"Don't you dare. I love you, Angel. I'm coming for you, and I'm never letting you out of my sight again, you understand me?" The door crashed open, the sound of it carrying through the house. I was out the back door when the sound of yelling carried through it, followed by gunshots. "Fuck! Ivory!" Matteo shouted, but I didn't answer.
With tears streaming down my face, I got to my feet and ran through the yard. "I've got her!" a male voice shouted, and I sobbed.
Weight hit my side, and I went flying and landed sprawled out on my back with my hands curled around my stomach protectively. "Matteo!" I cried, reaching for the phone I dropped.
A male hand reached down, plucking it off the ground and I followed it up to stare into Adrian's crazed, dark eyes. "Goodbye, Matteo." He grinned, dropping the phone to the ground and stomping on it until it crunched, and the call disconnected. I gaped up at him in horror. "Hello, beautiful. Fancy seeing you here." I started to stand, getting to my knees warily and eyeing him.
"Adrian, what are you doing?" I asked, and then he was wrapping a hand around my upper arm and dragging me through the yard. "Help!" I screamed. "Somebody!"
He made no move to stop me. Didn't seem to care that someone would have heard the commotion. He hurried me through the house, because there was one person, I knew he wouldn't want to face.
Matteo.
God, what if I never saw him again?
Bodies scattered my living room, and the sight of Scar lying motionless among them was enough to make me collapse despite his grip on me. I barely touched my fingers to his face, shaking at the sight of all the blood covering his chest. "Scar?" I asked, hoping like Hell he'd wake up and just look at me. "No. No, please," I begged, fighting off Adrian's arms as they wrapped around my waist. "No! Let go of me!" I shouted, twisting to claw at his face. When a nail broke the skin of his cheek, those eyes darkened, and I froze in horror. I didn't even see the fist he aimed for my temple.
All I knew was the sudden explosion of pain.
And then black.
Thirty-Two
Matteo
My blood roared in my ears, drowning out the sounds of Lino shouting at me from the driver's seat as he navigated through traffic. My men's SUV's surrounded us, racing for the only thing that mattered in my life.
My angel and my unborn child.
In the hands of that mother-fucking sadistic piece of shit.
I should have never allowed her to leave the estate. I should have never touched her.
"Matteo!" Lino shouted, finally drawing my attention away from the dead silence coming through my phone. "Talk to me, man. What's going on?"
"He has her," I answered, feeling a deadly, killing calm settle over me. I knew it wouldn't last, knew that as soon as I saw for myself that Ivory was gone from her house the rage would return.
But until that moment I embraced the monster. Let it take over me as I coordinated with my men.
The second we pulled up in front of Ivory's house, the house I'd left only an hour before, I was out of the car before it even stopped. "Matteo!" Lino shouted, throwing the car into park and following me. I didn't know what he was so worried about, it was obvious that Adrian and his men were gone. Not a single vehicle remained, just random bodies left to rot on Ivory's floor as I threw myself in the open front door.
In the middle of the chaos, Scar laid there—entirely too still. Lino went to him, checking for vitals, but a few of the men went to check the rest of the house. “Ivory!” I yelled, racing for the backyard, unsure if it should relieve me that I didn't find Ivory laying there.
She was alive but being with Adrian was far from a blessing. As soon as he put his hands on her, she'd wish she was dead.
He would hurt her. He would break her.
I couldn't let it happen.
Lino stepped out into the yard, looking around in dismay. "We'll find her," he said.
"She has a tracker," I reminded him, never more grateful that I'd disrespected Ivory's wishes than in that moment. "Get the guys ready."
"Scar's alive," he said, making my head jolt in shock. "Riddled with bullets, but somehow the stubborn fuck is still alive. Bruno and Marino took him to Doc."
"Good," I nodded, pulling out my phone and opening the app that would show me Ivory's location. They were still moving, but it would take me time to assemble enough of a team to stage an invasion wherever they landed. "I want every man we have."
"You've got it. I'll call Don, get him on it too." I gave a last nod, calling the one other man I wanted at my side. The one man I could trust to make sure Adrian suffered a very slow, painful death while I tended to my angel.
As much as I wanted to deliver his punishment personally, I knew Ryker would be a far worse punishment than I could ever dream to be.
And that would have to be enough.
“Yeah?” he asked when he answered the phone. Simon stood at the front door and nodded to me as I made my way back to the car, hopping in the driver’s seat to be ready to go with me wherever I went.
“Adrian Ricci took Ivory. I need you to give him the worst death imaginable,” I hissed into the phone as I made my way back inside her mostly empty house.
“When and where?”
“Get your ass to her house,” I said, rattling off her address. “We’re mobilizing now.” I kicked one of his men’s bodies for good measure, wanting to make even their corpses suffer for the part they played in taking Ivory from me. The number of them was a sign of just how hard Scar had fought to protect her, taking out half a dozen men on his own before they took him down.
“On my way.”
Thirty-Three
Ivory
I woke up.
Slowly.
Disoriented.
The pillow beneath my face wasn't mine. It didn't smell like Matteo, and the fabric of the pillowcase was far too luxurious to be the cheap set I'd picked up at the store with Scar. My face throbbed as I moved, and my head swam the moment I peeled myself off the pillow.
Deep wood-paneled walls stared back at me from the edges of the room, a navy comforter draped over me. I touched the side of my head, wincing at the pain radiating from there and the dried blood that seemed so coarse against my fingers.
I ignored my swimming head, shoving the comforter off me and got to my feet slowly. I swallowed my nausea as my stomach rolled once I was standing, determined not to vomit until I figured out where I was.
The first door I came to was a bathroom, and I stared into the mirror at the huge, mottled bruise at my temple that covered my brow bone and the top of my cheekbone. The blood seemed to be from a minor cut, and I ignored it in favor of finding my way out of the bedroom.
Seeing the bruise, I knew without a doubt Adrian must have knocked me out. Everything came back to me in a rush of panic.
Scar was dead.
I swallowed back my tears, knowing I needed to find a way out of that sadistic fuck's home. That was what Scar would want. I could mourn him once I was safe, could tell him how sorry I was that my stupid decisions had gotten him killed.
I liked to think he would forgive me.