Chapter 71 – remi
Seventy-One
remi
“You should eat something.”
I freeze halfway through slamming a magazine into my Glock and can’t help but smile at the irony.
Amalia Montesinos has a body count longer than I could ever begin to grasp.
She’s led a team of deadly women on missions most people would’ve called suicide, and she’s one of the best strategists I’ve ever known.
But when it comes down to it, no matter how impossible the odds or how deadly the battlefield, she’s a mother first.
“I’m not hungry, and we’re not done.”
She sets her weapon down and braces her palms on the metal table. “Remi, not eating isn’t going to make you feel better. It’ll only make you feel worse.”
“I’m not punishing myself, Mamá. I just don’t have an appetite.” I slide extra firearms, loaded magazines, and boxes of ammunition into my hard case. “Not with everything that’s going on.”
She doesn’t respond, but simply steps behind me and wraps her arms around me.
My hands go still over the open case as she pulls me against her. I let myself lean into her embrace, close my eyes, and listen to the steady beat of her heart as her familiar scent surrounds me. If only for a few seconds, everything I’ve been trying so hard not to feel becomes easier to bear.
Her fingers move slowly through my hair, but she doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay, and I appreciate that more than she’ll ever know.
Thiago’s betrayal feels so much like grief that my heart doesn’t seem to know the difference.
It comes in waves I can’t predict. One moment, I convince myself I can keep moving, and if I stay busy, I won’t have to think about him.
Then something as small as hearing his name or catching myself reaching for my phone brings it all rushing back.
I hate that I miss him, and I hate even more that I still love him.
Most of all, I fucking hate that part of me still wishes I could wake up to find that none of it was real, that he’d be standing in my garage with that smug smile that drives me crazy, teasing me for working through the night as if I’d never learned the truth.
But I did.
And no matter how badly I want him back, I can’t undo any of it.
“Everything your Aunt Leni said back there is true, mi amor.”
“I told him about our family. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“You loved him. You wanted to be honest, and you wanted him to accept every part of you.” She brushes a tear from my cheek. “I understand that more than you know.”
I pull away and shake my head. “But now look at us. We have to leave everything behind. It isn’t fair, especially for Zara. She’s so little, and now she has to leave her friends, her dance classes...”
“None of that matters as much as keeping her safe. As long as we’re all alive, we can figure out the rest.”
I nod, but it doesn’t ease the guilt I’m carrying. “I have to coordinate transport for Hannibal and Clarice. I’ll meet everyone back here tonight.”
“Derek and your father are going with you.”
When I open my mouth to argue, one look from her shuts me up. It’s the same look that’s ended every debate between us since I was five.
“Fine,” I mutter with an exaggerated sigh.
She smiles. “There’s my dramatic teenager.”
Leaning in, I kiss her cheek before grabbing the handle of my case. “Love you.”
“I love you more.”
I make it halfway to the door when her phone vibrates against the metal table behind me.
“Remi.”
The sudden tension in her voice roots me to the floor. I turn and find her staring at the screen, her fingers tightening around the device.
“Mamá?”
She doesn’t answer. She only lifts her eyes to mine, and every trace of color has drained from her face.
“What is it?”
Without a word, she crosses the room and holds the phone out to me..
The message is from a number I don’t recognize, and the address below it means nothing to me. But then I see the photograph.
Thiago is chained to a chair with his head hanging forward, blood covering one side of his face and soaking through his shirt. One of his hands is wrapped in a red-stained bandage, and I recognize the cuts across his skin immediately.
I did that.
A sick wave of guilt rolls through me as I stare at the damage I caused alongside injuries that weren’t there when I left him. Beneath the photograph are three words.
Come get him.
My mind struggles to process what I’m seeing, but before I can make sense of it, the weapons room door slams into the wall.
“REMI!” Matteo barrels inside, breathing hard, his shirt plastered to his back with sweat. “Thiago called me.”
I glance from Matteo to the photograph on the phone, unable to reconcile the two. “What?”
“He called me.”
“What do you mean, he called you?” I thrust the phone toward him, my hand beginning to shake. “Then who the hell sent this?”
Matteo takes one look at the screen and pales. “Fuck...” He drags a hand over his face. “They got him.”
