Lifting my chin, I faced the group of men in front of me. Three were familiar faces—my cousins—and the two I didn’t recognize looked to have barely reached adulthood.
I took a halting step in the direction my cousin indicated, attempting to ignore the pain shooting up my leg and torso.
Movement at my back had me stiffening.
Then, “Me,” Dan whispered, as he scooped me up into his arms.
One of the goons shifted as though he were going to stop Dan, but Dan just held me closer and said, “She’s injured and won’t make it far. Do you want us to go with you or not?”
Silence.
Then a brusque nod.
And I decided to play up the weak woman angle. Perhaps the fuckers would underestimate me. Maybe they would think me too hurt and wouldn’t pay attention, and then we’d have our way out.
Of course, it wasn’t hard to play up the weak woman angle.
Not when I was hurting and dizzy from blood loss and the pain.
“Focus, Ava,” Dan hissed.
I nodded. “I am.”
“Your—”
“No talking,” one of the men snapped. He turned and started walking, leading us through the series of corridors I knew all too well. Down. Guiding us farther into the twisted maze of rocks. My father loved this castle on the hillside, loved the ancient hallways and tangled passageways, the small cells, the dark, damp space.
I’d played in these halls when I was a child, hiding and seeking and laughing like a lunatic anytime I was spotted by one of my father’s men.
Until I’d realized that the halls led to cells.
Fun times.
Tearing my gaze from the walls, I glanced up at Dan. He held my gaze and tapped the inside of my elbow, where the tracker was implanted. I knew it was his way of reminding me that though we might feel like they were alone, KTS would have our backs. The tracking chips were another new technology, so at least there was a good chance they wouldn’t be compromised, if it truly was the former KTS agent, Daniel, who was the one feeding information and working with KTS’s enemies.
And we had a chip outside the heavy rock walls, so even if my signal was compromised, Dan’s wouldn’t be.
I covered his hand with my own, squeezed lightly.
Then I rested my head on his chest and pretended to be out of it.
Sadly, it was all too easy.
Twenty-One
Southern Italy
Unknown hrs local time
Dan
My ribs throbbed, my mind spun, and Ava in my arms was all too right.
And we were being led deeper into some sick fucker’s dungeon.
A sick fuck whose household she’d grown up in.
I wanted to refuse on principle to follow them, refuse to go anywhere near that room I’d been taken to before, refuse to carry Ava down this fucking sicko path.
Her father, Frankie, was on the top of KTS’s list of bad guys to take down. He’d ruled southern Italy with an iron fist, single-handedly driving out progress and better opportunities for the people who live there by expanding his criminal enterprises. He looped in young boys, got them running drugs and laundering money. Families living there had to pay protection money from their meager earnings, making it extremely difficult to move away, to find better and safer opportunities.
And Frankie used them as fodder.
Not giving a fuck if they were killed or injured, not giving a damn for the families left behind.
All while he lived in an expensive castle above the glittering Mediterranean Sea.
The Italian who’d ordered us to follow him stopped in front of a familiar large wooden door, knocking once on the thick board. A voice called from inside, and then the panel was pulled open.
And then we were face-to-face with Frankie Toscalo himself.
Ava’s spine stiffened, tension invading every part of her body that was touching mine.
“Bella,” Frankie said.
Ava shifted slightly in my arms, and I got the message, carefully setting her down, not liking the way her cheeks went even paler, nor the fragile way she held herself. But her voice was steady. “What do you want, Frankie?”
The man was plump and balding, the buttons of his white silk button-down slightly bulging, the remnants of his hair nearly white. He leaned against the wall across the room from us, arms casually overlapped, smile unaffected by the disdain in his daughter’s voice.
“I’m your father, daughter.”
“You stopped being that a long time ago,” Ava spat.
He strolled toward us, goons at his back. “Ah, you wound me, bella.” He stroked a hand down Ava’s face then cupped her cheek. She jerked away and stumbled several paces away.
I stepped closer—or tried to anyway. Hands gripped my arms, wrenched me back.
“I cared for you. I provided food and love—”
She laughed darkly. “You never loved me.”
I didn’t expect him to move so fast.
One second he was standing a foot in front of Ava, his eyes darkening, and the next, he had burst forward and punched her in the stomach.
She crumpled to the floor, a cry of pain escaping.
I tore my arms free from my captor’s grasp and jumped forward, moving between them, blocking her father when he would have kicked out at her, and earning a blow from the goons behind us for my trouble. I pushed Frankie back then spun, knocked one of the fuckers on his ass, reached out for another, but I couldn’t do more than that because—
Click.
“Don’t fuck with me.” Soft, deadly words that nonetheless easily reached my ears.
And sent a cold chill down my spine.
I slowly rotated back.
Frankie didn’t lower the gun from where it was pointed at Ava. “How did KTS know about the hotel?”
Silence. From both me and Ava.
A gunshot rang out.
I lunged forward again, trying and failing to put my body between her and the bullet.
But I couldn’t outpace gunpowder or a piece of metal flying three times the speed of sound, and the sound it made sinking into Ava’s flesh was fucking sickening.
Then I heard the click again.
“How?” he repeated.
Ava spat.
The gun never wavered, Frankie’s finger tightening—
“We had a source,” I said.
“Who?”
“He’s dead.”
Click.
A bullet exploded from the gun, hitting the stone floor next to her shoulder, sending chips of rocks flying up into the air.
I straightened from where I’d thrown my body over Ava. She’d gone quiet and deathly still, and panic was tearing through me. “You can put as many bullets as you want into me,” I said. “Into your daughter, but that won’t change the fact that the man is dead.”
Silence.
Frankie stepped closer, pressed the gun to my temple. I could disarm him in an instant, but I held my ground, knowing the other men in the room had weapons that could be drawn before I could do anything to get us to safety. “Our source told us that something big was going to go down at the hotel on that date,” I said. “We had no other information besides that.”
Frankie’s eyes were so much like Ava’s.
A deep chocolate brown.
Except where Ava’s had a warmth I could sense, even when there was ice on the surface, Frankie’s were like looking into a black fucking hole. There was no soul inside, no caring.