Dante (30 page)

“That’s the only thing helping me to breathe right now.”

“Do you want to wish me luck?” Cat asked.

“No.” Dante stepped forward and grabbed Cat’s face in both of his hands, kissing her so fiercely it almost hurt. He pulled away, reluctance filling his gaze. “No luck, you don’t need it.”

Bulletproof
, Cat thought. He would always see her like that, even if she wasn’t.

“Don’t be stupid,” her husband said one last time before letting her hand go.

Cat couldn’t look back at Dante as she walked away. She had to fix what she broke—her family.

It was a good ten minute walk through the empty streets to get to the warehouse in question. On a weekend, little work was done around here, apparently.

Cat recognized the sign on the front of a drab, gray warehouse that she had been told to look for. Besides the front access with a window darkened by paint, there was also a small, metal garage door. There was a security camera nearly hidden in the eave of the entrance. She didn’t have to wait long. The groaning shudder of metal lifting signaled the garage door opening.

A white car drove out as soon as the door was high enough for it to slip under. With windows tinted a dark black, Cat couldn’t make out who sat behind the wheel, but she knew.

When the car came to a stop only a foot from her form, Cat stared head-on into the windshield. The driver’s side window rolled down three inches.

“Money buys a lot of things, Catrina,” she heard a familiar voice say.

Bruno.

“It does,” Cat said.

“
Mmhmm
, like bulletproof glass and a hideout. Best way I’ve spent my money in a long time. Take the coat off.”

Cat hesitated. There was a small revolver in the inside pocket of her jacket, meant to be a backup. Still, she had to wonder if little Johnathan was in the car, too. It was a possibility.

“Take it off,” Bruno repeated.

The coat fell to the ground in a second.

“Beautiful, Catrina. As always, you dress to impress your prey. At your thigh, toss the knife.”

Cat’s jaw tensed, her only show of irritation. Of course, he would know about her knife. It was, usually, the only weapon she kept on her and had been for years. She always had two or three as a replacement. Cat reached up the skirt of her dress and pulled the knife from the sheath at her inner thigh. It clanked on the pavement as it dropped.

“And the boots, they can go, too.”

“There’s nothing in my boots,” Cat said.

“Yes, well, I don’t trust you. Whores like you have a way of lying about everything. Off with them if you want your
principe
back.”

“What about your
principe
?”

“Off with the goddamn boots, Catrina.”

She kicked her ankle-high, suede heels to the ground, losing a good four inches in height in the process. Now, Bruno would be able to look down on her if he stood in front of her. It unsettled her to think he might be above her in any way.

“In the car, now.”

Again, Cat wavered. She hadn’t heard a single cry come from inside the vehicle. Nothing to suggest her nephew was inside. Beyond that, she hadn’t caught a glimpse of her husband or Lucian since she left their cars behind. She certainly couldn’t see around the fucking building given her position.

Don’t let him lead you away.

Don’t be stupid.

In the back of her mind, Johnathan came to the forefront like the bang of a gun. He could be in the car. Perhaps sleeping, which would be the best choice. 

“Here’s the thing,” Bruno muttered, bringing Cat from her thoughts. “You’ve got five seconds to get your pretty ass inside this car, Catrina Danzi.”

“Marcello. My name is Catrina
Marcello
.”

“Get in the car.”

“No,” Cat said, refusing to let him win.

“Do it, or I’ll blow that building straight to hell.”

Cat’s heart stopped. “What?”

“You know me, Catrina. I don’t let things go to the wayside. I’ve got a backup, like always. There isn’t a single doubt in my mind that someone is attempting to get into that building. You’re just the fucking bait. And if you don’t get inside this car and take me to my son, I’ll blow your nephew and whoever else is trying to reach that kid into nothing but ash and bits. Get in.”

Cat did.

Cruel, cold eyes surveyed her when she closed the door. Warmth blew from the heater, warming her frozen feet, but Cat didn’t care. She was far too focused on Bruno and the wickedly evil sneer he sported.

“Let’s go for a little drive,
cagna
.”

Cat didn’t speak as the car pulled away from the warehouse. She kept one eye on Bruno, noticing the gun and cellphone he held in one hand while he steered with the other. For a good two minutes, he drove in silence. Cat wasn’t sure where they were going as he weaved in and out of backstreets she didn’t recognize.

When Bruno did finally speak, a nauseated sensation flooded Cat. “Play good, or I’ll hit the call button. If I do that, the building behind us is going to go bang in a big way.”

“What about your men inside?”

Bruno shrugged. “They matter little to me and they have no idea of my true plans. I’ve waited a long time to speak with you, Catrina.”

“I suspected.”

“
Sì
, and you should know, I’m going to enjoy this.”

