Page 96 of Stolen By the Don

Gunfire tears through the quiet, and I duck behind a vending machine as tiles shatter behind me. My men return fire, resulting in more muffled shouts echoing from within.

I hear a man fall before stepping out and cleanly dropping the other. Another one tries to run, but a bullet to the leg and another to the head stops him in his tracks.

“Keep pushing!” I yell. Marco. That’s theonlything I care about. And he’s in here somewhere.

My shoes trail on blood smeared across the pale linoleum, and I walk past shell casings scattered everywhere. Leo is way behind me, covering my exit and ensuring nobody else gets in.

I walk quietly to the end of the hallway where the office is. Two men armed with guns jump out of nowhere, raising their weapons, but I’m faster. One round slams into the first man’s shoulder, spinning him into the wall. The other fires, narrowly missing me. Leo appears and takes him down with a single shot.

They drop, motionless.

Leo wipes sweat from his brow, his breath ragged as he turns to me. “You ready?”

I nod once.

The door opens without much coercion, and I step into a dimly lit room cluttered with cigarette butts and a half-empty bottle of bourbon. I hear a safety going off just as I see him—Marco Ricci.

His voice comes out dry as he smiles. Smugly. “Well,” he mutters, pointing his gun at me, “you finally made it.”

“You’re a dead man,” I rasp as my thumb hovers over my trigger. I could put the bullet between his eyes and end it here, but I need him to admit it. I need to see the look in his eyes when he realizes he has nowhere else to run. “A dead man who has been running like the coward he is.”

Marco shrugs. “Maybe I am a coward, but I doubt you’ll be leaving here with my body.”

I shake my head as rage turns my blood into molten lava. I grit my teeth as I speak. “You still think you have a card to play here?”

“Yes.” He nods. “You see…” He waves his gun around. “I knew she would tell you where I was. That’s why I had her brought to me—not because I wanted to use her to find you.”

My brows furrow in confusion.What is he talking about?

“She was bait,” Marco says. “All I needed was for her to lure you here so I could send my men to your house. Right now, they should be there”—he steps closer, eyes glinting, lips curving into a wicked grin—“with a gun to her forehead.”

Isabella.

A crack opens in my chest. That’s what he means.

That’s why she looked like she’d already cried before she walked into the room. Why she kept glancing away. Why she wouldn’t say what happened.

He took her.

“You mother—” I surge forward, fury turning my limbs to fire, my only instinct to wrap my hands around his throat and crush the smugness out of him. But he sidesteps, laughing under his breath like this is a game.

He’s enjoying it. Shooting him would be merciful. And I don’t want mercy.

I want to watch the panic flicker in his eyes. I want him to feel every second of dread like I’m feeling it now before the life drains from his eyes.

Marcotsks, raising a hand. “Careful,” he says. “You don’t want to do that. Because if I don’t make a call to stand down in the next twenty minutes…” He draws an invisible line across his throat. “They kill her.”

My fists curl so tight I feel my skin split.

“So,” he says, tilting his head with mock curiosity, “what’s it going to be, Roman Volkov? Will you let me walk out of here…or will you let your wife die?”

My voice tears out, raw. “She’s your daughter.”

He doesn’t flinch.

“She’s your blood. How the fuck can you do that to your own?—”

“She chose you!” he roars, his composure fracturing like glass. “She chose you over me!”

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