He’d called to Van, jumped, and a shot was fired.
He was hit.
Her heart collapsed, and the roar of blood thrashed in her ears.
No no no no no. He can’t be hurt. He can’t die. He can’t. He can’t. He can’t.
Shadows moved in around her. Then footsteps. A lot of them.
She turned her neck and felt a cool hand on her cheek.
“Tate and Van.” The low rumble of a man’s voice. Tiago’s voice. “I know a lot more than their names.”
“Help.” She cringed away from his touch, but his hand stayed with her. “I think Tate was shot.”
“He was definitely shot.” His fingertips crawled across her lips. “Directly in the chest.”
She couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t real. Her body locked up, and her mind screamed in denial. “I need to see him. Let me see!”
A phone rang. Muffled and cheerful, the chirp sounded close. Somewhere on the floor.
Cole Hartman. He was supposed to call back with an address for a doctor.
The hand on her lips slipped away. A moment later, the chirping grew louder, clearer. Then it died.
“Who’s calling him?” Tiago’s voice drifted from above.
“I don’t know.”
It didn’t matter. That call was an invitation for believers and dreamers. There were no dreamers in hell. Only sufferers and tormentors, prey and predators, and she epitomized both sides.
She was also a fool. Because dammit, she still hoped.
She hoped Tate was alive as Tiago carried her away from him and out of the apartment.
She hoped to live as he sat her in the backseat of a car and drove her to the compound.
She hoped for strength as he hauled her into the basement chamber.
But as she trembled on the concrete floor, it was hard to hang onto hope. The pain in her body became intolerable when her muscles began to spasm and a seizure thrust her into the black void.
Voices and footfalls ricocheted around her, but her mind was a mass of wool. She couldn’t focus. Couldn’t fight. They would do whatever they wanted to her, and the slow pulse of time would be a new kind a torment.
At some point, her brain disentangled, and her senses came online. A pillow, hard and thick, bolstered the back of her head. She lay face up, squinting against the harsh lighting. And hurting. The pain concentrated in her stomach, constricting and twisting and threatening to take her under again.
Oh God, it hurts. Make it stop.
She shifted her gaze away from the lights and focused on what was directly above her. Broad chest, thick biceps, and a scarred and swollen face with silver eyes. As her mind sharpened, she realized her head was on Van’s lap. With his back against the wall and his arms chained to a horizontal beam behind him, he watched the activity on the other side of the room.
Her heart rate exploded. If Van was here…
She gathered the strength to turn her neck and collided with the crystal blue fury engulfing Tate’s eyes.
He’s alive.
Her breaths seized, and her arms quaked to hold him.
Shirtless and heaving, his chest bore a ghastly wound that bled beneath the skin. But it wasn’t the critical, penetrating type of injury she expected from a bullet. It looked like someone had swung a hammer as hard as possible against his ribs.
If he was in pain, he didn’t show it. His red-hot expression suggested he had so much adrenaline and testosterone pumping through him he felt nothing but violent rage.
“He took a bullet in the chest for me,” Van said quietly. “Saved my life. Only reason he’s alive is because he was wearing an armored shirt. His ribs are probably broken.”
She knew his soft tone was meant to calm her, but beneath the whispered words shivered something she knew too well. Fear. She felt it, too. Dread. Terror. The horrifying grip of doom.
Tate hung from chains that encircled his wrists and connected to the rafters, his feet bare and raised on toes, as if to ease the strain on his arms. It was the same place, same position, same fate as the man who died there only hours earlier.
Standing beside him, Tiago held a phone in one hand and Tate’s shirt in the other. He spoke in a low voice to Armando—the only other person in the room. When he tossed the shirt on the metal table in the corner, that was when she saw it.
The lethal razor blade curved from the end of his finger like a claw.
An artist’s instrument.
His favorite weapon.
“No.” A mangled keening sound wailed from her throat. “Tiago, please, I’m begging you. Don’t do this. I’ll do anything.”