“I’m not going to give you Michel,” Cat said, hoping to distract him in some way. The further from her husband they drove, the worse her dread became.

“I don’t care.”

Cat stiffened in the seat. “Excuse me?”

“That bastard of Catherine’s, I don’t care if I ever see him again. Born with brown eyes and blond hair, like I wouldn’t fucking know.
Cristo
, that goddamn thing isn’t mine.”

“But you celebrated—”

“Others did, I simply went along with it.” Bruno took a deep breath, gaze narrowing. “She was going to leave, you know.”

“What?”

“Catherine.” Bruno’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. “I just knew it. The next time you came, she was going to leave with you. I couldn’t let her.”

“She was my sister and you hurt her. I couldn’t let you keep hurting her.”

“I loved her!”

Cat inched slightly away from the anger flying from the man beside her.

Love came in many forms, and sometimes, one of those forms was the terrible misdeed of abuse. Most times, because the abuser didn’t know any other way. The abused, however, was the one who learned no other way.

“You hurt her, Bruno,” Cat repeated. “You’re an awful, disgusting piece of shit and—”

His hand left the steering wheel in a flash, cracking Cat in the face. She was knocked against the passenger window with a thud, failing to catch her balance. The movement of the car jerking to the side before rolling to a stop was the only thing Cat felt before Bruno was on her. The gun in his hand waved in front of her face, the cellphone lost somewhere on the floor. When Bruno’s foot stomped down to the floor as if he were bracing himself, something crunched and he cussed.

She sincerely hoped that was the fucking phone. Cat shook her head from side to side in order to keep the barrel of the gun away from her head. All she needed to do was stay alive.

Bruno’s rage made his hands shake, unable to hold the weapon steady.

Cat used his weakness to her advantage, knocking the gun out of his hand with her palm and sending it flying into the backseat somewhere. Bruno laughed darkly above her, slapping Cat hard before both of his hands were at her throat. He squeezed just enough to take her oxygen away.

“It doesn’t matter,” Bruno murmured, a hint of a smile playing at his mouth. He squeezed harder and Cat dug her nails into his forearms, drawing blood. God, she couldn’t breathe. “I also had the bomb set up to a wireless timer through a WiFi internet clock. It’s going to blow regardless if I made the call or not. It started counting down the moment the garage door lifted.”

“N-no.”

“Oh, yes. How many came for the boy, Catrina? Two, five, maybe? More?
Dio
, I hope so. I bet the boy’s father and his uncles came. One of them is your husband, too. Bye, bye Marcellos.”

Cat trembled under his weight on her chest and the words coming from his mouth. Faintly, Cat was sure she could hear the muffled sound of a child crying, but blood rushed in her ears. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her.

“You made me hit her, Catrina. It was you who did that by putting nonsense in her head. Your heart for mine.”

This man was crazy.

“
Boom
,” Bruno whispered.

Chapter Eighteen

Dante popped the truck on the stolen car, pulling two items out of the back. He handed one of the Kevlar vests to Lucian. Better to be safe than sorry. It was one thing to go in on something when you knew what was waiting behind the walls, it was an entirely different thing to go in on something when you didn’t have a fucking clue.

Lucian pulled off his jacket and yanked the vest over his head. Dante did the same. Reaching back into the truck, he brought out two weapons Lucian had brought along. Neither Gio nor Dante kept any real stash of weapons on them but for a few handguns they favored. They didn’t need to with Lucian’s overly extensive collection at hand.

The Uzis were a rapid fire assault weapon that could and would do a fucking hell of a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. It was also practically uncontrollable in the wrong hands. The Uzis weren’t in the wrong hands today.  Along with the clip for the Uzi, Dante had his magnum at his back, too.

“You okay?” Dante asked his quiet brother.

Lucian wouldn’t meet Dante’s eyes, but his jaw was taut and his hands were steady, gripping the Uzi so tight his knuckles were white. “No.”

Honesty was the best policy, Dante supposed. Beyond that, it was good indication of what kind of headspace his older brother was in.

“
Cazzo merda
.” Gio’s curse filtered in from the Bluetooth in Dante’s ear.

“What is it?” Lucian asked.

Gio didn’t answer, instead getting out of his car with the laptop in hand. He set the computer to the top of the car, turning it around so the brothers could see the screen. Four camera views had been separated and enlarged from the rest. All were for the inside of the building.

“What do you see?” Gio asked.

Dante did a quick survey of the vantage points. “Three men, guns, and a lot of boxes, crates, and shit. What are those barrels?”

“Exactly,” Gio snapped.

“John’s not on view,” Lucian said low. “We don’t even know if he’s in there. This could be a trap.”

Gio pointed his finger at the barrels, making colors bloom on the screen. “No, behind those barrels. See?”

