In a frenzy, my shaking thumbs punch in his phone number and I listen to the rings, both anticipating and dreading the sound of his voice. I’ve done my best to forget about him and his stalker-like tendencies. Brandon is not someone I ever hoped to talk to again, and here I am calling him in my moment of crisis. I know he is going to lecture me, belittle me. Curse me for being so stupid. He’s going to gloat that he was right, that he knew I would meet a terrible fate if I abandoned him for Europe. I don’t want him to be right. And I really don’t want to give him any power over me.
I never loved him, and I don’t think he loved me — just the idea of owning and controlling me. He just wanted to be the one to deflower and ruin me. And not because he loved me and wanted to show me pleasure, but because he wanted the bragging rights. To be able to say he was the one who fucked the ice queen. He wants to place me up on a dusty shelf and keep me cooped up at home while he roamed the world freely. I shudder as I hear his familiar voice flooding into my ear.
“Hey, baby girl. Long-time no talk,” Brandon says smugly.
In the next moment, several things happen all at once. The phone beeps twice and dies before I can even respond. The thought occurs to me that Brandon should not be expecting me on the other end of the line, since this is Caitlin’s phone — and therefore, it only makes sense that he would be addressing Caitlin as baby girl.
He never even called me baby girl. What is going on? And for how long?
And then a flurry of deafening gunshots ring out, shattering my thoughts.
13
Darios
I run down the hallway as the sounds of bullets hitting the walls echoes around my head, and I can hear the girls’ screaming in the distance. I run by the entrance to the terrace, only to see one of my men slumped dead against the edge, bullet holes in his chest. I curse and take cover behind the wall and pull out my phone, turning on the transceiver we use to communicate.
“Men! Remember your training and get into position, stick to procedure — this isn’t a drill, we’re under attack!”
“Who the fuck is shooting at us?” a voice comes back, the sound of gunfire in the background.
“Fucking mercenaries,” growls another voice, and I feel fury swelling up in my heart. Could this be one of the parents taking justice into their own hands? This was something I’d thought about in the past, but my silencing tactics have proven effective up until now. I grip the pistol in my hand and crawl out onto the terrace, taking the bloody rifle from my dead man’s hands and reloading it before heading back into the house and slinging it over my shoulder as I run.
One of my guards emerges from a room with a terrified Lyssa in his grasp, and both of them look to me as I approach, my man looking to me for direction.
“Get her to the cellar,” I order in my native tongue, pointing down the hallway. “Take the old servants’ staircase hidden in the laundry room to the right. Keep her head low and covered, they may not have men on the inside yet, but bullets still ricochet. You hear me?” I add looking the uneasy man in the eyes meaningfully.
Taking a breath and finding the confidence he’d forgotten, he nods resolutely. “Yes, sir!” Lyssa can’t understand a word of Georgian, so she just looks to both of us with terror in her eyes, but I get her attention and point to her guard.
“He’s going to get you to safety,” I say in English, “if you leave his side, your life is in your own hands, understand, girl?”
“Y-yes!” she blurts, nodding and clinging to her guard, who nods to me and takes off, following my directions with his pistol out and his eyes alert.
I make my way around towards the dining hall — I have to make rounds of the whole perimeter, but my thoughts are stuck on the safety of one person above all the rest.
“Do we have eyes on Delaney?” I bark over the phone, and there’s a silence from the other men. “Well?”
“None here, sir,” reports the guard assigned to her wing of the house, “she was in her room when the fighting started, and I took to the windows on the north wing to secure the-”
I curse, changing my direction and sprinting towards the guest wing, ignoring the rest of his statement. “Very well, I’m on it — why don’t I hear fire from the rooftop? I want men with rifles in the tower now, we had those barricades installed up there for a reason.”
“On it, sir,” another couple of voices chime in near unison.
“Caitlin, what about her?” I shout.
“We were separated,” her guard says back, sounding injured. “I had her near the entrance to the dining hall, but she bolted when a stray bullet caught me in the shoulder.”
