Cade Burns
The small squeal of pain was all I needed to hear to know that Aria was there, alive and not well. I couldn’t recall a time in my life when I had felt such unadulterated rage in my chest. I had killed people for looking wrong at her, and Matteo had hurt her. He’d hit her.
I would kill him slowly.
“Where is she?” I asked, my voice deceptively calm.
“Why? Do you plan to come and retrieve your new pet?” Matteo asked.
“She belongs to me now. You aren’t getting her back.”
He had no idea how wrong he was. “The number of times you touch my wife,” I said, enunciating the word. “Will be the number of weeks I torture you before ending your miserable life.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. I wondered if he understood how gravely he had fucked up by taking her. “Then come and get her. We’re waiting for you in my home.”
I ended the call, and I didn’t stop myself from rearing back and throwing my phone across the room. It collided with the wall and broke apart into pieces as it clattered to the ground. Serg stood at my side, fists balled at his sides. “Are you sure it’s not a trap that she’s orchestrating?” he asked. I only narrowed my eyes at him. “I didn’t think so, either, but you have to remember that she did betray us, boss. She was a spy, and we don’t know for sure what she told him-what he can use against us.”
I thought about the way she’d been so keen to tell me-so nervous about my reaction. She’d seen me murder people for far less, but she still decided to tell me the truth so that we could properly prepare for an attack that would be coming.
She risked her life to tell us the truth, and she only did it so that we’d be safe.
She was one of us, and if nothing else, telling us the truth proved it. I hadn’t realized that at first. I’d stormed out of the room and come to do damage control, but as I considered the risk she took by telling me-by standing against her brother-I saw precisely how strong and brave she was.
“She’s not a spy anymore. She’s still my wife, and I’m going to make him pay for every time he touched her.”
Serg pulled back the slide on his pistol, and a bullet locked in the chamber as he nodded and tucked it into a holster at his side. “That’s what I was hoping you’d decide.” He stood straighter, malice in his gaze. “I just ask that you let me give him a few blows before you take him out.”
If there was one other person who had learned to care for Aria the same way as I had, it was Serg. He’d spent hours every day with her, and she’d become almost like a sister to him. We both cared about her, and neither of us would stand for someone hurting her, no matter who it was.
We’d both do anything to get her back.
The drive to the house went by in a blur, and only when we parked two streets down and equipped ourselves with all of our gear did I focus on the mission at hand. I stared in the direction of the house and then glanced at Serg beside me. “We get in and get out, and then we rain down hell on his fucking life.”
We knew that if we brought a tactical team with us, he’d kill her before we had a chance to retrieve her. But we had all of them on standby. Once we got out Aria, we’d send them in and kill them all. I didn’t care if she wanted that or not. I didn’t care if it brought repercussions with the rest of the Italians. None of it mattered when he’d taken her.
“What are the odds of us getting in and out quietly?” I asked Serg, and he only shook his head. I knew the odds, but it was the only way we’d get her out of here before the fighting started.
“We’ll do our best.”
We slinked down the street, making it past the exterior guards of the estate without incident. We hadn’t taken the time to go through the home’s defenses and floorplans before coming, so we settled on a first-floor window before going inside and keeping watch.
Something didn’t sit right with me as I noted the lack of guard presence in the house. In fact, we made it to the second floor without running into a single man, and when we marched back down the stairs and into the basement, Serg only needed to incapacitate one guard at the bottom of the stair before finding that she wasn’t there, either.
She wasn’t in the house.
We moved out the back door, looking for any indication of where she could be, and we immediately dipped behind a bush, finding far more guards in the back than anywhere else. Two stood at the front door, and we watched as three rounded the large building in a rotation that seemed relatively consistent.
I heard one of the guards say something to the men on the backside, and I heard two voices in response.
There were at least seven guards milling about the building, and I knew that I’d find her inside. “To the left, there’s a second-story window,” Serg said, pointing to the only side that had no consistent men standing guard.
“From the tree, we could make it inside.”
“There’s going to be guards on the inside, too,” I told him, shaking my head. “As soon as one of them raises an alarm, we’ll be overwhelmed.”
