Kill.
The Glock in his hand held fifteen rounds, and he used every bullet to clear a path to the stairs. When the pistol clicked empty, he whipped it across the face of the nearest intruder and threw it at the head of the next one.
Down to the knife, he slashed it along a heavily muscled arm. The man’s firearm dropped out of reach. Tiago slashed low and opened the man’s gut.
Five intruders left. Two swept up the stairs.
Kate.
Fury flogged him, but he couldn’t chase them. Three men were already on him, punching, kicking, and swinging knives.
He tackled the only one with a gun, gripping the man’s arm and guiding the automatic weapon as the fucker squeezed the trigger.
The spray of bullets went wild, punching a zigzagged line along the floor, up the front wall, and taking out one of his own guys.
He swept the man’s legs out and wrestled him to the ground.
Gunfire sounded from the direction of Boones’ room, ramping his pulse to a dangerous level, distracting him.
An elbow slammed into the back of his head. He coughed a pained grunt and lost his balance.
Adrenaline flooded his veins as he rolled, swept the blade wide, and cut a deep gash across the man’s chest. Hardened eyes rounded in shock then tapered with the drive to kill.
With a grunt, Tiago flipped to his feet and spun as another guy jumped on his back. A backward stab with the blade relieved him of the threat behind him.
He rammed his forearm against the throat of one in front, pinning him against the wall.
Footsteps erupted on the stairs, descending at a run.
He swiveled his neck and marked two men making an escape from the second floor.
One of them carried Kate, her unconscious body dangling over a bulky shoulder, blood dripping from her face.
Heat smothered his brain and blinded his vision.
She’d put up a fight and received a knockout punch for the effort, which meant this wasn’t a rescue attempt. It was a kidnapping, and he knew exactly how it would play out.
Her chance of survival was nil.
Rage detonated in his chest and hit the air in a blistering roar. He seethed, breaths shaking, teeth cutting the insides of his cheeks.
With a surge of strength, he pushed harder against the throat beneath his arm. Holding the knife in his other hand, he buried it in the man’s skull, pushed it in to the hilt, and yanked it free.
The body dropped, and he launched for the stairs. Until someone slammed into him from behind.
The wind evacuated his lungs as he collided with the floor, his shirtless chest skidding through shards of glass beneath the weight of the man on his back.
He trained his eyes on the front door, where those dead motherfuckers had just carried out his whole fucking world.
They knew it, too. They knew exactly what she meant to him, because one of his own goddamn guards had tipped them off.
Someone had told them to head straight for the stairs.
An arm hooked around his neck from behind, the heavy drive of a knee against his spine. He shoved his upper body into a push-up, dug in his toes, and dove into a somersault. The man lost his grip and came up swinging.
Fists flew. Elbows. Shins. Bone-crunching smacks. Tiago wouldn’t feel the pain from those hits until later. Right now, all he felt was pure, raw aggression, scorching his blood and driving him forward, toward her.
If he didn’t get her back, he would burn the whole fucking country to the ground.
Venom seared through him, powering his punches, propelling each strike harder, faster, spraying blood, breaking teeth, bone, and cartilage, until the man slumped to the floor.
Legs quaking, heart thrashing, he grabbed a pistol off a dead body and bolted out the door and into the night.
At the end of the drive, taillights glowed red in the blackness. They already had her in the van. Already driving away.
Bullet holes littered his cars. Tires deflated. Hoods ablaze with fire.
He was too late.
Grief tried to suck him into the earth, but he pushed forward, throwing himself into a burning sprint.
Serrated air sawed in and out of his lungs. He pumped his legs and leveled the gun on the van’s tires. Fired. Missed.
As he emptied the magazine, the van sped away, vanishing into the darkness.
He careened to a stop, braced swollen, bloody hands on his knees, and attempted to stymie the insufferable pain closing around his heart. If he let in the anguish, it would kill him.
This wasn’t over.
He couldn’t fail her.
Her captors would contact him, before or after they killed her. It depended on who they were and what they wanted. He had an hour at most to organize an attack.
First, he needed to find out where the fuck they were taking her.
Spinning, he raced back to the house as his mind pored over what he knew and everything that had just gone down. He recalled faces, accents, weapons, and fighting styles.