Page 53 of Unbound

Once we were inside the bathroom, she grabbed me and held me tight. I hugged her. She was shaking.

“It’s okay. You did good. No, you did great, Tessa. We’re almost through this,” I told her.

She started to hyperventilate. I rubbed her back and when she seemed to be settling down a little, I let her go. She started breathing harder so I dashed into the stall finding what I’d hoped would be there. In the stall there was a dispenser of small brown paper bags. I grabbed one.

“Wanna try to breathe into this?” I held it out.

She shook her head and grabbed the counter edge at the sink with both hands and stared into the mirror at her own reflection and hunched, blowing air out.

We knew Leo Denarda would show.

One of his men had agreed to help out tonight with the promise of support of his taking over Denarda’s role once the fuckhead was taken out. That man had been the rest of that organization’s choice to take over when Denarda’s uncle died.

The guy had been like a son to the uncle, but Leo was blood-family, so it’d been a problem in their organization. It was a small organization compared to most players in Vegas, but they owned some big construction contracts in Nevada and had some strong ties with politicians as well as had pull in the bookie business.

The organization was worried Leo being at the helm would fuck that all up. And he’d already taken away from their livelihood because they never got the Fete build, but the guy we’d brought over to our side was going to be in a solid position for his powerplay after Denarda was out of the picture. And he’d benefit from being a subcontractor in Nevada for the Ferrano Enterprises construction arm.

He’d let a mutual acquaintance know that he was very unhappy with the state of play, so we used that to our advantage. Someone on the other side had been there when Leo Denarda got Ben’s invite to the Fete launch.

It’d been delivered only two days before, but we’d made it look like a courier problem that had delayed it. The envelope was beat up, there was a fake waybill attached that was backdated if Denarda tried looking it up online. Leo might be suspicious but he could come without losing face, which would be perceived as important to a guy who thought he had any face in Nevada or anywhere else.

I saw the look on his ugly mug when he spotted my sister. He’d tried to hide his surprise, the smug look died on his face. And he’d given her a chin jerk like they’d been old hook-up buddies or something. The smug bastard hadn’t flinched through that part. Either he wasn’t surprised that I’d gotten her back, someone had gotten that news to him (which would be really fucking bad but I doubted it), or he didn’t give a fuck and thought he was untouchable.

Or else, he had what he believed would be another ace up his sleeve.

We’d had Ben increase security, add another layer of vetting through Hal, Zack Jacobs’ man for staff for the opening, and there were cameras everywhere. If something went wrong, we’d be able to pinpoint how it had happened. I’d not only had a GPSin my wife’s engagement ring, but we’d had Tess wear a watch that had a GPS as well.

We also had Leo’s limo driver being switched out for one of ours. He wouldn’t be going back home tonight. His two bodyguards, who I’d just had a text message about stating they were directly outside the bar giving death-ray eyes to my other guards. They’d be put out of commission, too.

I was uncomfortable with how long the girls were taking to come back so I looked over my shoulder at Dex. I could see him standing outside the employee bathroom. I touched my index finger to my wrist and jerked my thumb toward the door.

I looked back in Denarda’s direction and caught a look on his face that set my teeth on edge. He put his drink down, grabbed his date’s hand and they moved quickly out of the room. Too quickly. Nino didn’t wait for my ‘go’, he immediately moved to follow.

I sipped my drink. My phone rang with a blocked number. I rejected the call and looked over my shoulder toward Dex.

I didn’t like that I couldn’t see the girls so I jerked my chin at him and said, “Now.”

Dex knocked on the door to the bathroom but at that second, the lights flickered as the room shook with a vibration that hit me in the depths of my gut. The bar area, to the left of me and not far from the alcove that led to that ladies’ room where my wife and sister were, it exploded. Something scraped my face and temporarily disoriented me.

I saw an orange flash that accompanied the deafening sound of glass smashing, wood splintering, and people screaming. Screaming filled the crowded space.

The now darkened space was filled with smoke. I immediately moved toward where I knew Tia and Tess were and before I got too far, moving through people and wrecked furniture and falling down ceiling and light fixtures, there was asecond explosion. It was happening over by the entrance to the bar, where we’d come in.

As the sound of that explosion and debris crashing around me pierced the air, I’d gone to the floor, turtling. When I rose, pieces of wall and ceiling falling all over me, there was coughing and screaming. Dust and smoke in the air was filling my lungs.

I glanced behind me and saw flames by that doorway. My eyes started to burn, but I had a single-minded goal. Get to Tia and Tess.

Leo Denarda deserved more credit than he’d been getting. Priority one: my wife and sister. Priority two: make Denarda pay. Fuck, I hoped that Nino and our other guys had managed to get away from that doorway in time and that our guy had him in the limo.

I moved through people and debris, smoke clogging my lungs, but determined to get to the girls. I felt for my phone in my tux jacket pocket and squinted through feeling half blind to use the phone’s flashlight to light the way.

I could see people who were hurt and some who weren’t moving among the debris. The bar was half blown apart, some pieces of ceiling were down and there was stuff coming through from the floor above the bar. The alcove that led to the restrooms had people and furniture and other shit blocking it. I carefully moved through it.

“Can you help me? I think my leg’s broken,” a small female voice asked. I saw the black and white cocktail waitress uniform of one of Ben’s servers.

“I’ll get help. I have to get to my pregnant wife in the bathroom. One sec.” I started coughing, eyes still burning, mouth filled with dust, throat itching like fuck, but I kept moving forward. She was talking to me as I moved, sounding in pain but still talking. I had no idea what she was saying because my wife and sister were all I could think of.

I heard more voices and saw spotlights from people’s phones coming through the dust and debris from multiple directions. The dust was settling a little bit but that fire by the door was spreading. People coughed, I heard weeping, both male and female. My cheek was wet, cut or something, but I was otherwise okay.

---