The first sliver of dawn was a pale, cold line at the edge of the world. Brianna watched it from Adrian’s bed, her body warm where it was tucked against his, her mind already a riot.
His breathing was deep and even, one arm a heavy, possessive weight across her waist. The peace of the night before—the gelato, the confession, the slow, deliberate way he’d loved her—felt like a dream pressed under glass. Now, in the grey light, the reality of her mother’s captivity was a vise around her lungs. The strategy was formed, the alliance sealed, but the waiting was a silent scream in her blood.
She needed to move. To think in motion. Running had always been her reset, the rhythm of her feet on pavement organizing the chaos in her head. Here, there was no pavement, only the promise of gardens and guarded grounds. It was a calculated risk. Staying curled in his bed felt like surrender to the panic. Moving felt like agency.
She extracted herself with forensic care, sliding from under his arm, pausing when he stirred. He didn’t wake. She dressed in the simple athletic clothes she’d packed—black leggings, a fitted grey tank—and padded silently from the room. In the kitchen, she found a notepad by a sleek, modern phone. Her handwriting was a precise, sharp contrast to the opulent marble.
Gone for a run on the grounds. Needed air. Back soon. – B
She propped it against the espresso machine, where he’d see it. A courtesy. A thread.
Marco was in the main hall, speaking in low Italian into a comms unit. He turned, his expression shifting from professional neutrality to mild alarm as he took in her attire. “Signorina Sterling. It is early.”
“I need to run. Clear my head. I’ll stay on the property.” Her voice was calm, leaving no room for debate. “Where are the boundaries?”
He gestured toward the eastern tree line, his disapproval a palpable pressure at her back as she pushed open the heavy door. The morning chill was a slap, and she welcomed it, her legs already beginning to pump.
The air was damp and clean, tasting of dew and turned earth. She followed the crushed gravel path Marco had indicated, her sneakers making a soft, rhythmic crunch. The manicured lawns gave way to wilder gardens, the geometry of the estate dissolving into a tangle of rose bushes, olive trees, and hedges sculpted into strange, mythical shapes. Her breath plumed in the grey light, her body warming, the tight coil of anxiety in her chest beginning to loosen with each stride.
She ran. Not from something, but toward the clarity that always came with motion. The strategy for her mother was set—a delicate, dangerous play of misdirection and timing she’d designed herself. But here, in the silence of the garden, the personal weight of it all threatened to crush the professional precision. Adrian’s confession last night. The office he built. The way he’d watched her laugh, a ghost on a screen, wanting that sound for himself before he even knew her name.
It was too much. And so she ran faster, the burn in her thighs a welcome anchor to the present.
The path forked ahead. To the left, it wound back toward the visible bulk of the main house. To the right, it dipped into a denser copse of cypress trees, a shadowy tunnel beckoning. Marco had said the boundary was the old stone wall at the wood’s edge. She could see its mossy top in the distance. Still on property. Still safe.
She took the right fork.
The light changed, filtering through the dense canopy in spears of gold. It was beautiful, serene. But as she ran deeper, a prickle started at the nape of her neck. A forensic psychologist’s intuition, honed on a thousand lies and concealed threats. The hair on her arms lifted. The birdsong had stopped.
She slowed to a jog, then a walk, her breathing loud in the sudden quiet. Her eyes scanned. The pattern of the ferns. The fall of the shadows. The way the moss grew on the trunks. Normal. All normal.
Then she saw it.
Just off the path, nestled in a bed of ivy, was a statue of a faun. Its marble was stained green with age, one horn chipped. It was the kind of ornament that belonged in a place like this. But its placement was wrong. The ivy around it was freshly disturbed, the earth at its base scuffed, as if it had been recently moved. Or placed.
A marker.
Her blood went cold. Every instinct screamed at her to turn, to run back the way she came. But her feet were rooted. She was being watched. She could feel the gaze like a physical touch between her shoulder blades. She didn’t look around wildly. That would confirm her fear. Instead, she took a slow, deliberate breath and turned, as if to admire the view, her eyes sweeping the tree line.
Nothing. Only shifting leaves.
She began to walk back, her pace controlled, her ears straining. A twig snapped to her left. She broke into a sprint.
A figure erupted from the woods behind her, moving with terrifying silence and speed. She had a fraction of a second to register dark clothing, a ski mask, hands reaching. She twisted, bringing an elbow up, but he was a professional. He caught her arm, his other hand clamping over her mouth and nose with a cloth that smelled sharply of chemicals.
