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As the blood sprayed like a macabre fountain, Leo swiftly caught the man before he could crash to the floor, muffling any potential noise. Together, we eased him down, leaving him lying in a pool of crimson.
“Grazie,” I whispered to Leo as we made our way back to the door, leaving the man where he lay.
Fifteen seconds.
Ten seconds.
Five.
I took a step back, aimed my gun at the lock. When the countdown struck zero, I fired.
As the gunshot ruptured the silence, glass shattered all around the cabin as the rest of our team breached windows.
Leo shoved the door open, and we slipped inside.
There was a man in the living room, right in front of us. Not Bianchi. I aimed and fired at the same time as Leo, taking the man down with two shots to the chest.
I saw Greta and Vito charge up the stairs as I turned toward the first door off the living area.
It was a bedroom. The light was off, but a sliver of moonlight slipped through the curtains, vaguely illuminating the queen-size bed beneath the window, a bed that wasn’t empty.
Leo felt around the wall beside me and flipped on the light, lighting up the burgundy and hunter green room.
And the blonde woman on the bed.
She was naked, staring up at the ceiling with lifeless eyes. Deep purple strangulation marks circled her neck. Her lips and fingers were a bluish-purple, but the tips of her fingers were covered in blood. She’d scratched her assailant, drawn blood, fought with everything she had in her.
She’d fought Bianchi and lost.
“Son of a bitch,” Leo muttered under his breath as he grabbed a burgundy sheet that had fallen to the floor and draped it over the woman’s body.
If I’d had any doubt about what kind of monster Bianchi was, those doubts were gone. If he’d gotten his hands on Heidi, was this what he would have done to her? Was this what ‘get creative’ had meant?
Suddenly, the face of the woman on the bed was pale, her eyes a star-flecked twilight blue, her hair spilling out around her like a dark halo.
Something ignited inside me, something raw and visceral.
“I want Bianchi alive,” I seethed. The mic in my earpiece would transmit my instruction to the whole team. The son of a bitch was mine.
Leo swept the closet and the en suite bath, and we headed back out of the room. No more gunshots were sounding. Only the sound of muffled footsteps as the team cleared the house, room by room.
“I’ve got him,” Vito called out. His voice came from the upper floor.
I took the stairs two at a time, down the short hallway to another bedroom. The door was open, the room was empty, but the closet door was open too, and I could see Vito standing inside it, his gun pointed toward the far corner.
“Get him out here,” I said as the room filled up behind me. Leo, Bruno, and Carmine. Greta.
“The rest are securing the perimeter,” Greta said as Vito leaned down and dragged Bianchi up with one arm.
I nodded, but I kept my gaze on Bianchi as Vito pressed the gun’s barrel to his head and yanked him out of the closet.
The man was my height, but he wasn’t as heavily muscled. His clothing was rumpled and his short, dark hair stood out in every direction. There were tears on his cheeks. Fucking tears. He was blubbering as Vito dragged him toward me.
Bruno and Carmine took a step forward, guns in hand, but I shook them off as Bianchi looked around the room with wide, tear-filled eyes.
“P-please,” he blubbered. “I didn’t have a choice. I’ve got nothing. I had to do something.”
I smiled like the devil himself. “You did what you felt you had to do, Bianchi. Now, I’m going to do what I have to do. You understand,si?”