I swear. “What’s your condition?”
“Don’t mind me,” he chuckles, “I’ve got more than enough muscle to take a few of these bastards’ cheap bullets.”
“Good man,” I say, taking a short detour in my route. The dining hall is on the way to the guest wing, but if there were bullets flying into the room there, that means the attackers are trying to get in quickly, probably nearby.
I make my way down the hallway leading to the dining hall when the window about ten feet from me shatters, and my eyes widen at the sight of a grenade clattering to the ground. On pure instinct, my body responds by rushing towards it and kicking it back out the window, and I hear it go off before it even hits the ground, the sound of men shouting in pain is music to my ears as their own weapon blows up in their faces. I don’t have much time.
I ready my rifle and appear at the window, looking at the three men down below recovering from the blast that killed what looks like two others. I take aim, and three quick shots later, there are five dead men on the ground below me.
Before their allies can return fire, I disappear from the window, rushing to the dining room door and kicking it open. I hear a shriek, and a butcher’s knife comes flying at me from across the room. I only have a moment to react, moving to the side as it sinks into the wooden door behind me.
I raise my pistol to shoot the attacker, but upon seeing me, Caitlin throws her hands up with wide eyes, her face white as she crouches behind a barricade of kitchen tables she’s erected for herself. “Oh my god I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, oh my god, I didn’t know it was you, please don’t shoot!”
I swear under my breath as I rush forward, tossing the table barricade like a toy before grabbing her wrist and dragging her with me as I head for the opposite end of the dining room. “Where is your guard?”
With a shaking hand, Caitlin gestures to the opposite side of the room, where I see my man’s body, having bled out from a new injury to the neck. Grunting, I just tug her along beside me, raising my phone.
“I need a man at the dining hall, now! Redirect other reinforcements to the foyer, I dealt with the incursion at this wing.”
“Yes sir!” a few voices chime.
As we exit the room, my eyes focus on the window to my right in the next hallway out. There’s a grappling hook lodged in it. I shove Caitlin behind me as I ready my pistol, and the moment a man’s face appears, I fire, and Caitlin shrieks as he vanishes with a spattering of red on the windowsill.
A few moments later, one of my guards arrives, and I nod to him, gesturing to Caitlin. “Get her to the cellar with the rest, there’s a passage down the hall to the left. She’s shaken, but she can run, can’t you?” I add to her, making sure she’s responsive. It’s not unusual for people new to combat to go unresponsive and into shock at the first sight of real violence — far more so for these sheltered American girls.
But she nods, swallows, and manages a “Yeah, yeah I can run!” as my guard comes to her side and holds her close to him. She instinctively wraps her hands around his arm, and he nods to me.
As they leave, I proceed to the guest wing, raising my phone again. “What’s the status on the foyer?”
“We’ve repelled them, sir!” one of my lieutenants reports proudly, “But we’re not out of hot water yet — they retreated and joined the men heading for the gu
est wing.”
Fuck.
“Good,” I say, “secure the other wings and ensure the girls headed for the cellar are well guarded — I don’t want enemies coming within a fucking kilometer of that cellar, do you hear me?”
“Yes sir! What about the guest wing?”
“I’ll handle that,” I say, and while the pause on the other end tells me my men are worried about my safety, they know far better than to question me.
“Understood. Good luck, sir,” my lieutenant says.
I tear down the hallway to the guest wing, but as I hear voices I don’t recognize around the corner, I press my body up against the wall and listen.
“Did you find her?” a man says, and the voice makes my eyes widen. They’re speaking in Georgian.
“Bitch must have gotten away when we stormed in,” another says, and I hear his footsteps coming closer to me. My mind races. Why would there be Georgian mercenaries all the way out here? Why wouldn’t the parents have hired Americans or even local Spaniards for the job? The conclusion is looking me in the face — these can’t be just mercenaries. But why else would they be trying to take the girls away?
