Kol’s voice broke over comms.“No—”
Luca didn’t hear the rest.
He was already killing.
Dominic hit the nearest shooter like a freight train, driving him into steel hard enough to crack ribs.Rafael fired twice, clean and controlled, both men dropping before they understood they were dead.Kol abandoned overwatch, fury tearing through discipline—he tackled one man bare-handed, slammed his head into concrete again and again until there was nothing left to fight.
Luca went straight for the lieutenant.
The man scrambled backward, hands up, mouth working.Luca grabbed him by the collar and drove him face-first into the floor.Once.Twice.The screaming stopped.
Silence crashed down.
Breathing.Dripping blood.A sob that sounded like it had been trapped for days.
“Clear,” Dominic said.
Mateo swore under his breath.
Luca turned to the women.
There were five left alive.
“We are going to get you out of here,” Luca promised.
One stepped forward.
From the looks of her, she shouldn’t have been able to.
Her face was swollen, one eye nearly sealed shut, lip split and crusted dark.Bruises wrapped her throat like hands that wouldn’t let go.She was shaking—pain, exhaustion—but her spine was straight, chin lifted like defiance was the only thing keeping her upright.
“You are not separating us,” she said.“We have lived through hell together.Lost—” she looked around at the women who had just been killed.“—too many.”Her voice cracked, but then she stood taller.
“What’s your name?”Luca asked quietly.
She met his gaze without flinching.“Seraphina.”
The name carried weight and her voice carried steel beneath the damage.
“We will not separate you, but we will get you out of here,” Luca promised.
“And...”Seraphina’s voice shook as she indicated the bodies on the floor.
“I promise you,” Kol said as he stepped up beside Luca.“We will treat each and every one of them with the respect and care they deserve.And we will make sure that the people who did this to them and to you, will pay with their fucking lives.”
Elias stepped into the room, tablet in hand.“There were nine of you,” he said.“Intel said nine.”
Kol turned away sharply to look at Seraphina.
Seraphina nodded once.“They sold Eliza this morning.”
“Fuck!”Kol slammed a fist into the wall.“We were too late.”
“We were in time to save five,” Luca said.“You know that we can’t save everyone.Life is just not fucking like that.”
A new voice cut in over their comms unit.
“Luca.”
