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“So what the fuck else do we do? Could we blow the doors off?”
I shrug. “I have no fucking idea, but where the hell are we gonna get a shitload of explosives in the next half hour?”
His eyes light up. “We can make some. As long as they have what we need in the pantry. We’ll need some bleach and some sort of accelerant…” He screws his eyes closed. “I’ll need to google the rest.”
I shake my head, feeling completely fucking useless, and then I remember that the Morettis have two panic rooms, and Max had the second one installed in the new wing for him and Joey a couple of years ago. “You go check the pantry for whatever shit you think you can use. I’m gonna call Max.”
He runs off toward the kitchen where the maid and the bodyguard lie unconscious, no doubt happy to do something more gratifying than stare at a door.
Max answers after a few rings, and I pay close attention while he explains how the electrical system of a panic room works, while doing my best to tune out the banging and shuffling sounds coming from the room in front of me. Apparently panic rooms aren’t susceptible to power outages because they’re designed to be self-sufficient.
“But there will be a fail-safe somewhere, Ace. Some kind of mechanism so the room can be opened in an emergency. Someone will know where or what that is. You just have to find that someone.”
The bodyguard! The unconscious bodyguard. I stifle a groan of frustration, thank Max, and end the call. In the kitchen, I call Romeo’s name. He comes out of the utility room with his arms stuffed full of cleaning supplies. “That stuff’s gonna make a bomb?”
He shakes his head, his eyes as wild as his hair. “No fucking idea, but maybe if we mix enough shit together, something will go boom,” he says, his tone desperate and shaky.
“Or we wake this guy the fuck up and find out what the fail-safe is.” I hoist the bodyguard up and drag him to a chair.
Romeo drops everything in his arms onto the floor with a clatter. “Then fuck yeah, let’s do that.”
Chapter
Forty-Four
KERES
Theo pulls off my jacket and tosses it behind him, then goes for my jeans, tugging the button open before he tries to wrench them over my hips. I’ve given up struggling. Instead I lie still with my eyes closed while I plan out my next move. He goes on spewing his disgusting filth about what he’s going to do to me, but I mostly tune him out and focus on the fear snaking its way through my veins.
Warriors don’t escape fear, they conquer it. Fear isn’t the enemy; it’s the body’s way of preparing us for battle. And I know all there is to know about violent battles.
I no longer hear Ace or Romeo outside, and that makes my heart heavy even as I’m filled with relief that they’ll be safe, but I can’t think about them right now either. I can only think about me and Theo, locked in this room. Only one of us will make it out alive, and it sure as fuck isn’t going to be him.
My lack of fight disarms him, and he keeps less pressure on my wrists now as he pins them with one hand. He releases the knee from my ribcage to try and get my jeans off and makes the mistake of not applying that pressure anywhere else. Using all my weight, I rock my hips and swing my legs into the air, high enough to wrap them around his thick neck.
He blinks at me, caught completely off guard for a second, before he realizes what’s happened. But a split second is all I need. I lock my ankles in place and squeeze my thighs around his throat. At first he laughs, probably at what he considers my pathetic attempt to overpower him—a man twice my size—until he realizes I’m not pathetic at all. I might be small, but I’m way stronger than I look, and my thigh muscles have been honed through years of martial arts and riding motorcycles at top speed.
His face turns purple as the pressure builds on his windpipe, and he releases my wrists and tries to pry my thighs from his neck. That’s his second mistake. Before he can even blink, I sink the pads of my thumbs into the corner of his eye sockets and press against them, pushing and gouging with all the strength I can muster.
He howls in pain as my nails dig deeper, tearing through sinew as I scoop my thumbs into his sockets and burrow behind his eyeballs. I keep the pressure on his throat the whole time, making him wheeze. He claws at my hands as well as my thighs, unsure which to focus on, which means he focuses on neither. His fingers grasp wildly at my flesh without taking a firm hold. His left eyeball pops out of its socket first, with a sickening yet satisfying squelch.
His mouth opens on a silent scream, and I twist my ankles together, squeeze my thighs together, and crush his windpipe. His head drops forward as his right eye joins the left, both bloody orbs dangling from empty holes. His dead weight falls to the floor, and I release my legs from around his neck so his lifeless body lies splayed beside me. Spotting my knife, I instinctively reach for it.
He lies on his side, bleeding from eye sockets that blankly gape at me. But it’s not enough. This pent-up rage inside me is clamoring to get out, like a wild animal that’s been caged for too long and finally scents its freedom. I roll him onto his back and dive on top of him with a roar. I plunge my knife into one empty socket, causing blood to spurt high into the air and splatter my face. But it doesn’t stop me. I pull out my knife and jam it inside him again. Then again and again. His face. His neck. His chest. Every stab is for the women and the children he stole. For the babies whose mothers he stole, the parents whose children never came home. For the rivers of tears and oceans of blood he’s responsible for. Everything, all of them. For my mom. For Phoenix. For me.
And only when I can no longer lift my arm and I’m covered head to toe in his filthy blood do I roll off his mutilated body. Scrambling under his desk, I locate and press the small black button he must have pressed when I came in. The sound of steel groaning into place dimly registers, and I curl into a ball, hug my knees to my chest, and cry.
Chapter
Forty-Five
ROMEO
“This isn’t fucking working,” Ace growls after he dumps a second bowl of ice water over the unconscious bodyguard’s face. He remains slumped on the chair, head hanging over the back of it.
I slap him and his head snaps to the side, but he doesn’t come to. “How else can we wake him up?”
Ace frowns. “Did you hear that?”