In seconds, I’m across the room, grabbing the front of his shirt. “Who? Who has him? Matteo!”
“Helios.”
“No.” I shake my head before he can say anything else. “That’s impossible. He is Helios. Why would they take him?”
“Remi.” Catching my wrists, he forces me to look at him. “I almost hung up on him. He was driving, and I could hear sirens behind him. He said they had deployed containment teams and were coming for us.”
I search his face for any sign he misunderstood, but there’s nothing.
“He was warning us.”
My grip slips from Matteo’s shirt. “No...”
“He told me to get everyone out and protect Zara. Remi, he told me that if he didn’t make it to you himself, I had to tell you he loved you.”
Bile rises in my throat.
“He said everything you two shared was real.”
Thiago said the same words to me on the rooftop, and I called him a liar. My eyes burn, and I look away from Matteo before he can see how badly that memory hurts.
“What happened after that?” My voice barely works, so I have to ask again before Matteo answers.
He lowers his eyes. “He said they found him.”
“And then?”
“He got hit. I don’t know whether they ran him off the road or T-boned him, but I heard the crash, and then the line went dead.”
I shake my head. “No, none of this makes any sense.”
“What if it’s a trap?” Mamá asks as she takes the phone from Matteo.
“I don’t think it is,” he says. “He sounded terrified, but not for himself.”
My eyes are fixed on the photograph, still glowing on the screen. “Why would they turn on him?”
No one answers, but as I stare at the blood covering Thiago’s face, the answer becomes painfully clear. He warned my family and tried to protect us, and Helios turned on him for it.
Because of me.
I grab my case and hurry to the door.
“Remi, wait!” someone calls after me, but I keep moving.
The heartbreak, the lies, and the betrayal are still there, but none of it matters right now because Thiago needs me. If I have to put a bullet in him myself after I drag him out of there, then so be it. But nobody else is laying a fucking hand on him.
“Follow me!” I yell over my shoulder without breaking stride.
I may be desperate, but I’m not reckless enough to charge in alone and risk getting us both killed. I need my family with me.
I throw myself into my car and tear out of the driveway.
In the rearview mirror, Matteo falls in behind me, followed by my parents, Aunt Leni and Uncle Silas, with Uncle Derek and Aunt Eva bringing up the rear.
I don’t have time to explain where I’m going or why.
I tell them to follow me, and not one of them hesitates.
“Remi,” Papá’s voice comes through the speakers. “If, for some reason, you get there before us, you hold. Do you understand me?”
“I just need you to keep up.” I push the speedometer higher. “He didn’t look good.”
“I understand that, baby, but if this is what we think it is, charging in without a plan will only end badly.”
Before I can argue, Mamá joins the call, followed one by one by everyone else.
“I found the address,” Aunt Eva says. “The property belongs to a shell corporation with no business filings, no employees, and no operating history. As far as the public record is concerned, the building shouldn’t exist.”
Silence follows her discovery.
“Whatever’s inside that building,” Uncle Silas says, “someone invested a lot of time and money to keep it hidden.”
“Then we assume the worst,” Uncle Derek says. “Everybody stays together until we know what we’re walking into.”
I don’t answer. My eyes stay on the road as the world warps past the windows. Every second we spend talking is another second Thiago is trapped inside that building.
Two days ago, I was ready to kill him myself, and I almost did. Now the thought of getting there too late scares me more than anything he did to me.
I don’t know what will happen if we get him out. I don’t know whether I’ll forgive him, hate him, or walk away the moment I know he’s safe. I just need him to be alive when I get there.
I try to hold on to every reason I shouldn’t care this much. He lied to me, betrayed me and my family, and nothing he’s done since has erased any of it.
But it doesn’t stop me from loving him.
The first siren barely registers over the growl of my engine, but another quickly joins it, then another, until the wail surrounds us. Red and blue lights flash against the buildings ahead and streak across my windshield.
I’ve never been more relieved to see cops in my life until I realize they’re standing between me and Thiago.
As I round the final corner, police cruisers stretch across the street in both directions.
Two tactical vehicles block the approach to the building, and officers in black body armor have formed a perimeter behind portable barricades.
Some have rifles trained on the entrances, while others move between the command vehicles and the teams positioned along the neighboring buildings.
Whatever they think is happening inside, they’re preparing for a siege.