Chloroform. The clinical part of her brain identified it even as panic flooded her system. She fought, driving a heel into his shin, clawing at the hand on her face. Her vision tunneled. The last thing she saw was the faun’s chipped horn, grinning at her from the ivy. Then the world dissolved into nothing.
***
Adrian woke to empty space and cold sheets.
His hand slid across the linen where Brianna’s warmth should have been. He came awake instantly, the deep, post-sex languor vaporized. The room was silent, filled with pale morning light. He sat up, his gaze sweeping the en suite. The door was open, the light off. She wasn’t there.
A cold knot formed in his gut. He was out of bed in one motion, pulling on trousers, his mind running through scenarios. The kitchen. She might be in the kitchen.
He found the note propped against the espresso machine. Her precise, angular script. Gone for a run on the grounds. Needed air. Back soon. – B
He stared at it. The courtesy of it. The thread. It should have placated him. It did the opposite. The grounds were secure, but Julian had just proven no territory was impregnable. His fingers tightened on the paper.
He was heading for the main hall to find Marco when the door burst open.
Marco’s face was a sheet of pale fury, his usual composure shattered. “Boss.”
Adrian didn’t speak. The look on Marco’s face was the only answer he needed. The cold knot in his gut turned to ice, then to a spreading, black void.
“The eastern perimeter. Near the cypress copse. There were signs of a struggle. Her scent ends there. They used a vehicle—tire marks in the service road beyond the wall.” Marco’s voice was clipped, brutal. “They crossed our line. They took her.”
Adrian Valenti saw black.
It was a pure, annihilating rage that swallowed sound, light, reason. It was the fury of a king whose most prized treasure had been stolen from under his nose, from within his own walls. It was the terror of a man who had just found something irreplaceable and felt it ripped away.
The note crumpled into a tight ball in his fist. The paper bit into his palm. He didn’t feel it.
“Who.” The word was not a question. It was a death sentence waiting for a name.
“The tire pattern is consistent with vehicles used by the Mancini crew. The arrogance of the grab… it has their signature. They didn’t just take her. They walked onto our soil to do it.”
The Mancinis. The rival family leasing infrastructure to Julian’ CIA front. They weren’t just a business obstacle anymore. They were dead men.
Adrian’s vision cleared, the black rage condensing into a diamond-sharp focus more dangerous than any outburst. His stillness was absolute. “How long.”
“Less than thirty minutes. We have drones in the air. The vehicle disappeared into the city traffic, but we have a direction.”
Thirty minutes. A lifetime. Every second a violation. Adrian saw her in his mind. The fiery hair against his pillow. The intelligent eyes calculating a strategy. The way she’d kissed him last night, soft and sure. The feel of her tattoo under his thumb—his family’s motto inked into her skin, a claim she’d accepted.
They had taken what was his. But more than that, they had taken *her*. The one person who looked at him and saw a partner, not a monster. The only mind that had ever outmaneuvered his own.
“Get everyone,” Adrian said, his voice so low it was almost inaudible. “Every soldier. Every contact. Empty the war chest. I don’t care if we burn the city down.” He looked at Marco, and his eyes were the color of a winter storm. “We are not getting her back. We are taking her back. And we are leaving nothing standing in our wake.”
He turned, the balled-up note falling from his hand to the marble floor. The run was over. The war had begun.
He moved toward the armory, each step a silent promise of violence. The city outside would learn the cost of touching her.
The hallway to the lower levels was a study in restrained power. Reinforced steel doors, biometric locks, the hum of climate control preserving instruments of precision and pain. Adrian’s focus was absolute, a laser cutting through the lingering fog of sleep and the phantom warmth of her body beside him. That memory was now a fuel cell, burning cold and clean.
Marco kept pace, a shadow giving form to the chaos. “The drones have a probable location. An old textile warehouse in the Quartiere Mancini. It’s one of their legacy properties, off the books. Heavy fortification observed.”
“How many.”
“Thermal signatures suggest eight, maybe ten. Plus the target.”
The target. Brianna. Adrian’s jaw tightened. He saw the faun’s chipped horn in his mind, the ivy she’d noticed. She’d seen the marker. She’d known. And they’d taken her anyway.
The armory door hissed open. Racks of weapons gleamed under sterile light. Adrian didn’t hesitate. He selected a compact, matte-black assault rifle, checking the action with practiced, economical movements. He shrugged into a tactical vest, the weight settling on his shoulders like a second skin.
