SWNOVELS Fractured Freedom: Chapter 25
Dante
“Cade, how did you miss the fucker coming to her room? And how did we have the wrong ship?” I tried to control the rage. I tried to bottle what I knew had been in me all these years but had never let out.
He rolled his eyes. “I look away one second and see them walking out. I’m staring at twins. I thought it was Izzy leaving too. You were all there. I got other shit to watch.” He sounded pissed.
Losing the one person in my life who kept me sane, though, had me more pissed. It would cause me to unravel and unleash everything I kept bottled. “If Delilah Hardy has one fucking hair out of place on her head, I’ll kill them all.”
Cade had called in his brother, Bastian, and he was on the car speakerphone as Leonardo navigated the side streets to get us there as soon as possible. We’d also called the authorities, but they had protocol to get through. They needed to get approval. Goddamn red tape. This was a big bust. They had to do things right. But they also had other intelligence that said it was the next ship over.
Fuck them.
We’d seen Delilah’s phone location.
“I shouldn’t have left her,” Izzy whispered, looking out her window.
Damn right she shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have let her leave the room without telling her I loved her. Without telling her we’d get through the shit and get to the other side.
“I’m getting the authorities’ clearance right now, Dante,” Bastian said over the car’s speakers.
Cade chuckled as he looked at me. “Not going to help, Bastian. Dante’s killing them before anyone gets there.”
“We need to keep it clean.”
“You keep it clean and legal when your wife was in danger?” My question was met with about two seconds of silence.
Then, his wife’s voice came over the phone. “He still hasn’t forgiven Cade for not protecting me diligently even though the guy only held me at gunpoint for less than a minute.”
“That’s beside the point. You and I were married. The disrespect—”
“Lilah’s as much a fucking Untouchable as your wife, Bastian. She’s mine. My Untouchable. My Lamb. My whole goddamn future. I will tear this island apart, I promise you.” I clenched my fists. I put them over my stomach, but the energy that flowed into them burned hot and monstrous.
“Hey.” Izzy turned to me and grabbed one of my hands, quickly threading her fingers through mine. “I know my sister. She’ll be fine. She’ll stall, okay? She was smart enough to get that text off. We’ll get there in time.”
Her hand shook, and it reminded me Lilah wasn’t just mine. She was my best friend’s family’s kid. Little Lilah who at twelve had come home with fucking pigtails and a huge smile on her face because she’d won the spelling bee.
Lilah who’d tried not to smirk when her parents praised yet another straight A report card on the refrigerator or the girl who’d taken her five siblings to feed a lamb because the mother hadn’t made it. She’d refilled the milk over and over again and let each of them give it to the lamb first.
A fucking giver.
And then she’d given me her virginity, and I’d never been the same.
I’d never be the same.
I wouldn’t lose her again. Not this time.
We pulled up to her phone’s location, and I was out of the car before it stopped moving, rushing past everyone, rain falling on my collared shirt and tailored slacks. I splashed through the puddles, raced across the sidewalk, dodging pedestrians, and then flew like a crazy motherfucker through the security entrance. Cade was behind me making amends wherever necessary.
And it only took me two seconds to scan the lobby of that ship to find the perpetrators. They saw me, and their eyes widened. Maybe things clicked into place for them.
Their friend who’d gone missing after looking into Lilah and me on that staircase, how they’d tracked my whereabouts, the man who’d listened in on our hotel room romp and been gunned down by me later that night.
As the police raided that boat, I turned to the officer and said, “Iago’s room is mine. Don’t come in until we give the signal. Cade”—I met his eyes, and he rubbed those knuckles tattooed with chaos across his cheek as he smiled wide at me—“let’s go.”
We let the police take the men who’d tried to rush away quietly with eyes as big as saucers. Except for the one at the front desk. I approached and asked quietly, “Iago’s room or you die.” I laid my gun on the counter.
The man didn’t hesitate. He knew he’d lost it all already. The Albanians didn’t scare their associates well enough if their men folded this easily.
Cade and I ran to the stairs because I knew I could beat the elevator at the speed I was going.
Cade laughed behind me the whole time, throwing out, “Man, we haven’t fucked someone up this bad in a long time. They’re going to wish they’d never taken the wrong sister.”
He needed therapy.
“You need some help.” I was surprised to hear Izzy behind us.
Had I been a better man, not scared of losing another second, I would have told her to stay back, I would have argued that the scene may not be one she wanted to see.
Yet, Izzy and I had worked together long enough for her to know that.
When I didn’t hesitate for one second to kick in the door, Cade and Izzy flew in, guns already pulled. Thankfully, we’d been smart enough to wear bulletproof vests, because the bullets sprayed immediately.
With only three of them and three of us, we may have been even in numbers, but they were outmatched in skill tenfold. Cade was hit once in the chest, and I heard the wind get knocked out of him as I dropped the shooter, then Izzy ducked past a wall as we scanned for the other two men. One had barricaded himself in the bathroom, and the other stood with a gun pointed directly at the floor.
At Delilah.
“You guys make one more move and I shoot her.”
Izzy and I looked at each other, then she shot his leg while I shot his arm. Hesitation was for cowards, and we weren’t either of those things.
Cade whooped and went skipping to the damn bathroom like a lunatic about to find his calling.
“Iago, you’re going to pay before I kill you,” Izzy whispered over him as he screamed, but then she went to Delilah and checked vitals.
She fell over her sister, slid Lilah’s limp body up into her arms, and curled around her. “She’s okay, Dante,” she whispered, tears streaming down her eyes. “She’s okay. Just knocked out.”
The assessment had me snapping my neck and stalking over to Iago, who tried his best to wiggle across the floor, the blood from his wounds smearing beneath him.
Cade jiggled the bathroom door lock, then stopped to grab a roll of duct tape from his suit pocket. “Brought this just in case,” he sing-songed. He threw that and a lighter my way, waggling his eyebrows.
I didn’t wait to grab Iago and drag him to a chair.
The man was going to admit everything before he died. And he was going to suffer while he did it.