“Unless we take out all the ones out here and then snipe all the ones who will come to their aid in due time, it’s our only option. We have to try to be stealthy unless we want to bring our teams and attack before getting her out.”
That wasn’t an option, and he knew it. Putting her in the middle of a firefight was the quickest way to lose her.
We had to get her out first. It was the most important thing. I knew what happened when someone stood in the middle of a mob battle. They ended up dead.
“Let’s do it, then,” I told him.
We rushed to the side of the building, careful to avoid the mobile rounds of guards. We had to duck and cover every twelve to fifteen seconds to avoid notice, so when we reached the tree, we had that long to climb it and go still before the guard saw us. It was hardly a challenge as the end goal felt so close. She had to be inside. There wasn’t another option.
Serg moved ahead of me the second the guard turned the corner, reaching for the window ledge and peeking inside. He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t see much, but it looks like there are a few guards. I can’t see Aria, but her coat is sitting on the floor.”
That was all I needed to hear to know she was inside. “Let’s go,” I pushed, and he nodded, stepping back just long enough for the guard to round the corner, examine the area, and then continue on. Serg worked fast, springing to the window sill and pulling open the window swiftly. It creaked slightly, but when he paused and nobody shouted out a warning, he opened it the rest of the way.
We waited the grueling few seconds it took the guard to walk around the side of the house before we both catapulted through the window, clinging to the sill just long enough to drop to the first floor in a crouch.
We made quick work of the guards inside, as none of them seemed to be paying an ounce of attention to their surroundings. We incapacitated two, and I slit the throat of the final one as the center of the room came into view.
I didn’t know where to look at first. Aria sat, tied, and gagged, trying to shout something at me. She looked disheveled, but all together, okay. What shocked me most was my sister, head hanging as she, too, sat tied to a chair. Elizabeth was unconscious, and the shallow cuts and bruises that covered her face had me seeing red.
I took one step. Just one before Serg grabbed the crook of my elbow.
I went to jerk my arm away, but he tightened his grip. “If you go over there, we’re all going to fucking die. They’re sitting on pressure plates,
Cade.”
I hadn’t taken in all the details, and I forced my eyes away from Aria long enough to see that he was right. They were on pressure plates. Matteo had known we’d come for them, and he’d taken the necessary precautions to make sure that we didn’t get them out of here. He’d played this smart.
Serg released my arm, and we each rushed forward. My eyes went between Elizabeth and Aria, and my heart felt like it was going to pound out of my chest. I had to get them both out of here, but Elizabeth… God, she looked like she’d been beaten to hell and back, and the tears that streamed down Aria’s face as she tried to speak through the gag only exemplified the rage that grew inside of me.
I had to get them out of here. I’d do anything to get them both out, and Serg was in the same position. He stared only at the pressure plates, walking around them and eyeing the wires that led across the room.
“Okay,” he whispered, getting to his hands and knees and looking beneath them. “Okay, they aren’t sensitive, but if they make too much movement, they’ll set off whatever the reaction is. It looks like it’s a fiftypound trigger system. You can take off the gag, and slow movements are safe, but don’t add your body weight’s pressure.”
I stood closest to Aria, and I reached forward, careful not to touch the plate as I removed her gag. Serg rushed across the room, following the wires wherever they led him.
“She needs a doctor,” Aria said immediately. “Cade, he said that these were hooked to bombs. It’s why we’re not in the main house. It took him a while to get them set up. Have Serg disconnect Elizabeth’s, and then get out of here. Leave me.”
My eyes narrowed, and I shook my head, caressing her cheek lightly. I hated that I couldn’t get closer than an arm’s reach from her. I needed her in my arms, but instead, I moved my hands to the knots tying her wrists together.
“I betrayed you, and you don’t need to save me when I am the reason they knew about Elizabeth. It was the only thing I ever told him. It’s my fault,” she sobbed, shaking her head. “Get her out.” “I won’t leave you behind,” I told her.
“You have to, Cade. There isn’t enough time.”
“Don’t ask me to leave you behind,” I whispered to her. “I’ll die before I leave the woman I love behind.”