“We go in quiet until we find her,” Adrian said, his voice flat. “Then we burn it down around them. I want the head of the family. Alive. He will watch his legacy turn to ash before he answers to me.”
“Understood.” Marco armed himself, his own fury a contained echo of his boss’s. “And Julian?”
Adrian’s grey eyes were arctic. “He’s the architect. This is his play, using the Mancinis as his blunt instrument. He wants her to run to him for rescue. He doesn’t understand she already has a protector.” He slid a serrated combat knife into a sheath at his hip. “Today, we remove his tools. Tomorrow, we remove him.”
***
Consciousness returned in a nauseating wave.
The first sensation was the throbbing ache at the base of Brianna’s skull. The second was the smell—dust, machine oil, and the faint, sweet-sour tang of mildew. Chloroform lingered in her sinuses, a chemical ghost. She kept her breathing even, her eyes closed. Listen first.
She was seated on a cold, metal chair. Her hands were bound behind her with plastic zip-ties, the edges digging into her wrists. Her running shoes were still on her feet. The air was cool, still, with the vast, echoing quality of a large, empty space. Distant traffic sounds, muffled. A warehouse.
A man’s voice, accented, rough with cigarettes. “She’s still out. How much did you use?”
Another voice, younger, nervous. “Standard dose. She’s small. She should be waking up.”
“The boss wants her conscious. He wants to talk to her before Valenti comes knocking.”
Valenti. The name was a spike of adrenaline. Adrian knew she was gone. He would be coming. The thought was a lifeline, solid and fierce. She clung to it, letting it sharpen her mind through the drug haze.
She let her head loll forward, a soft groan escaping her lips. A performance of disorientation. Footsteps approached, gritty concrete crunching under boots.
“Ah. Sleeping beauty stirs.”
Brianna forced her eyes open, blinking against the glare of a single, hanging work light. Two men stood before her. The older one had a face like weathered leather, a scar bisecting his eyebrow. The younger one shifted his weight, his eyes avoiding hers. Both were armed, pistols holstered at their hips.
She took in the space. A cavernous warehouse, rows of rusted, skeletal looms standing like silent sentinels. High, grime-clouded windows let in slants of morning sun, illuminating swirling dust. One main rolling door, closed. A metal staircase leading to a glass-walled office overlooking the floor.
“Where is my mother?” Her voice came out hoarse but clear. A professional’s calm. She didn’t ask who they were or what they wanted. She established her priority, forcing them onto her terrain.
The older man smirked. “Safe. For now. That’s not your concern.”
“It’s my only concern.” She tested the zip-ties. Tight, but not cutting off circulation. She could work with that. “You’re Mancini.”
The younger one glanced at his partner, surprised. The older man’s smirk faded. “Smart girl.”
“Not smart enough to avoid your statue,” she said, letting a thread of contempt show. “A faun? A little on the nose for a trap.”
His hand shot out, gripping her chin, forcing her head up. His fingers smelled of tobacco and garlic. “You have a mouth on you. My boss is curious about that mouth. He wants to know what Valenti sees in a psychologist.”
Her bright blue eyes held his, unblinking. “He sees a strategist. You just see a woman in a chair. That’s why he’s a king, and you’re a foot soldier with bad breath.”
He released her face with a shove, her neck snapping back. “Enjoy the attitude. It won’t last.” He turned to the younger one. “Watch her. I’ll tell Don Mancini she’s awake.”
He stalked toward the staircase. The younger guard moved to lean against a loom a few meters away, his hand resting on his gun, watching her with uneasy eyes.
Brianna let her shoulders slump, feigning defeat. She closed her eyes, slowing her breathing, listening. One set of boots climbing metal stairs. A door opening and closing above. Then, only the hum of silence and the skittish guard.
She had minutes, maybe less. Her mind raced, inventorying her body. The zip-ties. The metal chair. Her own strength. The guard’s nervousness was an asset. Fear made people predictable.
She let out a small, pained whimper.
The guard shifted. “Quiet.”
Another whimper, louder. She let her body sag forward as if slipping from the chair. “My… my wrist. I think it’s broken. The plastic is too tight.” Her voice was a strained whisper, layered with genuine-sounding pain.
He hesitated, then took a step forward. “Don’t move.”
“I can’t feel my fingers,” she gasped, letting her head hang. “Please. Just check. If my hands are damaged, your boss won’t be happy.”
Another step. He was within arm’s reach now, his caution warring with a basic human impulse. She was a woman in distress, bound, seemingly helpless. His hand reached toward her shoulder.
