Unknown number: If you want your daughter back alive, I have a list of demands. But first, let’s start with your head on a spike. And maybe the destruction of the entire Vitale family. How does that sound?
Ignacio.
Trepidation wells within me.
“Elio, I need this number tracked now!” I snap.
My brother comes to my side and copies it off my phone before getting to work. Liliana sidles up next to me as well, her soft breaths on my arm. She has her hand over her mouth as she reads what the text sent by her asshole of a father.
I do the decent thing and tilt the screen over to her side as I type out a reply.
Me: Tell me where the fuck you are and I’ll come willingly. You can do whatever you want to me but you have to return her. She’s only a baby.
Unknown number: I don’t want to hurt her either. She is my granddaughter after all but the clock is ticking, Rafaelle. Tick tock, tick tock.
I tighten my grip over the phone.
“Fuck!”