I will not die here.
Kairo, please find me before it’s too late.
Please.
18
KAIRO
The helicopter touches down on the roof of Andreas’s warehouse forty-three minutes after the call. I'm sober now, not because the alcohol left my system, but because the rage burned it out of me somewhere over the ocean, it replaced every drop of whiskey in my body, and now I am using it as fuel.
My men are already assembled when I come down the stairs. Fourteen of them, armed and vested, lined up against the warehouse wall like soldiers waiting for a war. They've seen me angry before, they've seen me kill, but the way they look at me now tells me they can see this is different. This isn't business, this is the end of everything.
"Castellano's estate is having a gala, and it is still currently running. Victor Castellano has a lot of security, he uses private military, twenty to thirty men, armed, positioned at every entrance. If you are attacked, then I don't care about casualties or collateral damage. My wife is in that building. She is hurt, and you're going to help me get her out."
My men are surprised by the comment about my wife, no one knows that she exists. I needed the honeymoon to convince her to be my queen and rule by my side, but nobody asks questions.
"Mario Rayne and Storm Rayne are on the premises." I pause. "They don't leave alive."
Andreas distributes the layout. Someone obtained the architectural plans months ago when we first started mapping Castellano's operations. Service entrance on the east side, the main ballroom on the ground floor. The basement is accessed through a corridor behind the kitchen.
The basement.
That's where she is.
Fuck!
I need to get to her, stat. If they have fucking harmed her, I’m burning everything to the ground.
We moveat eleven fourteen p.m. The service entrance gives us the first four guards without a sound. Andreas’s team takes them down with suppressed shots, the bodies dragged behind a catering van before the blood has time to pool. I step over them and keep moving. I have a carbon blade strapped to my thigh, the holster is warm against my ribs, and my hands are steady. This is not a normal operation. I’ve never had so much on the line before.
The kitchen is packed when we breach it. A dozen staff in white jackets, plating desserts, carrying trays, shouting orders over the hiss of gas burners. They freeze when they see us, fourteen men in black with guns drawn will do that. A woman near the sink drops a stack of plates, and the crash is deafening in the sudden silence.
"On the floor," Andreas orders. "Stay fucking quiet, don’t be a hero, then no one dies."
They drop fast, chefs, waiters, dishwashers, all of them on the tile with their hands over their heads. One kid near the service door starts to bolt, and one of my men grabs him by the collar and shoves him down. I step over a waiter curled on the tile and keep moving. Through the double doors, I can hear the gala, the bass of the music, the crystal-clear sound of people laughing who have no idea what's coming.
I push through the doors into the main corridor.
The first guard sees me and reaches for his weapon, but I put two rounds in his chest before his hand touches the grip. He hits the marble floor. The sound cracks through the hallway, and that's when everything changes. The music doesn't stop, but the screaming starts. Somewhere in the ballroom, glass shatters, and footsteps scatter in every direction.
I don't go to the ballroom, I let my men handle the upstairs. I need to find the basement. The corridor behind the kitchen is narrow and dim, service lights only, and the walls are bare concrete painted gray. Two guards are stationed at a metal door at the end. They see me coming and raise their rifles. I shoot the first one in the throat, and the second one dives behind a supply cart. I close the distance in four strides and put the barrel against the top of his skull before he can aim.
"Where is she?"
He's young, maybe twenty-five. His eyes are wide and wet, and the front of his pants is dark where he's pissed himself.
"The woman, where is she?"
"Last door, end of the hall, then downstairs." His voice is cracked and high. "Please, I didn't touch her, I swear I didn't …"
I pull the trigger.
I take the stairs fast, the smell changing as I descend. Damp concrete, rust, maybe copper underneath that makes mystomach clench because I know what it is. I've smelled it a thousand times. I've caused it a thousand times.
But not to her, never to her.
The basement corridor has four doors. I kick the first three open. An empty storage room, a utility closet with a mop and industrial cleaning supplies, and the third door is full of linens. The last door is reinforced, a steel plate bolted to a wooden frame, a padlock the size of my fist hanging from a hasp.