Brianna exploded upward.
Using her core strength, she drove the top of her head forward into the bridge of his nose. Cartilage crunched with a sickening wet pop. He screamed, staggering back, hands flying to his face. Blood streamed through his fingers.
She didn’t stop. Pivoting the chair, she swung her legs out, sweeping his ankles from under him. He crashed to the concrete, his pistol skittering away. She was on her feet in an instant, the chair still attached to her back by her bound wrists. It was awkward, heavy, but she used the momentum, turning and slamming the metal chair legs into his temple as he tried to rise. He went still.
Breathing hard, she dropped to her knees beside his prone form. Her fingers, numb but functional, searched his pockets. A switchblade. She fumbled it open, sawing frantically at the plastic binding her wrists. The zip-tie snapped.
She was free.
She grabbed the guard’s pistol, checking the magazine. Full. She took the switchblade too. Her eyes flew to the office above. No movement yet. The older guard was still with his boss.
The main door was too heavy, too loud. The windows were too high. The staircase led to her captors. She needed another exit. Her gaze swept the shadows. There, near the back—a smaller, human-sized door, rusted but promising.
She moved, keeping low, using the giant looms for cover. Her running shoes were silent on the dusty floor. Every nerve was live wire, her psychologist’s mind analyzing angles, calculating time. Adrian was coming. She just had to stay alive and mobile until he got here.
She reached the door. It was bolted from the inside, but the bolt was old, corroded. She threw her weight against it. It shrieked in protest, metal grinding on metal, but gave way an inch.
A shout echoed from above. “Hey!”
She looked back. The older guard was at the office window, pointing. Then he was gone, rushing for the stairs.
Brianna slammed her shoulder into the door again. With a final, deafening screech, it burst open, revealing a narrow alley choked with weeds and garbage. Morning sunlight, blinding after the warehouse gloom.
She plunged into the light, the pistol heavy in her hand, the taste of blood and freedom sharp on her tongue. She ran.
The first gunshot cracked the air a second after she heard the shout behind her. It wasn’t the sharp report of a pistol; it was the deeper, uglier bark of a submachine gun, and the bullet punched into a dumpster lid to her left with a metallic shriek.
Brianna didn’t look back. She threw herself into a weaving sprint, using the alley’s detritus as cover. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drum counting down the seconds. Another burst of fire. Chips of brick exploded from the wall beside her face.
The third burst found her.
A line of white-hot fire seared across the meat of her upper left arm. The impact spun her, not from force but from sheer shock. Her hand flew to the wound. It came away slick and warm. The bullet had grazed her, tearing through the sleeve of her running shirt and peeling back a strip of skin. It bled freely, a hot trickle down to her elbow, but the bone was intact, the muscle functional. A warning shot that missed being a kill shot by millimeters.
Adrenaline muted the immediate pain into a distant, throbbing ache. She lurched forward, her focus narrowing to the alley’s end where it T-boned into a quieter side street. Almost there. If she could make the turn—
Her foot caught on a loop of rusted cable hidden under a pile of soggy cardboard. She pitched forward, arms wheeling. There was no grace, no controlled roll. The world tilted, the filthy cobblestones rushed up to meet her, and she landed hard on her right side, her shoulder taking the brunt before her head snapped sideways and struck the corner of a discarded metal crate.
Lightning exploded behind her eyes. A blunt, sickening crunch echoed inside her skull. For a terrifying second, everything went grey and silent, a television tuned to static. Then sensation returned in a nauseating wave. A sharp, stinging agony bloomed above her right eyebrow. Warm liquid, thicker than sweat, began to seep down her temple, tracing a hot path into the corner of her eye.
She pushed herself up on trembling arms, spitting grit. Her vision swam, the alley tilting. She blinked rapidly, clearing the blood from her eye. It was a cut, not a crack. The pain was localized, fierce. A head wound bled like a nightmare, but she was conscious. She was alive.
Boots pounded closer. Voices, guttural and urgent. “She went down! This way!”
Move. The command was primal, overriding the dizziness, the burning arm, the throbbing head. She scrambled to her knees, then to her feet, stumbling. As she pushed off the crate, her left wrist brushed her cheek, smearing blood. The silver bracelet Adrian had clasped there days ago, the one with the delicate filigree that hid a micro-GPS tracker, glinted in the slanted morning sun, streaked with her own red.
He could see her. He could see the frantic, erratic line of her flight turning into a stunned, wavering stumble. He would know she was hurt. The thought was an anchor in the chaos. He was coming. She just had to stay mobile.
