Page 62 of Protected By the Mafia

Miguel shrugged his arm free and leaned forward. “I got it, I— Oh, shit.”

The room went silent.

Cristiano forced his lungs to function. He could only see a portion of the image over Miguel’s figure, enough to recognize Felicity’s distressed face and a man directly in front of her. The male wasn’t fully facing the camera, but enough of him had been captured that the picture was good enough for anyone who might know him. Like Miguel, apparently. “Speak.”

Miguel turned, positioning himself out of the way and motioning to the picture. “That’s Cezar Barros.”

“Shit,” Mikey muttered.

Cristiano ground his teeth; stare riveted to the image captured on the monitor. The image of a man with teardrops tattooed under his eye, a Glock in one hand and his other wrapped too tightly around Felicity’s abused wrist. Felicity, looking panicked and on the verge of tears. Frightened. Vulnerable.

“So that’s Barros.” Dante’s voice at Cristiano’s shoulder snapped him from the dark haze.

Cristiano turned his head, realizing as he did that more bodies had filed into the room. The room was still silent. Every man was on his feet, watching and waiting. Miguel had moved back to the far side of the desk, for once biting his tongue.

Dante studied the screenshot for a moment longer, then lifted his stare to the room. “Every man sees this picture. I want boots on the ground. Barros reportedly drove off in a black four-door Mercedes. If you think you see this motherfucker, shoot out his goddamn knees and call it in. No one sleeps until Cristiano’s fiancée is home safe.”

“He took the Merc?” Miguel’s question sounded almost accidental in seconds following Dante’s speech, and the boy had the brains to avert his gaze when attention shifted to him.

“Does that mean something to you?” Dante asked.

Miguel cleared his throat. “Just, uh, rumor was that car’s his prized possession, you know? He don’t mess around with it. So if he used that, instead o’ the beater he sometimes drove, that means he wasn’t planning on makin’ a mess or something. That’s … good, right?”

“Are you an idiot?” Mikey whispered to him, cutting a sidelong look at Miguel.

Cristiano’s fists clenched again at his sides. He recognized Miguel’s point, unpleasant thought it was, but he also recognized what that meant. The truth he’d feared from the start of this. “He’s taking her to Tristán.”

Miguel opened his mouth again, probably on reflex. “Why the hell would—”

Mikey smacked his palm over Miguel’s mouth. “Shut up now.”

Cristiano pushed out a rough breath. All he wanted to do was get back out there, but that was an ineffective strategy without some effort toward coordination. “Don’t waste time on any location we’ve already raided. He won’t have taken her anywhere he thinks we’re aware of, or anywhere he doesn’t feel in control. Spread the word.”

“You heard the man,” Dante said sharply.

Cristiano watched, for just a moment, as the gathered men in the room turned to file out. In his peripheral vision he saw Mikey lifting his tablet, presumably to send out the file to all their troops as Dante had ordered. It was time to get going, finally. He turned and offered a nod to his cousin in gratitude, then angled around the desk to stride from the room. “If anyone finds her before I do, call me. Otherwise, don’t.”

She had no way of knowing how much time had passed. It felt like hours, though the lighting in the room remained exactly the same. Her legs fell asleep long before her eyes got heavy and Felicity had to fight with herself to stay awake. She wasn’t safe here. It was strange to be so bored while being held against her will with her life on the line that she could actually drift to sleep, but that was where she was.

So, at first, she thought she was dreaming when she saw Tristán on his feet.

It was her ingrained reaction to the sight of him looming near that snapped her fully awake again, and then her heart leapt into her throat. She hadn’t had some half-dreaming hallucination. Tristán—swollen face and all—was walking toward her. His chest heaved with each rasping breath and dried blood was caked to the side of his jaw.

Felicity scrambled to her feet, almost toppling over when she realized her legs were more like jelly. She’d had to tuck them mostly under her to fit in her spot. A choice that was now working against her. She had no option but to brace herself with her wounded and still wrapped hand on the top of the recliner, leaving her only her good hand with which to wield her pot. Her legs were barely holding her, shaking in place. There was no way she could run. A single step would land her on the floor.

Several inches of rope dangled from Tristán’s wrist, the dangling end terribly frayed. In his other hand, hanging low at his side, Felicity realized he held a switchblade. He’d had a knife in his pocket the entire time.

Stupid. Stupid, Felicity. She should have checked. She should have made herself dig through his pockets. He might even have had a phone or something on him. None of those thoughts had occurred to her, not until she saw that ominous knife.

Tristán made a sound that was almost like a coo, his Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow, and he tried again. “Ouu ahr a bich!” He spat the final, least butchered word, and threw himself forward.

Felicity screamed, doing her best to block his lunging blade with her pot while at the same time throwing herself backward. She got stuck between the heavy chair and the wall, the space not wide enough for her to fit between, and her ears rang with the bone-rattling clang of his knife connecting with the backside of her makeshift shield. “Get off! Get away!” She tried to shove him back, but she’d wedged herself in at a bad angle and her momentum was lousy. It didn’t help that her legs hadn’t finished torturing her yet.

“Ore!” He tried to stab at an angle and she only barely blocked him. This time, his weapon slid across hers with a terrible screeching sound.

It took her a second to process the background noise that had erupted almost simultaneously. Gunshots, somewhere outside the room she was trapped in.

Tristán seemed to hear them, too, because he took a half-step back and glanced to the door. His eyes were still half swollen shut and bloodshot, but he seemed to have regained some degree of focus and concentration. He wasn’t fully lost to a rage.

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