Reaching, I realize with a pain that threatens to split me open, toward me. Toward the safety I promised and failed to give her.
"We have a location." Luca's voice cuts through the grief threatening to drown me. "Industrial basement. Oldmeatpacking facility on the south side. Victor's been using it as a safe house for months."
I push off the car just as Rafael and the others pull up. They step out and I meet the eyes of my brothers. Kon, his shoulder bandaged but his expression murderous. Rafael, calm and deadly in a way that reminds me why he leads us. Luca with his screens and his surveillance, already coordinating approach routes. Massimo and Rowan ready to burn the world if I give the word.
My brothers. My family. The men who will follow me into hell and help me drag Katriana back out.
"Victor Kedrov dies tonight." I check the fresh weapons Kon pressed into my hands, the weight of them settling into my palms like extensions of my own rage. "Anyone who stands between us and Katriana dies with him. No mercy. No survivors. No one who touched her walks out of that building alive."
I turn to Massimo. “Call the men of Genesis. I left my brother in there half dead.” I jut my chin in the direction of the warehouse where I left Jonah. “I want him secured in their basement. I’ll deal with him later. Tell Harlon I’ll pay whatever price tag he puts on the service.”
Massimo nods and takes out his phone. “I’ll stay behind and get it taken care of.”
“I owe you.” With that, I slide into the car that will take me to her.
Hold on, little rose. I am coming.
And God help anyone who tries to stop me.
Twenty
Katriana
Darkness swallows me whole.
I wake to the smell of rust and damp concrete, my head throbbing with a pain that pulses in time with my heartbeat. My wrists burn where something coarse bites into the skin, and when I try to move, I realize I am bound to a chair.
Metal. Cold. The chill seeps through the thin fabric of my blouse and settles into my bones like a promise of worse things to come.
My glasses are gone. The world blurs at the edges, shapes dissolving into smears of shadow and sickly yellow light. I blink rapidly, trying to force my vision to cooperate, but without the lenses everything beyond arm's reach becomes a watercolor painting left out in the rain.
Panic claws at my throat. I force it down with a breath that scrapes against lungs that feel too tight.
Think. I need to think.
The last thing I remember is the airport. The town car pulling up to the departure lane. Drake's guards flanking me, solid andreassuring in their dark suits. I was thinking about Gemma, about how good it would feel to hug my sister after so many months apart. I was thinking about Drake, about the way he kissed me goodbye.
Then the SUVs appeared.
The memory fragments into shards of violence. Gunfire. Screaming. Hands grabbing me, dragging me across pavement while I fought with everything I had. A needle in my neck. And then nothing but darkness until I woke here, wherever here is.
My eyes adjust slowly to the dim light. The space around me reveals itself in pieces. Concrete walls stained with something I do not want to identify. Rusted pipes running along the ceiling, dripping condensation that echoes through the silence. Industrial fixtures that speak of a building designed for purposes far removed from whatever nightmare I have stumbled into.
A basement. I am in a basement.
Movement at the edge of my vision snaps my attention to the left. Two figures huddle against the far wall, their wrists bound like mine, their faces turned toward me with expressions of terror and something worse.
Recognition.
"Katriana." My mother's voice breaks on my name, thin and reedy with fear. "Oh God. Katriana, what's going on?"
"Kat!" Gemma struggles against her bindings, her dark hair tangled and wild around a face streaked with tears. "They came to the house. They had guns. Mom tried to call the police but they took our phones and they brought us here and I don't know what's happening but I'm so scared, Kat. I'm so scared."
The world tilts beneath me. My mother. My sister. Here. Bound and terrified in this concrete nightmare while I sit naked in a metal chair.
Naked.
The realization crashes over me like ice water. I am naked. Completely exposed. My clothes are gone, stripped away while I was unconscious, leaving me with nothing but my skin and the ropes cutting into my wrists.
