Were they out of their minds thinking I was going to let her out of my sight? They knew who I was, there was no argument. But they still made me change into sterile gear.
Maxim, on the phone a few feet away, caught my attention. “A chopper will be here the second they stabilize her. We’ll move her to the hospital in Rome. Everyone’s ready.”
I nodded and turned back toward the OR. The sound of rotor blades suddenly cut through the air. My entire body went rigid and I snapped my head toward Maxim. He already had his gun out.
“That can’t be ours,” he said sharply. “Find Emily. Now.”
Adrenaline hit me like a freight train. I took off for the OR, four of my men right behind me. But it was already too late. The room was empty except for the blood and the bodies. The clinic staff lay dead. Pools of red on sterile white.
“No!” My roar echoed through the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a door half open and I ran.
Outside, a black chopper was lifting off. Maxim and the others were closing in from the far side, weapons raised.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled, breathless. “Emily’s in that fucking chopper!”
Without waiting, I ran to the car, jumped in, and floored the gas. The tires screeched as I chased the black silhouette cutting through the sky. I pushed the engine hard, my hands clamped on the wheel, laser-focused on the thing I had to catch.
It climbed higher, pulling away, out of reach. Too fast. Too high. Too fucking late. I slammed the brakes, the car skidding to a stop in the middle of the road.
Stumbling out, I roared at the sky, “No! Emily! No!”
The pain was unbearable. I’d been played like a fucking fool, and now she was gone. Still, I stood there, rooted in place, staring up at the sky. Horns blared behind me. Cars piled up. But I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
A gunshot cracked behind me, but I didn’t even turn. I was too stunned to move. Then Maxim’s voice thundered through the chaos, silencing the blaring horns and shouting drivers in an instant. “Get back in your fucking cars!”
I turned toward him. “Did the choppers see it? Tell them to go after it!”
“They’re already in the air. If they spot anything, they’ll let us know.”
A flicker of hope hit me, Emily’s tracker. The chip we’d implanted beneath her skin. My hands scrambled for my phone, trembling as I pulled up the app. Nothing. No signal. My stomach dropped.
Diablo! He must’ve destroyed it when he bit her.
The phone slipped from my hands. A raw sound ripped from deep inside meas I turned and slammed both fists into the hood of the car, over and over. Metal dented under my blows until my knuckles split open and bled.
“Everything,” I rasped. “Every fucking detail was perfect. Giuseppe knew. He planned this.”
Maxim stepped closer, placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find her, Carlo. No matter what it takes, we’ll get her back.”
But an hour later, I knew the truth. Emily was gone. My wife, my pregnant wife, had been taken while bleeding out, and I knew exactly who’d done it. I could already see Giuseppe’s smug face. I’d skin him alive. I’d burn the world down if I had to. But none of it would undo what happened.
When I got back to the estate, Diablo’s body was still there, right where he’d fallen. The yard was eerily quiet. I walked across the grass, sat down beside him, and stared at the blood-soaked earth, his blood mixed with hers.
His head had been split open by the bullet. Half his skull was gone, brain exposed. My hand reached for his ear, fingers brushing against stiff, blood-matted fur.
Maxim eventually sat beside me, laid a hand on my shoulder and let the silence settle. After a long moment, he asked quietly, “Why did Diablo do it?”
I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the dog I’d raised. My voice came out low and bitter. “Because Giuseppe planned it that way. Smart bastard always knew how to cut deep.”
“How the hell could Giuseppe have anything to do with Diablo’s attack?”
“When Emily stepped out of the car, she smelled like Salman’s cologne,” I said flatly. “Someone at the hotel must’ve been involved.”
Salman. He was an Arab assassin my father used to trust. I’d never liked him. Never trusted him. I’d always been against hiring outsiders, but my father had been blind to his flaws. Salman got things done, and that’s all that had mattered to him.
But to me? Salman was a snake. And he hated me. The feeling was mutual. His cologne was custom-made, something sharp, woodsy, and distinctly Arabic. After my father’s accident, I’d gone to a remote village to handle a deal. Because it was such a low-risk trip, I only brought Maxim and Diablo. It should’ve been nothing.
