Chapter 8
eight
Vivi stared at her reflection in the tinted window of the SUV as it wound through narrow streets.
Her face betrayed nothing—perfect mask in place, just as she’d been taught.
Inside, her heart slammed against her ribs like it was trying to break free.
She’d seen Sabin hurt before—bloody knuckles from a fight, a broken arm from a job gone wrong in Prague, the scar above his eyebrow from their first heist when he was seventeen.
But never like the man in that video feed, zip-tied to a chair with a knife at his throat.
She closed her eyes briefly, exhaled long and slow, then opened them.
She couldn’t afford emotions right now. Emotions made you sloppy, and sloppy got you—or your brother—killed.
“You okay?” Dom asked from beside her, his voice low.
“I’m fine.” She touched the lock pick hidden in the sleeve of her shirt, reassuring herself that it was still there.
She’d palmed it from the kit that morning while Dom was in the shower, slipping it into a pocket in her sleeve.
Small enough not to set off any metal detectors, strong enough to give Sabin a fighting chance if an opportunity presented itself. It wasn’t much. But it was something.
She wasn’t worried about anyone finding it, even if they patted her down or scanned her.
Hiding tools in clothes was her specialty, and every dress, every outfit had invisible pockets.
Most of the women who bought her designs liked the pockets for lipstick, tampons, or credit cards.
Not her. She used them for the tools of her trade.
Or former trade.
Dom seemed to understand she didn’t want to talk. He turned his attention back to the road, watching every turn, every landmark. Memorizing the route. Always the soldier, always cataloging escape routes and threats. Once, she’d found that comforting.
The SUV slowed as they approached a nondescript warehouse building, its concrete facade weathered by salt air and time.
Nothing about it suggested a Praetorian black site—no guards visible outside, no cameras she could spot.
But she knew better. The most dangerous places often looked the most innocent.
The driver—a silent man with close-cropped hair and dead eyes—hadn’t spoken a word the entire journey. Now he turned, his gaze sweeping over them both before settling on Dom.
“You. Stay.” The driver pointed at Dom like he was a dog. “She goes in alone.”
Dom tensed as if preparing for a fight, and she set a restraining hand on his arm. “Dominic.”
He looked down at her hand, then up at her. It was the first time she’d touched him since the backseat of his car. Since that ill-advised, but not unpleasant, moment of weakness that she hadn’t had time to regret properly.
His eyes softened for just a fraction of a second, the blue darkening with concern. Vivi withdrew her hand quickly, regretting the touch instantly. Every point of contact between them felt dangerous, like striking a match near gasoline.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Let me handle this.”
Dom leaned in, and for one heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She wasn’t sure how she’d react if he did. Accept and return the kiss? Punch him?
But all he did was open the door. “If they hurt you—or, hell, if they make you uncomfortable in any way, I’m going to burn this whole place to the ground.”
The intensity in his voice sent a shiver down her spine. This was the Dom she remembered from their days working together—the one who calculated risks in milliseconds and made split-second decisions that somehow always worked out. The one whose protective streak ran a mile wide.
“I can handle myself, thank you.”
“I know you can, Viv, but that doesn’t change the facts.
” He was no longer looking at her, but instead at the driver, who had circled around the car to escort her and now stood beside the door, waiting for her to get out.
“I will nuke every last piece of this operation if anything happens to her. And then I’ll come after you personally. ”
The driver’s lips curled into a condescending smile. “Big talk from a man in restraints.”
Dom leaned forward and held up his bound hands. “You think these ties would stop me? I could be out of them in thirty seconds. I could take your weapon, disable you, and be inside that building before your backup even realized what happened.”
The driver’s hand moved instinctively toward his concealed weapon.
“Dominic,” Vivi warned, but he wasn’t listening.
His eyes never left the driver’s face. “I’ve spent my entire career dealing with men like you. Men who think a gun makes them the scariest thing in the room.” His voice dropped even lower. “You don’t even make the top ten of scariest things I’ve dealt with.”
Calculations flashed behind the driver’s eyes. Assessing the threat, weighing his options, deciding if Dom was bluffing.
He wasn’t.
Dominic Wilde gave off golden retriever energy, which made people underestimate him, but she’d seen him take down three armed men with nothing but a ballpoint pen and sheer determination.