She lunged for the mouth of the alley, her gait unsteady. The side street was narrower, lined with the shuttered rear entrances of shops and a few parked vans. It offered more cover. She ducked behind a large industrial bin, pressing her back against its cold metal, gulping air. Her breath sawed in her throat, loud in her own ears. She listened.
The pursuers hit the T-intersection. “Which way?”
“Check left. You, right. She’s bleeding, she can’t have gone far.”
Brianna looked down at herself. Her light grey running leggings were stained with grime and a dark, spreading patch of blood from her arm. A drop fell from her chin onto the pavement with a soft tap. She was leaving a trail a child could follow.
Think. She was a psychologist, not a soldier, but she understood pressure, pursuit, and panic. Their orders were likely to retrieve her alive—Don Mancini wanted to talk—but the younger guard was unconscious, maybe dead by her hand, and she’d just been shot at. Rules of engagement had blurred. They would be angry, reckless. Predictable.
She peered around the edge of the bin. One man was jogging away from her, down the street to the right. The other was methodically checking doorways to the left, his back to her. The alley mouth was clear for a moment.
Her original path was cut off. Going back toward the warehouse was suicide. She needed to loop, to find a place to hide and stem the bleeding until Adrian’s chaos descended. The pistol was still heavy in her right hand. She switched it to her left, hissing as the movement pulled at the graze. Her right hand, slick with blood from her head, gripped the switchblade. It was a close-quarters weapon. Useless against a submachine gun from twenty feet, but a potent piece of psychology in her palm.
She chose the left, moving parallel to the searching guard but on the opposite side of the street, darting from van to doorway. Her head pounded with every footfall, a sickening rhythm. The blood from her eyebrow kept flowing, a persistent drip she wiped at with her shoulder. She needed to stop it.
Spotting an open, overflowing trash bag beside a cafe’s back door, she grabbed a wad of discarded paper napkins, grimly noting the coffee stains. She pressed them hard against the cut, the pressure sending fresh bolts of pain through her skull. It would have to do.
A shout echoed. “Footprints! Blood here!”
They’d found her trail at the intersection. Time was up.
Directly ahead, a narrow service passage gaped between two buildings, barely wider than her shoulders. It was dark, cluttered with broken pallets, and stank of urine. A terrible place to be cornered. But it was the only option not directly in their line of sight.
She slipped into the gloom, moving as quickly as the confined space allowed. The passage turned a dog-leg after ten meters. She rounded the corner and stopped, pressing herself against the damp brick wall, listening. Her own breathing was too loud. She forced it slower, shallow, through her nose.
Boots approached the entrance of the passage. A beam of light from a flashlight swept over the garbage at the opening. “In here?”
“Can’t see. Go check.”
“You check. It’s a rat hole.”
The argument was brief, tense. One set of footsteps entered the passage, cautious. The beam of light bounced ahead, growing brighter as he approached the turn.
Brianna’s fingers tightened on the knife. Her left arm trembled, making the pistol waver. She couldn’t fire. The report in this stone tunnel would be deafening, would pinpoint her exactly, and she might miss. The knife was silent. But to use it, she’d have to let him get close. Very close.
The light played on the wall just ahead of her corner. He was steps away. She held her breath, every muscle coiled. The tracker on her wrist felt like it was pulsing, a silent beacon screaming her location into the void. *Hurry.*
The man rounded the corner, the flashlight held high in one hand, his weapon lowered in the other. His eyes, adjusting from the light to the deeper shadow, widened as they landed on her.
Brianna moved first. She didn’t thrust with the knife. She swung her left arm up in a short, brutal arc, smashing the heavy pistol grip into the side of his jaw. Bone cracked. His head snapped sideways, the flashlight clattering to the ground. He grunted, stumbling, but didn’t go down.
Before he could bring his weapon to bear, she was on him. She drove her knee up into his groin. The air left his lungs in a pained whoosh. As he folded, she brought the knife up, pressing the cold tip just under his ear, where the carotid artery thrummed against the blade.
“Drop it,” she whispered, the words ragged. “Or I paint this wall with you.”
His submachine gun hit the ground with a clatter. His hands came up, palms out. In the fallen flashlight’s beam, his face was a mask of pain and shock. She was a blood-smeared vision, one eye half-swollen shut, her expression utterly focused, utterly calm. It was more terrifying than any snarl.
“How many more?” she breathed, the knife not wavering.
“Two. In the street,” he gasped.
“The Don. Is he at the warehouse?”