Dante could. What looked like a door was covered by metal barrels piled high. “What would that be, an office?”

“I think so,” Gio stated.

“And there’s no camera for that room?” Lucian asked.

“No.”

“Damn,” Dante grunted, rubbing at his temples. He glanced at Lucian, deciding to let his brother make the final call since it was his son. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to know if my son is behind that door,” Lucian muttered.

Dante nodded. “Okay. Gio, has Cat made it to the front, yet?”

Gio turned the laptop around and clicked a couple of keys. “She’s just coming into view. You two need to hurry.”

“Keep an eye on my wife,” Dante warned.

Catrina never did know how to follow his rules very damn well.

Gio cocked a brow. “Give her some fucking credit. There’s one camera along the back where Lucian is heading. I’ve got control of it and I’ll black it out, but I can only do that for a short while before it looks suspicious on whoever is watching theirs. Get going. Be smart.”

Lucian and Dante left without another word. At the second warehouse, the two split up. It didn’t take Dante long to skip over through a second alleyway and find the warehouse in question. He made his way down the narrow walls until he came to the exit door.

“Wood framing all the way around the door,” Dante noted.

“Can you shoot the lock out without ricochet?” Gio asked.

“Yeah,” Dante confirmed.

“Shit,” Lucian hissed.

Dante didn’t like the sound of that. “What’s wrong?”

“Mine is metal framing.” Lucian cursed again, angrier the second time. “You’re going to have to let me in, Dante. We can’t afford to waste time by me coming around.”

“One of the guys are walking toward the back,” Gio noted. “He’s the one on the cameras, I suspect. I’ve had the back one blacked out for an entire minute, and I can see through the coding he was trying to fix it, but my control on the program overrides his. We need to move, now.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dante said, trying to think. “Can you see my door?”

“From the side of another view. There’s a few crates around it, why?”

“That’s all I needed to know.” Dante just needed some form of protection when he blew the door open.

“Just something for you to take note of before you go in,” Gio added quietly.

Dante aimed the Uzi at the wood casing around the door. “What?”

“I could only see three before, but there’s at least five. They’re waiting with assault fire like ours, they know. A car has left the front and Catrina is standing in front of it.”

Dante hesitated. “She’s not getting in the car, right?”

“No.”

“Then she’s doing what we needed, drawing him out.”

“What if John is in the car?” Lucian asked.

“He wants Michel, right?” Dante asked back. “And five men inside makes me think there’s something he doesn’t want us getting, so …”

“Blow it open,” Lucian said.

The Uzi’s trigger pulled back smooth under Dante’s finger. Bullets plowed into the wood casing around the latch, ripping the framing keeping the lock in place apart.

“They’re moving like rats inside,” Gio said. “Guns are out.”

“And we’re in,” Dante told his brothers as the door popped open.

“Two are coming straight at you but there’s a crate in the way.”

“Got it.” Dante pried on the door, opening the heavy metal the rest of the way with his Uzi still aimed in front of him. The moment he stepped into the warehouse, bullets tore into the crate Gio mentioned. And not Dante’s fucking bullets. His knees hit cement, lowering to keep his target from being obvious as packing peanuts spilled to the floor. “Shit.”

“You good?”

“Perfect,” Dante answered Gio.

“Hurry up,” Lucian growled. “Some fucking idiot is shooting at my door, and I’m not even inside.”

“Yeah, coming, man.”

The noise inside the warehouse was volcanic. Gunfire toward the back, somewhere in front of him, and shouts near the entrance of the building. The situation would confuse a frightened man, but Dante wasn’t easily scared. He was already off his knees and moving to the side, shielded by another crate. Above the sounds, Dante could hear the familiar cry of his nephew, but he couldn’t place the direction from where it came. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere all at once.

As Dante slid around the other side of the crate, shards of wood blew past his face from the crate the fools were still shooting into. “I can hear John, but I—”

Lucian’s relief was instant in the speakers. “I want my son.”

“Yeah, yeah, hurry,” Dante practically snarled. “I’m trying not to get shot here.”

“A couple in the chest isn’t going to hurt you,” Gio barked.

Actually, even with the Kevlar vest on, it would. It might not kill him, but it would hurt like a motherfucker.

When Dante came to the front of the crate, he looked around the side quickly, noted the two men who couldn’t see him, shoved his Uzi out, and tucked his head back in. His heartbeat was like a drum in his ears pulled the trigger back on the Uzi one more time, using both hands to steady the jerking of the gun as bullets soared out rapidly. 

Fuck, he should have brought ear plugs.

The moment Dante heard two distinct shouts of surprise and pain, he cut across the aisle without checking back on the fools who had been shooting at him. More crates and piles of boxes made him unsure of his position.

