Divided (Unguarded #2) (17 page)

“Mason. Roamyn. Get out here.”

I sit up from the couch in Mason’s office the tone in Elias’s voice blasting me with worry.

We run, fast.

Elias stands by his desk, precinct phone still in his hand, grim twist to his mouth. Something’s really fucking wrong.

“Giuseppe and Lucio just got out. Charges were dropped. Evidence went missing.”

My heartbeat thrashes in my ears as I thump a fist into the wall beside me. The pain from the blow not registering with the fury pumping through my veins.

Mason snaps. “How the fuck is that even possible? Why weren’t we informed this was happening? Fuck.”

Elias shakes his head and I pull at my hair
.
Doesn’t take a genius to know they’d have pulled strings and paid off every corrupt cop and judge to not only make this happen but to keep it from us as long as they could
.

I clench my jaw, twisting to Mase.

“Alison.”

“Lindsey,” we say at the same time. Our minds now on one thing and one thing only. Getting to our women before they do.

“Let’s go,” Mason calls out, heading into his office. I grab my gun and badge from my desk and run out with Eli. Mase comes up behind us outside minutes later, squad keys in hand. I blast the sirens, Mason drops the clutch, and before we know it we’ve cut three cars off heading into the street.

“Cassidy’s there. Call her,” Mason orders while swerving through traffic.

Elias dials Cassidy, and every second it takes to get there, my throat closes up as memories with Ali flash before my eyes. The Brooklyn Bridge, where I made her smile for the first time. The night where we stood in the soaking rain and I realized whether I wanted it or not, she’d branded my soul with her sass and her story. The morning in rehab when she woke up in my arms after a night filled with nightmares she’ll never forget, and when I asked her if she was okay, she nodded and whispered yes. She was far from okay. In that moment, I knew I’d met the strongest person I’d ever known. And the fear of now losing her is creeping in, devouring me. We weren’t informed about the Marino’s getting out and every protocol seems to have been broken which means Ali and Lindsey won’t be expecting them.

We pull up alongside the curb of Lindsey and Ali’s apartment building and jump out, leaving the motor still running. We yank out our guns, clicking the safety off and someone walks out of the building as we jump up the stairs. We slip through the door, guns up, guards up. Prepared. Ready. But still sweating what’s to come.

First floor, clear.

Elevator, clear.

The elevator dings. The doors open up and time slows down. Cassidy’s pain stricken face greets us with a whole new nightmare.

Her breathing is shallow and her chest heaves. Her shoulders droop and her voice tremors. “We’re too late. They’re gone.”

Bumps. One after another.

I slide, as whatever I’m in turns.

We’re moving. We must be moving.

My head throbs. My breathing is labored. My lungs struggle for breath thanks to the material covering my head. Every part of my body aches. Especially my cheek and my arms. My arms are tied up. Around something metal, maybe a pole. I groan as I try to move. Everything is slowly becoming clearer. I can hear faint voices in the light, but I’m still in darkness. I try to open my eyes but my lids are too heavy.

Banging starts. Frantic clanking against something metal and I whimper, the throb in my head thumping at the sound.

“Alison. Is that you?”

My ears perk up. “Lindsey.”

“Alison, oh… thank God. You’re alive.”

Her voice loosens the grip on my heart. She’s alive. I’m alive. We’re not gone yet which means there’s time. Cassidy would have been on her way over. When she finds us gone, she’ll call Roamyn and the others. I just have to pray they can somehow find us. Before we end up dead.

“Barely. My arms are going to fall off. I can’t move.” I groan as I try to sit up, my back protesting as it cracks.

“Ali, listen to me. Can you see anything, feel anything nearby? Are your hands tied up? I can’t move. I—”

A door slides open, the cool wind brushes against my skin. A shiver trembles through me, but it’s not from the weather.

“Well, well, you’re both awake. Just in time for your deaths.” Lucio’s indifferent tone sends me sprawling back into the corner of the vehicle. I hear a pull on chains and Lindsey grunt. Of course, she’s fighting back. She’s strong, confident, nothing can tear her down. I tuck my head low and Lucio laughs at me for retreating or Lindsey for fighting, I’m not sure. Either way, he’s a cold-blooded asshole.

“Oh, little Lindsey, give up now. Fighting will only make it worse.” Lucio mocks her with the nickname he’s always used for her, despite him being the younger of the two.