A hesitation. She pressed the blade until a bead of blood welled beside its point. He flinched. “Yes. Office. Upstairs.”
Brianna shifted her weight. In one fluid motion, she reversed the pistol in her hand and slammed the butt down onto the crown of his head. He collapsed, a sack of meat and bone, into the filth.
She stood over him, shaking, the knife still gripped white-knuckle tight. The pistol felt like a lead weight. Two more in the street. They would come looking for their friend. She couldn’t stay here.
She snatched up the fallen flashlight, clicked it off, and plunged deeper into the passage. It opened into a small, enclosed courtyard filled with empty kegs and crates. A high wall topped with broken glass surrounded it. No exit. A dead end.
But there was a rickety wooden staircase leading to a second-floor landing and a door. A service entrance, maybe to an apartment or a storage room. It was her only vertical option. She climbed, each step sending a jolt through her aching head. The door was locked, but the frame was old, wood rotten in places.
Setting the pistol down, she braced her good shoulder against the door near the handle and pushed with everything she had left. The wood around the lock splintered with a sound like a gunshot to her strained nerves. The door gave way, swinging inward into darkness.
She stumbled inside, pulling the door shut behind her as best she could. The room was an unused storage closet, smelling of dust and old paint. It was windowless, safe. For now.
She sank to the floor, her back against the wall, the pistol in her lap. The napkin on her head was soaked through. She peeled it away, the fresh air on the wound a new kind of sting. She pressed the clean underside back against it, holding it tight.
In the absolute dark, the only sounds were her ragged breathing and the drip of her blood onto the concrete floor. *Tap. Tap. Tap.*
She lifted her left wrist, bringing the bracelet close to her face as if she could see it. The metal was cool against her feverish skin. He was watching the little blinking light that was her life. He was coming through the streets like a force of nature, and she was here, in a dark hole, bleeding. But she was free. She was armed. And she had just interrogated a Mancini soldier.
A grim, bloodied smile touched her lips. Let Julian have his traps. Let Mancini have his foot soldiers. She was Brianna Sterling, forensic psychologist and strategist to a king. And she was done being taken.
She closed her eyes in the dark, listening for the coming storm, and waited for her partner.
The world dissolved into a warm, buzzing numbness, the pistol slipping from her slack fingers to clatter on the concrete. Brianna’s last conscious thought was of the cool metal bracelet against her skin, a final anchor before the dark swallowed her whole.
Adrian Valenti moved through the Mancini-controlled warehouse district like a blade cutting silk. Silenced reports from his weapon were punctuation marks in the symphony of chaos his men were orchestrating. He felt nothing but a cold, crystalline focus. Every corner cleared, every hostile neutralized, was a step closer to her. The tracker in his hand showed her beacon, stationary now, pulsing in a storage block two streets over. Alive. He clung to that.
He rounded a corner into a narrow alley just as two Mancini foot soldiers stumbled out, weapons raised. They didn’t even get a syllable out. Adrian fired twice, center mass. They dropped. He stepped over them without breaking stride, his eyes already scanning the ground. His men fanned out ahead, securing the perimeter, but he was the spearpoint.
At the mouth of a foul-smelling service passage, he found Marco standing over a groaning, semi-conscious man. “This one was already gift-wrapped,” Marco said, toeing the soldier’s cracked jaw. “Her work.”
Adrian didn’t answer. He grabbed the dazed man by the collar, hauling him up against the brick wall. The man’s eyes swam, trying to focus. “The woman,” Adrian said, his voice low, flat, devoid of all humanity. “Where is she?”
“I— I don’t—”
Adrian slammed him back against the wall, once, hard. “The redhead. You took her. Where is she now?”
The man coughed, blood spraying. “Didn’t… take. She shot Rico. Got away.” His gaze flickered down the alley, toward the dead-end courtyard. “She was hit. Bleeding.”
The words landed in Adrian’s gut like a physical blow. *She was hit.* The cold focus splintered, replaced by a white-hot blade of fear. He dropped the man, letting Marco catch him before he crumpled. “Find out everything,” Adrian ordered, the command razor-sharp. He was already moving, following the tracker’s signal, his eyes scanning the ground.
He saw it then. A spatter of blood, fresh and dark, on the cobblestones. Then another. A smeared handprint on a crate. A trail. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drum trying to break through the wall of his control. He forced a breath in, held it, let it out slowly. Panic would not find her. Sharpness would.
