Page 87 of Dangerous Deception

Then relief.

It’s not Adelina.

“Caterina?” Vito gasps over my shoulder, dropping down beside me.

Caterina is badly beaten with a blood-soaked gag in her mouth. Her torso is covered in multiple dark bruises and lacerations, with her clothes barely clinging to her body.

“Shit.” Cradling her head, I work on untying the gag as her eyes flutter and open.

They widen the moment they see me and her lips move around the gag, but her words remain muffled.

“Hold on,” Vito assures her quickly. “We’re going to get you out of here.” He leans over her body and picks up Adelina’s phone, ending the call with a tap of the button. He slides it into his jacket just as I get the knot on the gag free.

“Trap!” Caterina croaks weakly. “G–Get out, he rigged the room to?—”

The explosion takes out the entire wall to my left, sending Vito and me crashing into one another and then into the old couch between us and the window. The heat is intense as a ball of fire skims over the top so us, burning skin and hair before sweeping up toward the ceiling.

A sharp ringing fills the air, settling in my ears from the sound of the explosion, and the shockwave knocks all the air out of my lungs. I lie there, unable to even take a breath as scorching heat burns my face. Any sweat that forms dries instantly.

Then Vito is over me. His lips move, but I can’t hear him over the ringing. I squint up at him as he grabs me by my shirt and hauls me upward.

“Fucking move!” A few words breach the deafening noise in my ears, but it’s enough to spur me upward. I clamber to my feet with Vito’s help, and we make a beeline for Caterina. Together, we drag her upward between our two bodies and stumble toward the door. I can finally breathe again, but the smoke burns my throat, forcing me to cough harshly. The door feels impossibly far away through the smoke and the roar of the flames, but somehow, we make it outside where the first lungful of fresh, clean air feels like a burst of peppermint on a cold winter’s morning.

“Shit!” Vito coughs sharply as we stumble down the path and fall to our knees.

I look up and instantly take a knee to the jaw. It sends me flying backward, and I land in a heap on the grass, still struggling to breathe through the constant coughing my body forces meto do. Several gunshots suddenly blast through the air and then someone is on top of me, punching me repeatedly in the face.

Pain explodes through my cheek and my jaw. My chest is being crushed. Pressure swells in my skull from my lack of oxygen.

I can’t breathe.

I can barely see through streaming eyes.

He’s on top of me, punching my senses right out of me.

Shit, Raffaele. Get up. Get up!

I throw my elbow up and catch my attacker on the tip of his chin. His head jerks backward, so I punch him squarely in the throat. He flies off me with a gurgle, and I roll onto my hands and knees, coughing and gasping through the smoke in my lungs and the blood streaming from my lower lip.

Then something impacts my thigh, like a punch that quickly throbs into a sharp, horrifying pain. I yell, rolling over to see my attacker hanging onto the hilt of the knife he plunged into my leg. In the background, I’m dully aware of Vito engaged in his own brawl and Caterina somehow holding her own in another fight.

“The fuck, man?” I gasp as the pain becomes a blaring siren throughout my body. It cuts through the fog in my mind and the daze from the explosion, bringing the world into a sharp focus.

“Fucking die!” The man rips the knife free and surges upward like a bear about to come down with the killing blow.

I rip my gun out of my holster so quickly that the clip burns my hand and fire multiple shots into the chest of the man seconds away from ending my life. His face twists in pain and then he collapses backward in a dead heap.

Panting heavily, I roll over and spit a mouthful of blood on the ground as several more gunshots ring in the air, then the loud hum of arriving vehicles catches my attention.

What kind of backup are they if they arrive this late?

I push myself up groggily, then yelp as the pain aggravates the knife wound on my leg, and then arms are suddenly around my body, hauling me upward and away from the inferno consuming the house.

Vito and I collapse back down to the ground, resting against my car with Caterina beside us. All three of us pant heavily, watching the house be consumed as the rest of my men flit about like bats mopping up the vermin Pascal left behind.

“Holy… shit,” Vito gasps.

“I t–tried to tell you,” Caterina says weakly.

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