My thoughts are cut short as the footsteps tell me the man is right around the corner. Without another moment to spare, I move around the corner and reach around the man’s neck before he can react. His eyes are still wide with surprise when I snap his neck and fire off two shots into the man standing behind him.
The two men drop, but my eyes are on Delaney’s door — it’s open. I sprint towards it, pistol out in one hand, and I draw my knife in the other, my rifle firmly around my shoulders.
I reach Delaney’s room just as a man holding a raised pistol emerges, and I grab his wrist and twist it up just as he fires, sending dust raining over us as I slash his throat with my knife before he can scream. There are two men in the room behind him who both raise their guns, but I take cover on the other side of the doorframe as bullets fly out. I clench my jaw. Delaney isn’t in her room, so I don’t have time to tangle with these fools.
Remembering the grenade that I kicked out the window, I glance down at the dead mercenary’s body and spot a glinting metal ball on his belt. I blind fire a few suppressing shots into the room as I reach for it, and I pull the pin out with my teeth before hurling the grenade into the room and pulling the wooden door shut.
I hear a man scream from inside as I turn to proceed down the hallway, and the door gets blasted off its hinges behind me as the two men inside are silenced.
I have my pistol raised as I round the next corner, but the silence there is deafening. Beyond it is a staircase that leads to the third floor, where my room is located. I didn’t see Delaney on the way up here, so if she took off, then this is the only way she must have gone. I bound up the stairs, my heart pounding furiously.
I hear Delaney’s terrified scream, and I quicken my pace, crouching down as I move to keep silent as I reach the top of the stairs. There’s a corner that turns off to the north, leading to the door to my quarters, the master bedroom.
I hear heavy footsteps that don’t belong to Delaney, and my muscles tense, ready to kill, but I hear a voice as Delaney rattles the door to my room, which is always locked.
“This isn’t personal,” the cruel, accented voice says in English. “If it were up to me, I’d just take you for myself. I bet a little cunt like you would be nice and tight around my cock all the way back to Georgia when this job is over. Shame we have to kill you all — our clients just don’t appreciate fine pussy like I do.”
I hear the cocking of a gun and Delaney’s scream, and I whirl around the corner with my knife out.
The man who turns to look at me is a little farther than I thought, though, and he tries to bring his gun around to shoot me with a shouted curse. My knife slashes at his hand, making him drop the gun, which clatters to the ground, and I kick it to the wall before he can reach down.
His hand is bleeding profusely, but his eyes are bloodshot with fury, and he uses his other hand to draw a knife of his own as we square off. He lunges in, but I’m too quick for him, sidestepping him and coming in for a counterattack that he just barely parries with his wrist. He doesn’t see my knee coming into his chest, though, and he nearly doubles over with a grunt as I knock the wind out of him.
My eyes catch a glimpse of Delaney cowering at the door, her eyes wide as she watches us fight. My enemy takes a blind hook aimed at my head, but I duck, and while his attention is distracted for a fraction of a second, I deliver a swift kick to his knee, making it crumple inwards with a sickening crack, and he howls in pain as he falls to the ground before I end his suffering, plunging my knife into his neck and watching the life drain from his eyes, his muscles giving out and his body going limp.
I rise up slowly, standing over his body as I turn to look at Delaney, who’s breathing almost as heavily as I am. She doesn’t stare for long, though, before standing up and rushing to me, and I catch her in my arms, lifting her up off her feet in a tight embrace as she sobs into my shoulder. When I set her down at last, I stroke her back, shushing her quietly as I reassure her.
“You’re safe, Delaney, you’re safe.”
“I thought I was going to…” she starts, tears streaming down her face, but I take her by the hand, and kiss her tears away before looking her in the eyes.
“Let’s not talk about that — come on, we’ll be safer in my bedroom.” She nods hurriedly, and I lead her to the door, unlocking it and closing it behind us before I rush to the window on the east side of the room, overlooking the entrance to the estate.