He followed the droplets into a courtyard, his weapon up, eyes sweeping the high walls, the stacks of kegs. The signal was strongest here, directly above him. His gaze snapped to the rickety wooden stairs leading to a second-floor door. The frame was splintered, the door slightly ajar.
He took the stairs two at a time, the wood groaning in protest. He didn’t announce himself. He pushed the broken door open with the barrel of his weapon, sweeping the small, dark room.
And there she was.
Slumped against the far wall, a small, still figure in running shorts and a blood-soaked tank top. Her fiery hair was matted with more blood on one side, a crude, stained napkin stuck to her temple. Her left shoulder was a mess of dark, wet crimson. Her skin was ghost-pale in the slice of light from the doorway. Her eyes were closed.
For one terrifying second, the world stopped. He saw only the absence of the rise and fall of her chest.
Then he was across the room, his weapon discarded, knees hitting the concrete beside her. His hands, steady through a dozen firefights, trembled as he reached for her. He pressed his fingers to the side of her throat, under her jaw.
A pulse. Thready, too fast, but there. The breath he hadn’t realized he was holding rushed out of him.
“Brianna.” Her name was a raw scrape in his throat. He cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking the cold skin. “*Amore mio*, look at me.”
She didn’t stir. The panic threatened again, colder, deeper. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, wadding it up to press firmly against the gunshot wound on her shoulder. She flinched, a faint moan escaping her lips, but her eyes remained shut. Unconscious, not gone. Shock. Blood loss.
“Marco!” His shout echoed in the tiny room. “Now! I need a med kit and a clear path out!”
He heard the confirmation barked into a radio below. His attention snapped back to her. He gently peeled the bloody napkin from her head wound. It was a deep gash, still oozing, but not arterial. The shoulder was the priority. He kept pressure on it with one hand, his other hand brushing the tangled hair from her face. The Valenti motto tattoo on her wrist, his family’s words etched into her skin, was smeared with her blood.
“You foolish, brilliant woman,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Running into my war.” He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching hers. “You do not get to leave it. Do you hear me? You stay.”
Marco burst in a moment later, a heavy black medical kit in hand. “Courtyard is secure. Car is two minutes out.”
Adrian took the kit, his movements becoming efficient, clinical. He cut away the fabric around her shoulder with a trauma shear, revealing the wound. A graze, thank God, but deep and messy. He cleaned it with antiseptic wipes, his touch as gentle as he could manage, then packed it with hemostatic gauze and wrapped it tight with a bandage. He did the same for her head, his fingers deft as they smoothed a sterile pad over the gash and secured it.
As he worked, he talked to her. Low, steady words in a mix of English and rapid Italian. Promises. Threats. Nonsense. Anything to tie her spirit to the sound of his voice. “You will be fine. You will be furious with me for being furious with you. We will argue about your recklessness. You will win. But first, you open your eyes.”
He finished the bandages and checked her pulse again. Still there. Weaker. He stripped off his dress shirt, leaving him in his blood-smeared undershirt, and wrapped the softer cotton around her over the bandages, trying to keep her warm. He lifted her carefully into his arms, cradling her against his chest. She was so light, yet she carried the weight of his entire, reshaped world.
He carried her down the unstable stairs, Marco leading the way, weapon up. The courtyard was now filled with Valenti men, a wall of grim-faced protection. They parted for him as he moved toward the archway leading to the street, where a black SUV idled, its door open.
He laid her across the back seat, climbing in beside her, keeping her head cradled in his lap. “Drive. To the clinic. No lights, no sirens. Be a ghost.”
The SUV pulled away, sliding into the early morning traffic. In the relative quiet of the moving vehicle, Adrian looked down at her. The pallor of her skin, the dark circles under her closed eyes, the blood—her blood—drying on his hands and arms. A quiet, annihilating rage settled in his bones, colder and more final than any previous fury. The Mancinis had touched what was his. They had drawn her blood.
He would burn their world to the ground.
But first, he would beg any power that listened for her to wake up. He stroked her hair, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. “Brianna,” he whispered again, the word a vow in the dim light. “Come back to me.”
On her wrist, the tracking bracelet emitted a soft, steady glow. In the front seat, Marco’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then back at Adrian in the rearview mirror, his expression grave. “Boss. The signal from the bracelet. It just sent an automated alert. A second frequency was pinged. Someone else was tracking her.”
Adrian’s eyes, fixed on Brianna’s face, turned to stone. Julian. It had to be. The game had just expanded. And his queen was wounded on the board.