She needed to defuse this before Dom did something spectacularly stupid.
“Enough,” she said, sliding out of the SUV. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
The driver finally broke eye contact with Dom and gestured for her to follow. As she walked toward the building, she felt Dom’s eyes boring into her back, that familiar protective gaze that had once made her feel safe and had later made her feel suffocated.
The warehouse door opened as they approached, revealing another guard, this one with a military bearing that reminded her of Dom’s older brother Davey. He nodded once, and her escort stepped back.
“Arms out,” the new guard said.
Vivi complied, keeping her breathing steady as he ran a handheld metal detector over her. She’d anticipated this—Raines had stupidly given her a lock pick set that was ceramic, designed specifically to avoid detection. The wand passed over her sleeve without a sound.
“Clear,” he said, stepping aside.
The interior was all concrete and fluorescent lights, sterile and cold. Two more guards joined them, flanking her as they moved through a series of corridors. She counted turns—left, right, right, left—memorizing the path like she’d memorized museum floor plans and mansion layouts. Old habits.
They stopped at a heavy door with another keypad. The first guard punched in a code, and the door swung open to reveal a room identical to the one she and Dom had woken up in.
And Sabin.
Her heart stuttered. The video feed hadn’t captured half of it.
His wrists were zip-tied to the chair arms. His face was a roadmap of violence, lip split, jaw bruised. A fresh cut oozed blood from above his eyebrow.
But it was his hand that made bile rise in her throat.
Two fingers on his left hand were swollen, purple, and bent at unnatural angles despite the splint someone had slapped on them.
They’d broken his fingers. The thought made her dizzy with fury.
Oh, Sabin.
Inwardly, she was crying for him. Outwardly, she kept her expression impassive, didn’t let a single flicker of reaction cross her face. The guards were watching, Raines was watching through the cameras mounted in each corner. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
“Fifteen minutes,” the guard said, gesturing to the chair they’d positioned across from him. “Audio is on. No physical contact.”
“Vivi.” Sabin’s voice was little more than a rasp. “You okay, you?”
Always worried about her. She wanted to laugh or scream or break something. Instead, she took the seat.
“Am I okay? That’s what you’re asking me? With your face looking like that?”
His split lip curved into a smile. “Still pretty enough to break hearts.”
Classic Sabin.
“How are they treating you?” The question was absurd given his condition, but she needed to say something, anything to keep from screaming.
“Room service is terrible. No biscuits, no café au lait. Not even a pillow mint.” He shook his head slowly, like a man genuinely aggrieved. “?a c’est pas des gens, these people. No culture, no manners, no shame about neither one.”
She’d worked hard over the years to erase the Cajun from her voice—she’d found people took her more seriously without it—but not Sabin.
He was shamelessly proud of their heritage and leaned into it.
The familiar cadence reminded her of long, hot, slow summers on Bayou Lafourche with their dad’s family, and filled her with equal parts comfort and anguish.
God, she loved him.
She’d kill Raines for this. Slowly. Painfully. She’d make him beg before she was done.
“How’d they get to you?” She kept her voice neutral, but she already suspected she knew the answer.
Sabin had the grace to look slightly sheepish. “There was a woman.”
“Of course there was.”
A honey trap. It was the oldest trick in the book, and Sabin had fallen for it. Her brilliant, careful brother, who could spot a security flaw from fifty paces, had been taken in by a pretty face.
“Found her at a gallery in Athens,” he continued.
“She claimed to be an antiquities dealer. Said she had a client looking for Byzantine pieces like the ones we’d.
..acquired in Istanbul. You know I’ve been dying to offload those since we went straight, so I went to dinner with her.
Then to her hotel. Woke up zip-tied to a chair with Raines staring at me.
Should’ve known better, me. Ma always said pretty women would be my downfall. ”
Vivi tried not to wince at his admission. “How much did you tell the fake antiquities dealer?”
“Nothing important.”
But a shadow passed over his face that told her otherwise.
Sabin was a better liar than this, which meant he wanted her to know the truth without saying it aloud. They’d broken him. Not completely—Sabin was too stubborn for that—but enough to get what they needed. She wanted to tell him it was okay, that she didn’t blame him, but the words wouldn’t come.