“Jesus fucking Christ,” Calix muttered, pulling the cellphone from his pocket and dialing a number as he moved for the stairs.
“If we don’t call within the hour, they’ll shoot the women,” Murphy’s man said, holding his hands up. “Tick tock.”
“No,” Rafael said, shaking his head at me. “Too big a risk that he’ll relay some secret message if we allow him to call.”
I nodded my agreement, pulling my gun around to my front. I stepped close, watching as his breathing quickened and he waited for the quick death he assumed he’d get for the information he’d relayed.
But there were no quick deaths for the men who’d looked at Irina. For the ones involved in her capture and her pain.
They’d suffer for an eternity before I allowed them to die when I made the choice.
“I tried to warn you. I’m no Bellandi,” I said, watching as his eyes widened for a brief moment. I slammed the end of the rifle into his temple, watching as he crumpled to the floor. “Have Ryker put him in the fucking van,” I ordered, moving to the stairs and climbing back up into the daylight. Under any other circumstances, the men might have pushed back against the order coming from me, but in these? They did what they were fucking told.
I had less than an hour to get to the storage unit. I wouldn’t waste a single second of it.
Tick tock.
29
SCAR
Night made the storage facility feel eerie as we pressed through the darkness. The sheer number of storage containers made it impossible to know which one might house the women. Which one they’d hidden Irina away or left her to rot in with countless others who’d been unfortunate enough to attract the attention of Tiernan and his men.
A year ago, I’d have been horrified with myself, because I didn’t give the first fuck about any of them.
None of them mattered but my butterfly, and I would gladly trade every last one of them to save her. No matter what that said about me as a man. Any doubt I had that I’d belong to the fires of Hell when I died evaporated with that singular thought pulsing through me—a truth like I’d never known.
I’d burn the world to the ground to save her. Sacrifice anyone for her.
I peeked around the corner of one of the units, ducking back when my eyes landed on an armed guard standing in front of one of the containers. Glancing back to the men behind me, I waved my fingers in a salute that I had to hope they could see.
It would appear we’d found our container.
Matteo, Calix, and Rafael stayed behind, as much as it killed them not to be in on the main action. Ryker and Enzo crept forward, a group of seven others following at their heels and moving with the kind of stealth that only years of training could ingrain in them.
I moved to follow, rounding the corner as gunfire lit up the silence. The muffled sound of women’s screams came from inside the metal container, driving me forward.
A hand on my forearm stopped me, pulling me back around the corner to wait with the men we couldn’t risk. With the ones who were too valuable to lose in a time of war.
The men who ruled over cities—or would, once the war for Chicago was over.
“Wait until they’re dead,” Matteo said, his voice stern with all the warning I needed to hear. It was the voice he used when he wanted his men to know he should not be tested.
Normally, I listened.
But not fucking today.
I jerked my arm out of his grasp, glaring back at him and thinking of what he would have done, if anyone tried to stop him from going after his wife when she’d been taken. “Scar, she needs you alive. Think of what it would do to her if we rescued her only to make her look at your fucking corpse,” he said, raising an eyebrow as if he dared me to defy the logic.
I growled my frustration, turning to watch Ryker hack through his enemies with his hatchet, while the others shot with all the precision and skill the crazy-ass had, if he ever bothered with a gun like a normal person.
A bullet pinged off the container next to my head, making me duck back with another glare for Matteo. I hated it when the fucker was right, on a good day.
But I especially hated it today.
We waited, my blood tingling with the need to move. My fingers and feet throbbed, desperate to get to Irina and make our enemies suffer. But I held off, doing what was best for her and her recovery.
Because she would recover. The alternative wasn’t an option.
“Clear!” Ryker yelled finally. I rounded the corner to the metallic sound of a key in a lock, and vaulted over the pile of bodies to get to the doors just as he tore them open. The metal groaned, and Ryker was thrown to the side when a group of naked women and girls raced out of the container.
They screamed or cried as they ran, charging through the group of men like they couldn’t tell the difference between their rescuers and their abusers. Judging by the state of the bruises on their bodies, I suspected they couldn’t.
I searched through them desperately, fighting against the press of bodies as I moved into the container. The smell hit my senses like an assault, the body odor and metallic scent of blood like something from my worst nightmares.
There was no sign of Irina, and I began to fear the worst.
What if she wasn’t with the others? What if Tiernan had decided to keep her with him, after all?
Once I finally made it through the gauntlet of women and girls, I froze in place. My heart stilled. My lungs stopped drawing air.
Even in the dark, I would know that head of raven hair anywhere.
I took the first step, feeling like a ghost trapped in my own body. Like I was already dead, and my limbs moved of their own accord. She rested against a girl’s shoulder, her neck bent backwards so that her head was draped over the crook of the girl’s elbow. The girl spoke to her, her eyes glassy and cheeks wet with tears.
Irina’s face was nearly unrecognizable—mottled and bruised and covered in small cuts. Her lip was split and swollen, and, as my eyes trailed down over her body, my fury rose with every mark to her skin.
From the bruises around her throat to the blood coating her thighs, red filled my vision. Nothing existed but the red stain of blood that I would paint the city in. Nothing but the fire I would use to burn the world that had taken something so beautiful and shredded it.
Nothing.
Irina didn’t move as the girl curled her tighter into her chest, rocking her back and forth as she spoke to her. My butterfly’s naked body was a canvas of trauma, wounds marking her flesh the likes of which I had never seen before.
Except on me.
“She saved me,” the girl murmured, staring up at me with wide eyes. She drew Irina even closer, turning away as if she needed to protect her.
The fury in the girl’s gaze despite her fear told me she planned to do just that. That she’d honor Irina’s memory with her life if need be.
The whimper Irina emitted was the first sign that she was even alive, filling my chest with hope. I shoved down my fury, trying to force it away. The vengeance I would take would have to wait until Irina was stable. Until she was tended to and safe on the Bellandi Estate. Approaching her with violence would help no one, even if I wanted to lay the hearts of her enemies at her feet.
“I want to help her,” I said, approaching the girl as I spun my gun around to my back and raised my hands placatingly. She loosened her grip, letting Irina’s head loll to the side so that she could see me.