He looked from Marco’s reflection back down to the woman in his arms. His voice, when it came, was the calm before an absolute storm. “Let him track. Let him follow the signal right to my door. It will save me the trouble of hunting him.”
The SUV sped on, carrying them toward safety, toward answers, toward a confrontation that now had a new and deeply personal deadline. In the back, Adrian held Brianna tight, his world narrowed to the fragile beat of her heart against his own.
The SUV carved through the quieter backstreets of Rome, its speed a controlled, dangerous thing. Adrian held Brianna against his chest, one hand cradling her bandaged head, the other maintaining pressure on her shoulder through his bundled shirt. Her breathing was shallow, each inhale a faint, whistling sound that scraped at his nerves. He watched the city blur past, his mind a cold, dark engine calculating distances, contingencies, and a hundred different ways to make men scream.
“Two minutes,” Marco said from the front, his eyes flicking between the road and the rearview mirror. “Clinic is ready. Doctor Moretti is standing by.”
Adrian didn’t reply. His focus was on the woman in his arms. The pallor of her skin was worsening, a sickly white that made her freckles stand out like specks of dirt. He chafed her bare arm gently, trying to coax some warmth into her cold skin. “Stay with me,” he murmured, his lips brushing her temple just above the bandage. “You are not allowed to leave.”
The vehicle slid into a narrow, unmarked alley behind a nondescript building of weathered yellow stone. A steel security door rolled upward before they had fully stopped, swallowing the SUV into a dim, concrete-lined garage. The door rattled down behind them, sealing them in.
Before the engine cut, Adrian was moving. He pushed the car door open with his shoulder, shifting Brianna carefully into his arms as he slid out. His men were already there, forming a perimeter, but he ignored them. A man in green scrubs, Doctor Moretti, hurried forward with a gurney pushed by a nurse.
“Gunshot graze to the left superior trapezius, significant blood loss. Laceration to the right temporal region, probable concussion. Unconscious for approximately forty minutes,” Adrian recited, his voice devoid of all emotion as he laid her on the crisp white sheet. The clinical words were a barrier against the chaos churning inside him.
Moretti nodded, his experienced eyes already assessing. “Vitals?”
“Weak. Thready.”
The doctor placed two fingers on Brianna’s neck, then pulled a penlight from his pocket. He lifted her eyelid. The bright blue iris was visible, but the pupil reacted sluggishly to the light. “Get her into Trauma One. Start O-negative blood. I want a full scan, now.”
The nurse began pushing the gurney, the wheels squeaking on the polished concrete. Adrian moved with them, his hand still on Brianna’s uninjured arm, his steps keeping pace. He wouldn’t let go. Couldn’t.
At the double doors leading to the inner clinic, Moretti stopped and turned. “Adrian. You need to wait here.”
“No.”
“You are covered in her blood. You will compromise the sterile field. You will be in the way.” The doctor’s tone was firm, but not unkind. “Let me do my job. It is what you pay me for.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. Every instinct roared at him to follow, to stand guard over her, to ensure no further harm could touch her. He looked down at his hands, stained a rusty brown. He looked at Brianna, so small and still on the gurney. Her survival outweighed his need for control. He gave a single, sharp nod.
His hand lifted from her arm. The doors swung open, and the medical team whisked her away. The doors sighed shut, leaving him in the sterile, silent hallway.
He stood there, staring at the closed doors. The silence was a physical weight. He became aware of the ache in his knees from kneeling on concrete, the tightness in his shoulders, the coppery scent of blood that clung to him. He turned slowly.
Marco was there, holding a clean black t-shirt and a damp towel. “Boss.”
Adrian took the towel. He scrubbed at his hands and arms, the rough fabric scraping his skin. The blood came off in streaks, revealing pale skin beneath. He pulled off his ruined undershirt and tossed it into a biohazard bin, then yanked the clean shirt over his head. The mundane actions were anchors in a sea of static fury.
“The second signal,” Adrian said, his voice low. “Trace it. I want a location, not a theory.”
“Working on it. It’s sophisticated. Military or agency-grade. It piggybacked on our frequency, only revealing itself when her vitals dipped below a certain threshold.” Marco hesitated. “It means he knew about the bracelet. He was waiting.”
“Julian.” The name was a curse. Adrian leaned back against the cold wall, closing his eyes for a second. The CIA operative hadn’t been idle. He’d been adapting, using their own security against them. A cold admiration flickered and died. It changed nothing. It only clarified the target. “He wanted a distress signal. He wanted to know the moment she was vulnerable.”
“He knows now.”