It’s justified…My men are dead, and Cara is gone.
Their corpses litter the hallway, and yet there isn’t an ounce of sympathy for the loss inside me. I’m fidgety, andangryat them. Angry that they couldn’t do their jobs and keep Cara safe. Angry that they’re all dead, and I can’t kill them myself for being soweak. Inside my apartment isn’t much better, two dead Italians and a dead Irish. I glimpse a flash of pain on Tony’s face as he regards one of the men in the hall, and I realize that must be Larry. His call was a warning, an attempt to reach out despite an impossible situation. He’s the only one I’m not furious at.
The lounge is a wreck; the black wooden coffee table is splintered and destroyed, there’s blood pooling across the floor, and the crimson stains make it look like the scarlet furniture is melting into the floor. There’s a broken statue near the large windows, and a couple of the fine art pieces that dot my walls are crooked and broken. It hints at a fight… but between who? I scan the room as I try to control the anger surging like hot iron in my veins. This is my penthouse. This is myhome,and they came in here and destroyed it. They came here and took what belonged to me.Cara. She was supposed to be safe here.
Guilt churns under the anger. I left her alone. I left her alone with her men because she always insisted they were more trustworthy than my own. The bodies in the hallway and the two missing Irish bodyguards suggest otherwise. I know she’s not there, but I cross to my room anyway. There doesn’t seem to be any damage in here. She must have left the room, likely demanding to leave since she doesn’t like being cooped up. She would have thought she was safe here with her own men. Time and time again, that has failed her.
“Sir?” Tony’s hand brushes lightly against my elbow, and I turn to face him. As I do, my eyes catch a mess of glass and colorful chips scattered across the floor near the kitchen island counter. I can’t tear my gaze away. Each chip symbolizes a month ticked passed in sobriety. Sobriety that crashed the moment I met Cara, and now even the representation lies in tatters on my kitchen floor. It brings a swell of pain at the base of my skull, a pain that I know can be soothed with a drink, but there’s nothing here. I finished the bottle a few nights ago. My instinct is to call Niccolo and demand he bring me more before I remember he’s unavailable.
“The two by the door were shot in the back of the head,” Tony says once he realizes my silence is waiting to be filled with an explanation. His voice is pained at the loss of men he called friends, but I can’t bring myself to care. Not now. Not when my home is destroyed, and Cara is fuck knows where with men who definitelyaren’tprotecting her.
“So the attackers came from inside the apartment,” I spit, the anger bubbling up my throat. Tony doesn’t take it personally. When I finally tear my gaze away from the scattered chips, I can see he’s hurting. Angry too. Good, I’ll need that. “The missing Irish.”
“It looks that way,” Tony confirms. “They shot the two at the door, then it looks like one of our own tackled them. He took two in the chest for his efforts. They took down the rest quickly. It looks like no one expected an attack from the rear. Larry, he—” Tony cuts off, clearing his throat of the emotion I can hear threatening to take over. I move over to the dead Irish guard on my floor.
“Why kill one of their own?” I mutter, nudging his limp arm with the toe of my shoe. Killing one of their own suggests that not everyone was in on this little plan. His face is shadowed with a fresh bruise, so he must have fought back.
“Maybe he didn’t agree with what they were doing?” Tony suggests but falls silent when I glare at him, realizing my question is rhetorical. I glance at the bodies of the two Italians, trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened here. The more information I can get, the better. Both my guards have scorch marks burned into their shirts, tasered into submission before being shot in the head. Seeing it makes distaste swirl in my stomach. It’s a cowardly move to subdue like that before taking the kill. I growl in disgust and turn my back on the bodies, striding out into the hall as Tony hurries to catch up with me.
“What do you want to do, Boss?”
“Call Niccolo, find out where he is, and tell him I need him. If he can’t be here, tell him to watch his back,” I growl. We reach the elevator, and I turn to stare out at the carnage leading up to my front door. My gaze is unwavering until the elevator doors close on the scene, and my thoughts immediately turn to Cara. If she had just trusted me, then none of this would have happened because it would have been my guards protecting her. A weight settles around my heart, squeezing against every rapid, anger fuelled beat. They took her. They took what wasmine,and I’m going to kill every single one of them I can get my hands on until they give her back.
“Get me a line to Dante,” I state as the doors open to the parking lot, “and take me to the hospital. If anyone knows why the Irish did this, it’ll be her bastard father.” Tony nods, sprinting towards the car as I stride after him, no longer trying to contain my fury. It coils in my chest, ready to catch alight the moment I open my mouth. If Callahan has anything to do with this, I’ll kill him.
Alliances be damned.
2
CARA
My life has become anightmare. That’s my first thought as consciousness trickles back into my senses, and I’m no longer safe in the dark fog of my own thoughts. There’s a throbbing at the back of my skull, like when I’ve spent too many nights with Kimmy, and she’s switched out water for Vodka. I lick my lips and taste blood. My saliva immediately stings a cut on my lower lip, and my eyes snap open at the sensation. I instantly regret it as a harsh light burns my eyes and I screw them closed again with a groan.
How did I get here?
It comes to me in flashes between the throbs of pain bouncing around my skull.
I remember— I remember my own men killing Killian’s guards. They hit me on the head and then…Think, Cara, think!The details are hazy. I vaguely remember the sound of gunfire, bodies littering the hallway, and the suffocating stench of smoke when my cheek was pressed against the cool leather of a car seat. But that’s all I remember. A roll of frustration moves through me and I try to shift, try to shake the sensation free from my limbs, but it alerts me to the fact that I can’t move. I’m tied down.
“What..?” My voice sounds rough, foreign to my own ears, as I open my eyes again and squint against the harsh light in the room. It’s a small square room with gray walls and a stone floor. There’s a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, and when I breathe in, all I can smell is piss. “No, no no!” I’m bound to a chair in the middle of the room.
I wrench myself one way, then the next. A flash of hot sweat shoots down my spine as my heart rate skyrockets to the constricting pressure of the bonds that choke me further the harder I try to wrestle free.I have to get out of here.I have to get out before they come back and kill me! The rope binding my wrists and ankles is rough. Each jerk of my body twists the fibers a little tighter against my skin which only serves to fuel my desperation to get free. Each movement heightens the pounding pain in my skull.
I can’t be tied down like this.I can’t be trapped here!
“Hey, hey…be careful!”
A voice makes me flinch, and when a hand lands heavy on my shoulder, all my movements cease. In my panic, I hadn’t even noticed that there was someone in the room with me. A face swims in front of me, and I blink a couple of times to clear my vision.
It’s one of my guards. “Noah?!” I ask apprehensively.
He’d been with me in the apartment during the attack and for a split second immense relief floods through me like a warm blanket at seeing a familiar face. “Oh God, Noah, you have to get me out of here! You have to—” I cut myself off as the memory of Noah tasering one of Killian’s guards jolts into my mind. “Wait…”
“I know it looks bad,” Noah says, and he’ssmiling. This genuine smile is as if everything is okay and we’re just at a regular meeting. “You just gotta take it easy. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“Hurt myself?” I spit. Fear quickly gives way to anger. “Hurtmyself?!” I yell. “You killed those guards and knocked me over the head! I’m not the one that’s a danger to me!”
The tang of my blood still coats my tongue, and as I speak, I realize how dry my throat is. It burns when I talk and makes my voice more strained than I’m used to. None of that tampers the anger itching through me, and I curl both my hands into fists, tugging fiercely at the ropes. “Let me out of here!”