“I will never stop fighting,” she spits back while I stay silent. I’ve grown so much over the past few months, but being in Lucio’s presence binds me with hopelessness and sends me straight back into the dark hole I tried so hard to crawl out from.

Someone rips the material off of my head. Light blinds me. I squint to adjust to the brightness. The cuffs around my wrists are undone and I breathe relief when my arms are free. My eyes scan for Lindsey, panic ripping through me.

“Are you okay?” she asks, a tremble in her tone. I don’t have time to answer before I’m yanked out of the vehicle by one of Lucio’s men.

He and Lindsey argue until he’s had enough taunting her and reaches for me. Pulling me forward, we draw near to an abandoned warehouse made up of glass and graffitied rusted steel. Sirens echo through the factory district.
Please be coming to save us.
Optimism subsides, fast. A shiver jolts through me like a lightning strike sent to kill me. Giuseppe Marino walks out of the shadows. His presence validates everything I’ve been trying to convince myself won’t happen. Panic retches nausea from me. I heave.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die now.
Giuseppe sneers at me, cigarette in one hand, and a gun in the other. Beside him, two associates with big guns—huge guns, scary guns—that cause my heart to work faster as my breathing becomes shallower.
God, Cassidy hurry up. Please?
Smoke fills my lungs as Lucio pushes me toward him. Lindsey comes up beside me, shoulders heaving, fury behind her big blue eyes. If looks could kill, every man in this building would be dead.

“Lucio, about time, boy. Took you long enough. Girls, come in.” He throws his cigarette to the ground and steps to the side, gesturing a hand out in front of him for us.

“Come on,” Lucio mutters to me. But my feet refuse to move.

Lucio squeezes my arm, tight and bruising, and whispers in my ear, “Get moving, Ali. Don’t make this worse for yourself.”

I protest every word and scowl at him through the sweaty, damp hair sticking to my forehead and falling across my face. I grit my teeth. “What do you care?”

His eyes soften for a brief moment and for a second my heart lifts with a possible out. But I should have known better.

His lips curve into a smirk and his eyes harden. “I don’t, baby.”

A shudder ripples through me and I cringe.

He laughs and shoves me forward into a big room with plaster peeling off the walls and concrete beams scattered throughout the level. His gun digging into the center of my back until he shunts it down on my shoulder, sending me straight to my knees. I cry out in pain and Lindsey smacks down beside me.

“You asshole. Want to be any rougher?” she snaps back at the man who roughed her up, but he says nothing. He must know to say nothing if he wants to keep his job.

“Ah, so good to see you in fine form, Lindsey. I see nothing has changed over the past few months.” I kink my neck back to find Giuseppe’s smug face, smiling down at Lindsey.

“Fuck. You,” she hisses. All breath escapes me, waiting for the hit. The slap. Maybe a bullet for her backchat, but no retaliation comes which serves to confuse me more. I’ve never known what
it was my sister did for him, I just knew it wasn’t legal. But it’s clear Giuseppe actually…
respects
her. I narrow in on my sister, and my hair lifts on the back of my neck at her bared teeth, flaring nostrils, and tightness in her eyes. I gulp, fear clogging my airways because I’ve never seen this side of Lindsey. The side where emotion is a foreign concept, never seen, never felt—always a weakness. Where one second could be the difference between being killed and her killing. I glance back at Giuseppe, who’s grinning, loving every second of riling my sister up. My heart cracks at the realization of just how much I don’t know about Lindsey. We’d grown apart over the years. Both of us had reasons and played our roles in our lives dividing, but one thing is for sure, she’s more badass than I was ever aware of. I pray she can save us if the police can’t. Giuseppe runs a hand through his salt and pepper hair, which is perfectly aligned as it is every day. He bends down, undoing the button on his suit jacket as he moves. For a man who kills for leisure on a daily basis, there isn’t a drop of stained blood on his expensive suit.

“You ungrateful bitch… after everything I’ve done for you. After all these years of leading you down the right path, setting you up for a future in our world, you go and fuck it all up over your junkie sister who can’t stay clean.” A chuckle falls from his lips as he stands back up and he pulls a gun from inside his jacket, waving it around as he continues speaking, my heart sinking with the echo of his words in my head.

Your junkie sister.

“You know, I always thought you were a smart girl, Lindsey. But what you did in court, not so smart. Now you will pay, both of you will.”

