Page 67 of Sins of the Father
An hour later, Luc stood in a secured safehouse outside Miami. The inner circle had been summoned: captains, consigliere, enforcers—any man with a pulse and a gun in this city now filled the war room, eyes on him.
The tracker Carlos had slipped onto Mia had stopped blinking forty-five minutes earlier. Either John had found it, or they were somewhere the signal couldn’t reach—underground, in a concrete bunker, or a place without towers. Luc had a rough idea of the neighborhood, and he knew how men like John thought. John hadn’t called; that silence told Luc everything he needed to know. John was playing chess—waiting, testing, setting traps for every move Luc might make before the negotiation he expected.
“John has betrayed us,” Luc said, calm and cold. “The price of that betrayal is death. He took my wife to trade her for the Bonino chip—so he has a buyer. He thinks I’ll fold. He is wrong. I will burn cities before I ever fold.”
He let that land, watching faces go pale or harden. “John is drawing a net to trap and kill me and anyone who would avenge me. I will not give him that chance. I want every contact Johnever used. Every safehouse. Tear them apart. Find his men. All who are loyal to him will die. If he runs, he will have nowhere left to run to.”
He paused, and his voice softened for the single thing that mattered. “My wife’s life comes before everything, even killing John.”
A dozen voices answered in one, “Yes, Boss.”
Luc walked out of the room with Antonio at his shoulder. He carried his gun, his blade, and a hard, unforgiving rage that drove his steps. He did not let himself think of how terrified Mia must be, or how this raid would prove to her how brutal his life was and how right she had been to fear it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They had left Mia alone in a warehouse—a cavern of shadow and metal, with rows of rusted shelving rising like the skeleton of some dead beast, pallets stacked with shrink-wrapped boxes, and a single, bare bulb swinging from the rafters. Rain beat on the corrugated roof in hard, impatient taps. Somewhere far off, a forklift idled and coughed; a distant dog barked and stopped. The place tasted of cold iron and dust.
Her hands were bound behind her with coarse rope, elbows aching from the pull. The knots bit into her wrists; the fibers rubbed the skin raw. John paced in front of a pallet of crates, speaking to five men armed with guns.
“We can take him; there is nothing to fear,” he had said coldly. “You move when I tell you. Once I call, you cut the lights, and I’ll make her scream, drawing him to rush in.”
“What if he does not take the bait?”
A low, derisive chuckled escaped John. “Oh, he will. He made her his weakness.”
“Luc Valachi?” another asked, in a tone that suggested it was impossible.
“Yes. I saw how he doted on her. Compromised himself several times for a fine bit of ass. He will come running once we make her scream.”
“Got it,” another said.
John pinned them with his stare. “I will tell him to come alone, but he won’t. I am certain he will have Antonio by his side. Do not underestimate Tonio. Some of you might have played poker and drank with him, but that congenial façade is just an act. He is his brother’s most ruthless enforcer for a reason. So be on your guard and be ready to take out both of them. Got it?”
The men nodded, faces lit in the swinging bulb—hard features, cigarette stubs, the hardness of killers. They left in a slow, efficient exodus, boots clacking on concrete. The last man’s shadow had stretched away; the echo of the final footstep died.
John turned and looked at her the way a man inspected a tool he meant to use. “You’re staying where you are,” he’d said. “Soon, I’ll bury you two lovebirds together. Never say I am not considerate.”
Since the moment he took her, fear had been her companion. Now it leeched away, and it was replaced with a white, crystalline rage that made her teeth ache. The thought of Luc walking into a trap set with her as the bait felt like a blade through her. Tears pooled hot on her cheeks, then fell, leaving salt tracks on her face. The panic in Mia’s head had cleared. She would not let him go to die because some petty man wanted to use her as leverage.
Near her lay a pallet jack, a coil of plastic strapping, a jagged shard of metal—the corner of a torn sheet of tin propped against a crate. She swallowed the sudden lurch of hope and inched her body forward on the concrete, skin scraping as she dragged herself. The rope hummed against her wrists.
She found the tin first, its edge a thin, cruel blade. The rope was knotted tight at her wrists, the fibers old and coarse; frayingit would take time and would leave her bleeding. She pressed the shard to the cord and rubbed with the single, precise motion. The blade chewed at the fibers. The rope bit into her palms. Pain bloomed—stinging, then hot—but she kept rubbing, breath shallow, counting quietly to herself to keep from thinking about what would happen if she failed.
At all costs, she must not allow John to make that call to his men, nor would she allow him to make her scream. Her fingers went numb around the tin as the first coarse threads began to loosen. She found a rhythm—press, drag, press—small motions that felt like prayer. Blood beaded along the seams of the rope, and her hands grew slick; she kept going. A strand snapped. Mia didn’t allow herself a breath. She worked the next one, faster now, the adrenaline making her motions brutal and accurate. Splinters bit into her knees as she dragged herself forward, but she ignored the pain, her resolve tightening until finally the last fiber gave and the knot unreeled like an exhausted thing letting go. Her wrists were raw, skin torn in a line where the rope had chafed, fingers trembling with pain. She flexed them, listening for any sound beyond the thud of her pulse.
Mia tumbled to her knees, gathered the thin shard and the lengths of frayed rope, and moved with the same silent prowl Luc had taught her: head low, shoulders hunched, breath controlled. She slipped along the shadows between stacked crates. She tested doors quietly, easing one that gave to pressure and slipping out into a narrow service corridor that smelled of oil and diesel.
Her palms left bloody prints on the metal rung she used to lift herself to a higher pallet so she could see more of the warehouse. She spied John, and her breath fractured when she saw him pull out a cellphone and press it to his ear. Mia frowned, realizing he had spoken to Luc and given instructions on where to come for the trade. Her for the microchip her father left behind.
Mia took her time climbing down from the pallet. Her hands stung; her breath tasted like copper. It was not enough to slow her. Anger and love were fuel now—everything in her focused on stopping John from making that call to his men.
At the edge of the warehouse, she paused, listening. In the distance, she thought she heard boots and the beat of a radio. Mia pressed her forehead to the cold metal and forced herself to be quiet. She would not be bait. She would not be a bargaining chip.
When she moved again, it was with the predator’s patience she’d learn from Luc—slow, small steps that lived in the seams of sound. She used every lesson he had taught her. If she had to take John down herself to keep Luc from walking into a trap, she would. Her wrists burned; her hands trembled.
Mia’s fingers closed around a length of iron pipe lying beside a crate, cold and heavy. She tested its weight, adjusting her grip until it felt right in her hands. The air smelled of rust and dust, of rain seeping through old roof seams. Her pulse thudded in her ears, steadying to the rhythm of her breath.
She moved. Silent. Patient. A shadow among shadows. John’s boots scraped faintly on the concrete, the sound giving her direction. He was pacing, muttering to himself as he checked his phone and radio, unaware that his prey had slipped free. Mia tracked him from behind the stacks of boxes, keeping low, watching every shift of his shoulders. Her belly tightened when she realized where he was heading, back to the corner where he’d left her bound.
