Page 361 of Don’t Say Mafia

For a moment, my chest locked, and then I saw his chest rise. Barely . . . but it still counted. He was at least alive.

I could work with that.

The warehouse door creaked open, and several men walked in, their boots scraping against the concrete. Declan wasn’t with them, and none of them looked familiar, which told me they weren’t any of O’Dalaigh’s inner circle. If I wasn’t so angry, I would have been offended. They’d left me with the fucking disposable muscle.

I lifted my head slowly, letting my mouth curve into something lazy and unimpressed. “Where’s Declan?” I asked. “I wouldn’t have thought the B-team would be sent to handle me. I figured the big dogs would want to do this part themselves.”

A few of them laughed, and one guy stepped forward, shaking his head like I’d just told the world’s funniest joke. “Oh, Declan’s busy,” he said. “He wanted to handle your girlfriend personally. But he said you could watch. Wasn’t that nice of him?”

It was all I could do to keep my face blank and not show them the full extent of the rage and terror I was feeling right now.

I watched as, from the corner of the warehouse, two men rolled out a television on a metal cart, setting it up as a sick presentation. The screen flickered once before lighting up.

And there she was.

Eden was tied to a chair in a room, and a circle of men surrounded her, watching her like wolves pacing around a wounded animal. Her hair had fallen forward over one side of her face. Her shoulders were pulled tight from the ropes binding her arms. Even through the grainy feed, I could see the fear she was trying so hard to hide.

I was starting to get dizzy as I stared at the screen. The image kept flickering from a bad signal, but every frame burned itself into the back of my skull. My stomach rolled, bile rising sharp and bitter. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to die. Right there on the filthy warehouse floor, with my hands still bound and my blood still drying on my shirt, I wanted the world to end so I wouldn’t have to keep looking at what I’d let happen to her.

I had failed her.

Completely. Catastrophically. In every way that mattered.

All the power I’d built. All the men who answered to me. The empire Cruz and I had spent years expanding, brick by bloody brick—and none of it mattered. None of it had been enough to keep her safe.

“See?” a man said lightly beside me. “Declan figured you would like this. This is top-quality entertainment right here.”

Before I could do or say anything . . . the lights went out. Every bulb in the warehouse blinked off at once, plunging the room into thick darkness. The television died with them, the screen snapping to black.

“What the hell⁠—”

The men shifted uneasily, their voices rising as they looked around. The only light left seeped weakly through two high windows near the ceiling, the glass so filthy it barely let anything through.

For a moment, the warehouse went completely still.

Then something smashed through one of the windows.

Glass shattered across the floor in a violent spray, and a small metal canister bounced against the concrete before rolling to a stop near the center of the room.

A second later, it began to hiss. White smoke exploded outward, spreading fast across the floor. Shouts erupted immediately.

“What the hell is that?” someone barked as the smoke began spreading across the floor.

“Shit—my eyes⁠—”

Men started coughing, the sound turning harsh and ragged as the thick cloud swallowed the center of the warehouse. The smoke moved fast, rolling outward in a dense wave that climbed toward the windows and swallowed the weak light.

Boots scraped across the concrete as the men stumbled blindly through it. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

Another cough broke out, louder this time, followed by the crack of a gunshot.

Then another.

A body hit the floor with a heavy thud somewhere in the haze.

Someone shouted in pain. Another shot echoed through the warehouse. Another body dropped, the impact rattling across the concrete.

I couldn’t see a damn thing.