“You’ll do anything for him?” He tipped his head toward Tate, holding her gaze.
“Yes. Anything.”
“Hm.” He teased the claw across Tate’s pecs. “I’m more interested in finding out what he’ll do for you.”
CHAPTER 23
The scent of blood stung Tate’s nose. Not his blood. The death from earlier tonight hovered in the air and stained the concrete floor. He’d heard the man’s tortured screams through the transmitter and could now see the source of that agony glinting on the end of Tiago Badell’s finger.
The blade looked lethal enough to carve through muscle, and as it lightly scraped across his chest, he was certain it would.
His heart drummed a furious tattoo. Chains restrained his arms, and broken ribs made every breath excruciating. He had no defense, no way to protect Lucia and Van. No way out of this.
Fear should’ve been a hulking presence inside him, but it was crowded out by unholy rage. Lucia lay on the floor in dangerous need of urgent care. She’d just surfaced from what must’ve been a seizure, one that had convulsed her muscles so violently it banged her skull against the concrete. Van, with his arms shackled, had managed to wedge a thigh beneath her head. Meanwhile, Badell had stood there and watched her suffer like a morally depraved psychopath.
How would they get out of this? With Van and him shackled and Lucia clinging to life, they needed a fucking miracle.
It would be eight hours before Matias realized there was trouble, and even more hours to organize a rescue party. Maybe Cole would suspect something since his call went unanswered. That wouldn’t help them, though. He was in another country.
“There are no contacts stored on your phone.” Badell set it on the metal table and met his eyes. “No call history.”
At Cole’s request, Tate had meticulously kept the burner phone wiped clean. Thank fuck for Cole’s counsel. The man had laid out plans for every emergency, including instructions in the event Tate was captured.
“I can give you a contact.” He hardened his expression, masking the pain in his ribs. “Call my brother.” He rattled off a predetermined phone number that would alert Cole of foul play. “You’ll get your ransom money.”
“Your brother?” Badell casually strolled through the room, clasping his hands behind him and twitching that deadly finger blade. “Your shirt repelled a bullet, and your comp
anion”—he glanced at Van—“doesn’t carry a phone.”
Tate had destroyed all the phones but one before they left the apartment. He’d also had the foresight to protect their friends and family in anticipation of repercussions for taking Lucia out of Caracas. If Badell were to discover Tate’s identity, his friends’ lives could be threatened. So when he’d called Matias, Matias vowed to send his local guys to collect Liv and Josh, Amber and Livana, and all of Tate’s roommates. They should be safely on their way to Matias’ Colombian estate at this very moment.
“You have high-tech weapons and medical supplies.” Badell paused before him, head cocked. “But no IDs. No passports. Nothing to connect you to anything or anyone. We both know you won’t be providing your brother’s number.”
A knot formed in Tate’s throat. He’d given Badell too many reasons to be suspicious. The man might’ve been clinically insane, but he was smart. There would be no ransom demands, because he smelled the trap.
Across the room, Lucia’s whimpers grew louder. She rolled off Van’s lap and pulled herself across the floor, grunting and sobbing in her determination to get to Tate.
“Lucia, don’t.” He jerked uselessly against the restraints. “Stay where you are.”
“No.” Her legs dragged behind her, slowing her down, and she cried out in frustration.
It was gut-wrenching to witness, cracking things inside him that hurt far worse than broken ribs.
He gave Badell the deadliest glare he could manage for a man hanging in chains. “She needs medicine. A doctor.”
“Whether she gets that is up to you.”
“What do you want?”
“Tell me why you’re here. In Caracas.”
Given Tate’s weapons and the bullet-resistant shirt, Badell knew this wasn’t a pleasure trip. He also knew it was personal. He only needed to watch Lucia as she hauled herself toward Tate. Her anguished cries shuddered with heartbreak. And love.
Love.
She loves me.
The intensity of that realization sent waves of pain through Tate’s fractured chest. At first, he didn’t understand it. It made him feel desperate and terrified, but underneath the panic was something new, something wholly unexpected.