We were mid-sentence—arguing about perimeter rotations for the trial—when the sound cut through the diner's ambient noise. He glanced at the screen, and his face changed.
"Dario." He answered, listened for three seconds, and was already standing. "We're moving."
I was on my feet before he finished. "What?"
"Safe house breach." He threw cash on the table, phone still pressed to his ear. "Multiple hostiles. Heavy weapons. They have Valentina."
The words hit like a bullet to the chest.
We ran.
Domenico drove. I couldn't. My hands were shaking too hard to grip a wheel, and I hated myself for it. He floored the SUV out of the parking lot while I sat in the passenger seat, useless, every muscle locked tight.
"Tell me everything." My voice came out dead calm. The kind of quiet that meant I was going to kill someone.
He relayed what Dario had reported between bursts of gunfire before the line cut out. Professional extraction team. Smoke grenades. Flashbangs. Simultaneous breach from multiple entry points. FBI agents were overwhelmed in seconds.
"Sofia?"
"Down. Critical. Dario didn't know more."
"Who has her? Who took Valentina?"
Domenico's jaw tightened. "Caldwell."
The name landed like gasoline on a fire.
"He was there personally," Domenico continued. "Dario saw him before — " He stopped. Before the line went dead. Before we lost contact. Before everything went to hell.
Caldwell. The senator. The man who'd threatened to marry her, control her, destroy her. The man she'd run from in terror.
He had her.
Valentina.
The name was a pulse in my skull. A drumbeat. A prayer.
My chest felt like someone had reached in and squeezed—I couldn't breathe, couldn't think beyond the image of her in danger, hurt, dying while I was too far away to stop it.
Smoke rose in the distance, a dark column bleeding into Arizona's too-blue sky. Ten minutes away. The safe house.
Ten minutes might as well be ten hours.
"Call the team." My voice came out dead calm. "Now."
Domenico tossed me his phone without taking his eyes off the road. "Speed dial three."
I made the calls while he drove—sixty, seventy, eighty. The speedometer needle climbed, and my chest tightened with each tick. Every second at this speed was another second she was in harm's wayspent with Caldwell. Another second, he could hurt her, kill her, make good on his threats.
The traffic light ahead flared red.
Domenico didn't slow down.
The SUV shot through the intersection like a bullet. Horn blaring. Tires screaming. A sedan swerved left—missing us by inches, the driver's horrified face a white blur. A truck on the right locked its brakes, black smoke pouring from its tires as it fishtailed.
Let them call the police. None of it mattered if I didn't reach her in time.
Nothing mattered except Valentina.
