"We need to move. Now." He’s cut up badly, but doesn’t show the level of pain he’s in. I’m not fairing much better, but I don’t care about either one of us right now.
I look down at my brother. At the boy I raised, the man I tried to save, the monster he chose to become. Everything in me screams to finish it. To crush his throat and feel him die beneath my hands.
But Katriana needs me and if I take the dark turn down death’s path, I’ll want to savor it with time I don’t have.
I release Jonah and watch him crumple to the concrete, gasping for air. Then I drive my boot into his temple with enough force to ensure he will not be getting up anytime soon.
"He lives for now. I want him to watch me destroy everything he built before I end him."
Kon nods grimly. We fight our way toward the exit, two men against the remnants of an army, and somehow we make it through. The afternoon light hits my face like a slap. I am covered in blood, most of it not my own. Pain radiates from a dozen wounds I cannot catalogue. My ribs are cracked or broken. My knuckles are split to the bone.
None of it matters.
I pull out my phone and dial Katriana's number.
No answer.
I dial her guards.
No answer.
My hands shake as I call Rafael, leaving bloody smears across the screen.
"Drake?" His voice is tight with concern. "What happened? We got reports of gunfire at the docks."
"Victor has Katriana." The words taste like ash. "Jonah set us up. Her guards are dead. I need every man we have. Now."
The silence on the other end stretches for exactly one heartbeat.
"Where do you need them?"
"I don't know yet. Have Luca pull everything. Security feeds, traffic cameras, anything that shows where they took her. Rafael..." My voice breaks on his name, something I have not allowed since the day my mother died. "I cannot lose her."
"You won't." The certainty in his voice is absolute. "We're mobilizing now. We'll find her, Drake."
I end the call and brace myself against the car, blood dripping from my fingertips onto the pavement. Kon stands guard, scanning for threats, his own wounds seeping through makeshift bandages he’s made out of parts of his shirt.
Katriana is out there somewhere. Alone. Terrified. In the hands of a monster who has spent years dreaming of exactly this moment.
I failed her.
The thought cuts deeper than any blade. I promised to protect her. I promised she would never have to fear Victor Kedrov again.
Five minutes pass before Luca is on the phone with me, confirming my worst fears. Victor has her.
Luca gives me details, leaving the emotion out.
“Two SUVs boxed in her town car at the airport departure lane. Six men in tactical gear. Her guards went down in the first thirty seconds. And then the camera captured her being dragged, struggling, screaming, into the back of a van that disappeared into traffic.”
“Fuck!” I roar into the cabin of my car.
“She fought back and caught a couple of the men in the balls, but she was nothing against six men.”
Of course she fought. My little rose has always had thorns.
But they took her anyway.
I stare at the frozen image of her face, captured in the moment before the van doors closed. Brown eyes wide behind her glasses. Her sweet mouth is hinged open in a scream no camera could hear. She reaches toward the guards who could no longer protect her.