I pick up a pair of binoculars from my desk and use them to look over the grounds, and I smile at what I see. My men have routed the enemy — mercenaries are retreating in large numbers. There must have been nearly two-dozen of them when they came, judging by how many are in retreat. Then my gaze falls on one man in particular, and I feel my blood boiling, knuckles white on the binoculars.
“What do you see?” Delaney asks, cautiously stepping closer while keeping her distance from the window opening itself.
The red-haired man leading the retreat is unmistakable, and he casts a glance over his shoulder as he and his men vanish behind the cliffs, staring right up at my window ruefully. I can see his prosthetic hand clenched, his eyes full of hate.
“His name is Luka,” I say, lowering my binoculars. “He and I have history.”
“Is...is he some old accomplice?” Delaney ventures, biting her lip.
“Back in the war,” I say grimly. “A lifetime ago, we fought side by side, but he sold my men and I out to the Russians. I hit him back a few years ago, though — hard. If he’s here, then this attack might very well be some kind of power play on his part.”
Delaney is about to speak, but my phone rings out with the sound of one of my lieutenant’s voices.
“Sir! They’re routed! We’ve done it!” I can hear the sounds of cheering in the background, and I smile. My men are talented, and it was their skill that complemented my command well.
“I can see that,” I say, glancing out the window again. “Well done, all around. Are the girls secure?”
“We have two of them,” he reports back, “did you find-”
“Delaney is with me,” I say, putting my arm around her, and she smiles up at me, melting into my side, and I can feel how safe she feels around me. “For now, stay put and secure the perimeter, but do not pursue. I don’t want us leaving this place exposed, and I don’t want any heroes risking their lives in those cliffs — Luka is leading them.”
“...are you sure, sir?” the voice asks, tinged with contempt for the man I named.
“Do I ever speak uncertainly?” I shoot back. “See that my orders are carried out. Now.”
“Yes, sir!” the voice says, and I put my phone away as I look down to Delaney, putting both hands around her hips and squeezing them gently.
“Darios,” she says in a quiet voice, her eyes steady on me, “I...I didn’t think a
nyone would come for me. And I never thought I’d see someone do what you did, especially not for me.”
“You’re special, Delaney,” I say, pulling her close to me, and she wraps her arms around my stomach, hugging into me for comfort. “I would never let anyone touch you — not one of my men, and certainly not my enemies.” I pause for a moment, and I feel my instincts winning over my colder judgement in what I say next, but the adrenaline of the moment doesn’t let me deny my heart any longer. “This is more than what I took you here for — this is a personal entanglement I never wanted any of you to get caught up in, especially not you,” I add, cupping her face in my hands and kissing her forehead. “Delaney, if you wish, I will return you to your parents while I take care of this blood-feud. The other girls are already set to be ransomed soon, but your safety is the most important to me.”
She looks up at me with shining eyes, and she bites her lip. For the briefest moment, I see a thoughtful look on her face, but the next moment, she hugs me tight, our hearts pounding against each other.
“I couldn’t leave your side, Darios,” she breathes, squeezing me. “I’m not going anywhere — I’m staying right here, with you.”
I look at her, a smile on my hardened face as my hands slide down to her ass, squeezing it gently, then more firmly, pulling her hips against my hardening cock as I lean in to whisper into her ear, my voice a low husk.
“Then show me that you are mine.”
14
Darios
I move towards the bed and toss her on it roughly, my adrenaline still pounding through my system as I hear her gasp when she hits the mattress.
My bed is huge and firm, with silken black sheets that I keep neatly made on the mattress. But I spend no time focusing on what’s around me — not anymore. Right now, my body is spurring me forward to claim the woman before me, and nothing in the world could keep me from her.
I listen to her sigh as I pull her dress off, leaving her completely and utterly exposed before me, her chest rising and falling quickly as her own adrenaline makes her squirm on the bed sheets. My eyes ravish her as I rip my shirt off, hearing some of the fabric tear in my hurry to get it off my broad shoulders, muscles swollen from the strain I’ve put them through in the past few minutes.
Hostage of the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 12