A cry rips from somewhere deep inside of me. A strength I didn’t know I had pulls from me, unrelenting because I’m not that girl anymore. I’m not a junkie. I’m not a whore and refuse to fall victim to these men again.

“No. Please. You can’t. Not now, you can’t kill me now.” My body rocks with the sobs coming from me. I yell, I scream, I try, striving for a future that’s no longer just a dream. I try for me, for Lindsey, for Roamyn. I won’t give up.

“Oh, enough already. Come on, Papa, just get this done. I have to go meet Cannon in ten minutes.”

“Would you shut your fucking mouth, boy? Listen to yourself. You talk too fucking much in front of people,” Giuseppe yells at his son, his Italian accent thick and loud.

“They’re about to die. What the fuck does it matter what they hear?”

The men quip back and forth, but I barely hear them over my heart smacking against my ribs, loud and harrowing.

A soft touch soothes my back and I lift my head from my knees. Lindsey tries to calm me with a tight smile but it doesn’t relieve any fear.

“All right. Enough! It’s time.”

Lindsey and I both jump at Giuseppe’s tone, but when he trains his gun to my forehead, I turn to stone. Pain attacks my lungs, stealing air. I shake my head furiously. My chin trembles. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out because I can hardly breathe and my body fails me at the thought I’m about to die.

His lips curl into a smile, bringing on more tears. I whimper.

Lindsey reaches out, surrendering. Her voice is loud, scratchy, racking with fear for the first time since we entered the warehouse. “No! Don’t. Don’t kill her.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not yet.” Giuseppe tilts his head to the side, something snide in his tone ripples a chill over my clammy skin.

“One last person wants to see you, Alison,” he announces, his voice so smooth, without care that he’s about to kill me.

A woman’s heels travel toward me and as I spin around my heart fights to find balance between relief and revulsion.

“Oh, shit,” Lindsey whispers.

“Adriana,” her name falls from my lips, barely above a whisper.

She smiles at her father, greeting him the same way she would at any family gathering. “Princess.” Giuseppe envelopes his daughter with care and love he had once shown myself and Lindsey. Bile rises in my throat imagining those years.

“Papa, why don’t you let me do the honors with these two? After all, Ali was my best friend.” Adriana gives me a sweet smile, laced with evil, and it’s a blow worse than any Lucio or his father could have laid on me because this is Adriana. My best friend, putting out the palm of her hand for Giuseppe to slip her his gun. A gun she’ll use to kill me.

How could she?

Why would she?

“Make it clean, Adriana. We don’t need a big mess to clean up.”

My pulse speeds up. The adrenaline pushes me to fight.

“Adriana no, please. Don’t do this. I’m sorry, okay? So sorry I betrayed our family,” I beg and plead. Every part of me trembling worse with every passing second. Adriana never meets my pleas with a response or look. I sit back down, my chest caves in.

Adriana coughs and sits her shoulders back. She stands tall, posture stiff, legs apart, eyeing Lindsey while turning the gun on me.

I meet the barrel of the gun.

I meet the end.

I make peace with the present.

“Are you ready, Lindsey?” she asks and Lindsey frowns.

I close my eyes and Roamyn appears.

I whisper
, “I love you,”
even though he won’t hear it.

I still.

Bang.

I wait for it, for the moment where my soul is sucked from my body. When everything goes dark. When I leave this life and enter the next. But my heart still pounds heavily in my chest. Hot wet tears stain my cheeks. Gasps and rustling fill the air around me. My eyes fly open and everything slows. I soak in the fog of delirium while it lasts. Giuseppe is sprawled out on the ground, blood and brains splattered on his face and suit from a bullet wound to his skull. Adriana and Lindsey are fighting off Giuseppe and Lucio’s men, one by one. Another man comes from nowhere, shooting off bullets into the air and my panic deepens until I recognize the deep brown eyes behind his murderous stare.
No. It couldn’t be.

My eyes must deceive me. I blink again and my stomach flutters because I wasn’t imagining the madness I thought I saw. Lorenzo Baccarelli, Adriana’s childhood crush. Prince of the Baccarelli crime family. A boy whose death broke my best friend’s heart. A boy we mourned when his life was taken in retribution for the sins of his family. There he stands over a sight I’ve dreamt of since I was fifteen years old.