21
Dimitri
Sweat slips down my cheeks when I climb a rickety stairwell two steps at a time. I’ve killed a dozen men already this afternoon, watched another eight be slaughtered by Rocco directly in front of me, and saw Dr. Bates hung for his crimes in a practice not even chop-shop operations like the Castros could use without cringing, but I’m still thirsty for more. I don’t just want every man responsible for the pained expression on Roxanne’s face when she peered out of a top-story window twenty minutes ago to pay for their stupidity, I want them gutted for witnessing my daughter’s happiness before me.
She was born into a world full of violence, ripped from her mother’s stomach weeks too early, yet she still stops to smell the roses. She’s a baby, barely a toddler, but Rocco was right, her eyes reveal she’s strong enough to survive anything. I just don’t want her to fight alone anymore. As I said, she’s a baby. She shouldn’t have faced the things she has, much less a brutal bloodbath with the intention of only taking one hostage.
I can’t believe I agreed to Henry’s request. I’ve been hunting Rimi for years, so the thought of harnessing his punishment until the Feds are through with him has me wanting to take down Rimi’s entire crew with my knife instead of my gun. It would be more painful that way, more vengeance fueled. Alas, I shook hands with the devil more than twice earlier today. Considering it got me here at a hidden compound Rimi is endeavoring to get off the ground, I’ll swallow the injustice. Rimi will still be dead by the end of the day, just not until Grayson’s team has drained him of information.
My heart races like it’s about to go into coronary failure when I reach the landing at the top of the stairs. Although I’ve never handled them before, I’m reasonably sure nerves are also jittering in my stomach. Everything I’ve been working toward the past two years hinges on what I discover at the end of the hallway I’m creeping down. Roxanne was last seen in this location. Neither her nor Fien have been spotted since.
“Three… two… one…”
I kick down the door when Rocco reaches one, then we race inside shoulder to shoulder. My eyes go crazy while roaming over the four dozen pairs staring back at me. It’s clear from the women’s clothing and demure personalities that they’re not a threat, not to mention them guiding Rocco and me to a bathroom partway down the hallway we just snuck down when they realize who we’re seeking. Rocco showed them a picture of Roxanne he has stored in his phone—a photograph I was unaware he had until now. We will have words about it later, but for now, I’m happy to use his fondness of Roxanne to my favor.
“Fucking prick,” Rocco grunts under his breath when his dip into a secret entrance sees a bullet ping off the concrete block next to his head.
A groan of a man taking his last breath rumbles up the stairwell a mere second before I pull Rocco back so I can take the lead. The stairwell isn’t wide enough for us to go in side by side, so I will enter first. The suggestion to go in heavy was my idea, so if anyone is going to helm the charge, it will be me.
The scent of death teems into my nostrils when I step over the man Rocco took down from above. It isn’t the secretion of his bodily fluids responsible for the rank smell in the air, it’s the indent Henry’s tactical team made to Rimi’s crew when he stormed the lower level of his compound. Bodies line the floor. They stretch as far as the eye can see. The number alone reveals Rimi didn’t walk into his new adventure lightly. He has almost all his men on deck for this.
Even himself.
He stands at the back of the room, smirking like the bodies of his crew aren’t scattered around him.
When his eyes shift my way, and his smile doubles, my anger goes so white-hot, it could cause an aneurism.
With my eyes locked on the man responsible for years of torment, I shrug off my customized M6 machine gun, yank off the balaclava I requested the men of our joint raid wear so there’d be no mistaking the enemy, then pole-drive Rimi like several members of Henry’s team aren’t flanking him.
I know our agreement, I’m aware Henry only disclosed Rimi’s whereabouts on the agreement Rimi would walk away from the carnage for a couple of hours, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fuck him over. He’ll be more cooperative this way. More scared. I can rough him up how Grayson can’t. I can make him bleed and not face any conflict about it. The rules changed when he orchestrated the death of Henry’s brother. However, they were obliviated when he cut my daughter from my wife’s stomach.
As the monster inside of me roars to life, I pound Rimi’s face with my fists another two times before removing my switchblade knife from its pouch on my waist.
Rimi’s scream will highlight my dreams for years to come when I slice my knife across his stomach. I gut him like he gutted me all those months ago, unconfronted and without remorse. He tore my daughter out of my wife’s stomach without anesthetics, not the least bit worried about how painful that would have been for her.
I bet he’s regretting his decision now.
I bet he wishes he could take it all back.
It’s a pity for him it is too late. I’m on a warpath, and I don’t see anything slowing me down. Rage this hot can’t be contained. It’s uncontrollable. Brutal. Fucking all-consuming. Although it has nothing on the fervor that stops me in my tracks when my eyes lock in on a pair of gleaming green eyes in the corner of the room.
Half of Roxanne’s face is hidden by the shadows of a wooden stairwell Clover and several members of my crew are stomping down. She’s cradling my daughter in her arms, sheltering her eyes from the brutality she was born in with her chest while humming a melody to save Fien’s ears from the slaughter as well.
As my knife falls to the ground with a clatter, so does Rimi. His head crashing into the boilermaker matches the frantic thump of my heart. Usually, I would find his attempt to hold his stomach together humorous. Today, I don’t pay it an ounce of attention. My daughter is in front of me, in the flesh, breathing, and well, and she’s with the woman I love.
That outranks anything in the world. Nothing could come close to the emotions bombarding me now. Not even my deceased wife stepping into the frame with a butchered stomach and an ashen face.
22
Roxanne
Dimitri blinks several times in a row, certain he’s dreaming but hopeful it won’t turn into a nightmare. His daughter’s messy dark brown hair is fanned across my chest, her thumb is stuck in her pouty mouth, and her eyes are puffy from her sobs, but since her mother is lying on the gurney separating them, fighting for her life, he hasn’t had the chance to calculate just how many similarities they have.
I escaped injury in my endeavor to reach Fien, but Audrey wasn’t as lucky. She suffered multiple stab wounds to her stomach. Her injuries would be fatal if it weren’t for Dimitri’s last-minute decision to bring Ollie onto the battlefield with him. He’s doing everything in his power to save Audrey. He has since she collapsed into Dimitri’s arms thirty minutes ago.
The back of a hotwired ambulance isn’t the ideal spot for a reunion, but when news broke that the CIA was on the way, Dimitri had no choice but to bundle his crew into multiple transport vehicles and leave. I hated abandoning the women who had helped me beyond what I believed imaginable for what they had been through, but the elderly man leading the charge alongside Dimitri assured me it was the right thing to do. He said the CIA had contacts he didn’t and that they would ensure every woman was returned to their families. That alone made the burden easier to swallow.
It’s been a crazy thirty or so minutes since then, the haze growing more when Audrey murmurs Dimitri’s name in her almost unconscious state. She barely saw him for a second before the wounds to her stomach overwhelmed her, but as I’ve said previously, it takes a lot to snuff the aura of a man as dominating as Dimitri. Audrey can sense his presence like I did moments before he took his wrath out on the man believed to be the head of the organization who kept his daughter captive.