“Gio, where am I going?”

“You’re on the right path, just keep moving forward from your current spot,” his younger brother said. “Problem is, the two from the front are working their way down and the one by Lucian’s door is turning around, too.”

Then, Gio swore loudly, keys clacking on the other end of the line. “What the fuck did she do?”

Dante’s heart stopped as he slammed his back into a wall of boxes. The heat in the warehouse seemed to jump up to an unbearable level. There was only one
she
Gio could be talking about … Catrina.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Gio’s frustration turned louder in Dante’s ears.

Johnathan’s quiet crying continued to echo through the space.

“Should I ask?” Dante asked. “Or should I just keep going?”

Gio made an awful sound that tore through Dante’s chest. “I had the most important cameras up and zoomed in. I’m sorry, I just checked the front feed and she’s gone. So is the car.”

Oh, God no.

“I—”

“Let me in!” Lucian roared.

Gunfire sounded a blink before bullets ripped through the boxes beside Dante. “Fucking Christ!”

“Move!” Gio yelled.

Dante squeezed his eyes shut, decided to trust that his wife knew what she was doing even if listening to him might save her goddamn life, and started moving again. Panic saturated his insides as he weaved through the throng of storage and crates. Repeatedly, he checked over his shoulder for the two Gio mentioned, but not once did he see them.

Turning a corner in the makeshift aisles of crap, Dante could see the red flickers of light that signaled the loading docks and back exit where Lucian was waiting.

“Gun from the back turning the corner ten feet ahead and to your left in less than five,” Gio warned. “The other two are still fucking around looking down aisles thirty feet or so back. You’ve got a bit before they catch up with the way they’re going on.”

“Thanks.”

Dante lowered his Uzi and pulled the magnum from the holster at his back. No need to waste bullets. Flicking the safety off before he cocked the hammer back, Dante walked forward and raised the magnum. The moment the idiot popped around the corner, Dante’s gun met his head.

The bullet lodged into the man’s temple, killing him instantly. Blood sprayed as the corpse went flying into another wall of boxes. More packing peanuts spilled when the boxes fell. An assault weapon the man held clattered to the cement floor. Dante picked it up and slung the weapon over his shoulder by the strap. No need to give those fuckers any more ammo than they already had.

Shouts rang out from somewhere behind Dante. Angry, Italian shouts.

“Yeah, now they’re coming,” Gio said. “You’re definitely clear for Lucian, though, just keep a watch on your back.”

Dante jogged through the maze of crates and boxes. “Got it.”

“And—” Gio’s words cut off briefly before he muttered, “What is this shit?”

“Gio, what’s up?” Dante asked as he finally came to the back exit. His foot landed to the bar across the exit, knocking it off and allowing the door to be opened.

Lucian slipped in wordlessly. His head snapped up, his gaze sweeping the ceiling at the sound of Johnathan’s faint cries still reverberating above and around them.

“Gio?” Dante asked.

“I gotta shut the cameras off,” Gio said quietly.

“What, why?” Lucian demanded.

Dante felt just as confused. Gio’s skills with computers and hacking had gone a long way for them today and beyond that, they still had two fuckers coming at them and fast.

“I already shut them off, so you’re on your own,” Gio explained. “The coding program—”

“We’re not the ones who understand that shit,” Lucian interrupted sharply.

“My router is trying to bounce onto another hotspot, one so close it would have to be inside the building, too. All I can tell from the codes is that something is counting down, man. In order for me to figure out what it is, I need to get out of this hotspot, and jump into that one.”

“Counting down,” Dante echoed, giving Lucian a look. “Holy fu—”

Lucian tackled Dante from the side, knocking them both to the floor. Dante’s shoulder bloomed in agony as his head cracked into cement. The whistling sound of bullets screamed in every direction. Both brothers scrambled for purchase against the slick cement under they finally found traction. As fast as lightning, they disappeared back into the maze of crates and boxes. A tipped over shipping crate became their shield, but Dante knew it would do little for them.

A burning sting ached in Dante’s jaw, wetness dripped down to his hand as he touched the spot. Hissing, he pulled his hand away to see blood covering his fingertips.

“Ah, fuck,” Dante breathed, patting his jaw again to guess how long the bullet graze was. At least three inches.

“Shit.” Lucian grabbed his brother’s face, tipping Dante’s head up. “It’s just a flesh wound, nothing serious.”

“It’s bleeding pretty fucking badly for it to be just a flesh wound.”

“Because it’s on your face,” Lucian replied completely unbothered and letting Dante go. “Now shut up and let me listen.”

Lucian turned away, popping up over the crate to look around. When he did, Dante flinched. Two bullets were lodged deep into the back of the Kevlar vest Lucian wore. That had to be hurting.