“It’s about fucking time he cut his goddamn teeth,” Ryker said, charging into the fray. His hatchet swung, catching someone in the face and making a hole where his nose had been.
The others followed behind him, Matteo’s fear-filled face emerging from behind Simon’s protection as the guard clung to his boss. “Where are they?” he demanded, clenching his jaw as he prepared for the worst.
“Don took them,” I said, raising my head.
Matteo nodded, his brow furrowing as he turned and shot someone between the eyes. We’d fallen for the trap Darragh and Murphy had laid, let a viper into our nest carelessly because she’d been a victim.
Someone who Irina had sacrificed herself to save.
I grabbed a man around the throat as I spun, squeezing until his face turned blue. Calix was at my side in an instant, his knife pressing into the fleshy underside of the man’s jaw as he kicked the gun held at his side away.
It skittered across the floor, bumping into one of the bodies that littered Ivory’s beloved kitchen. “Where is Darragh?” I asked, knowing the others would ask for Murphy enough for all of us.
I wanted the man who had wronged my woman, wanted to watch his blood flow across the tile floor.
He laughed, flinching as Calix’s knife pressed tighter into his flesh. “You’re too late,” he wheezed, and the blood in my veins turned to ice as he glanced toward the hall that led to the basement. “He’s waiting for her.”
Calix shoved the knife deep, cutting off whatever else he might have said as he looked at me for a brief moment. He abandoned the knife, the two of us bolting for the door to the basement.
If Madison survived this, if I lived to tell the tale, I would peel the flesh from her bones so slowly that all that remained was pulp.
“They’re in the tunnels!” I yelled, making Matteo and Yavin stare at me in horror. They killed who they could, trying to retreat to the entrance as Murphy’s men closed in.
Their numbers were dwindling. We would win the fight with the rest of our men having returned to the property. But would it still matter if they were gone?
Matteo touched his hand to the basement door, prying it open as Simon moved in behind him. His guard’s eyes flared with panic, shoving himself forward to knock Matteo out of the way as an explosion ripped through the house.
Heat struck the front of my body, knocking me backward as everything went silent. I watched Calix fly backward at my side, his body airborne as the blast tore through the mansion.
Sound returned the moment my back struck the floor, the air knocked out of my chest as I wheezed and turned to heave.
A second explosion sounded upstairs. I felt a brief moment of terror. Then it all turned to black as the Estate, our home, crumbled around us.
68
IRINA
Aoife clutched my hand in hers, holding on to me tightly as we left everything behind. Ivory led the way with Don at her side, the dim, flickering lighting of old electricity the only thing we had to light our path.
I wanted to turn back, needed to go back, for Scar. If he was going to die, if I was going to die, then I wanted to be at his side.
Fuck.
“I have to go back,” I said, watching as the thought settled over Aoife. As much as she wanted to claim that she hated Yavin, something I’d seen in her gaze as he sent her off to save her life hinted at more. She’d never been put first, and the fact that Yavin would sacrifice everything for her prioritized things quickly.
“We can’t,” she whispered, watching as Don glanced over his shoulder at us. The man was on high alert, waiting for the moment when I would do something he disapproved of. He’d witnessed far too much of my suicidal ideation in those first weeks I’d spent at the Bellandi Estate.
What was walking into a shoot-out compared to leaping face-first off a railing?
Terrifying. That’s what it fucking was.
“I don’t want to say it,” she started, screwing her eyes shut as moisture gathered in her eyes. “But they’re probably already dead, Irina.”
“I refuse to believe that,” I snapped, tugging my hand away from hers. My breath caught in my throat when Don pinned me with his stare, the aging man and I both knowing he wasn’t capable of stopping me if I disobeyed the men’s orders.
Not without hurting me.
I turned, taking the first few steps back toward the estate we’d left behind us as we navigated the tunnel that wound beneath the suburbs of Chicago.
Boom.
Debris fell from the ceiling as the tunnel trembled, the walls seeming to lament with the pain from the earth itself.
“What was that?” Aoife whispered, her voice tinged with the same panic coursing through me.
I looked over my shoulder at her, the two of us moving in sync to hurry back toward the house. Consequences be damned. If Scar was alive to be furious with me, I’d take my punishment with a smile on my face.
The second explosion rocked the very bedrock. My legs trembled beneath me as I dropped to the ground, everything in my body shaking as the world seemed to fall around us. It echoed through the ground, the vibration sinking into my bones.
Oh God.
“You can’t go up there,” Ivory said, taking a few steps back to hold out her spare arm for me to take. She pulled me from the ground. “Think about what Scar would want.”
“What does it matter, if he’s gone?” I whispered, her gaze snagging mine. Ivory dropped her eyes, her own fear for her husband she hadn’t seen since he left the estate lurking in her gaze.
“Don!” Aoife screamed at my side. Ivory and I both spun, watching as a man emerged from the shadows further down the tunnel.
Everything in me pulled taut. Recognition flared inside me, threatening to reduce me to a shriveling mess of fear.
Time slowed.
His features became clear as he emerged more fully, raising the gun at his side and crashing it down against Don’s head before he had time to spin to face the new threat.
Don crumpled, falling to the ground in a heap. Ivory backed away slowly, Luna clutched in her arms as Aoife and I exchanged a glance.
I swallowed, nodding my head when Darragh snatched Don’s gun off the round and took his first steps toward where Ivory and Luna stood. The menace on his face, the cruelty stamped into the lines of his features, left little doubt as to what he planned for the two of them.
The wife and daughter of Matteo Bellandi were worth more than I could even possibly imagine on the black market if he chose to sell them, but breaking Matteo might be worth even more.
Sucking back a ragged sob, I watched as Aoife darted forward first. She put herself between Darragh and Ivory, acting as a human barrier that wouldn’t last long while I stood frozen to the spot.
My legs wouldn’t move, the memories of my agony crashing over me, leaving me paralyzed.
“Murphy will be very happy to see you, sweetheart,” he murmured, tilting his head to the side. “I was expecting Matteo’s prize bitch and my sweet pet. You, on the other hand? That’s a bonus. I’ve seen what he has planned to punish you for your betrayal. I’ll enjoy watching.”
“Fuck you,” Aoife snarled, spitting at his feet.
Darragh’s face twisted, the back of his hand lashing out to crack against Aoife’s cheek so hard she spun, then I heard her head thunk on the ground when she fell. Clutching her cheek, she struggled to get to her feet despite the pain.