“Well, this takes the whole drive it like you stole it to a new level,” Luca says from the back seat. Theo reaches over and slaps the kid upside the head. He doesn’t say anything but I can imagine the glare he’s sending Luca’s way. It’s one I’ve seen grown men piss themselves over.

  “Left, take the next left. There’re five minutes between us,” I tell Christian.

  “Got it,” he says.

  My fist opens and closes. I’m itching to get my hands on these fuckers. They’re not going to know what hit them.

  “Matteo, you know we’re with you. Whatever you need us to do, just say the word,” Theo says.

  “What I need is my fucking wife back. I can’t lose her,” I tell him.

  “You won’t,” he assures me.

  “Two minutes,” I tell Christian. He’s closing in on them.

  Theo’s phone rings and I listen as he puts it on speaker. “We’re going to surround the cars. Don’t hit them. If Savannah is in one of those SUVs, we don’t want her involved in a collision.”

  “Okay,” we all agree with him.

  “We’ve got three cars circling the perimeter. They’ll block the road, and we’ll come in behind them. Remember, unless you’ve got a clear shot and Savannah isn’t in it, don’t fucking chance it,” Pops says.

  When we pull in behind the two SUVs, I don’t wait for the car to stop before I jump out. “Fuck, Matteo, wait the fuck up!” Theo yells. I hear the doors opening, the footsteps right behind me. I don’t look back.

  Whoever is occupying these cars, they’re cowards and not getting out. Really, they’re nothing more than sitting ducks right now. I walk up to the first SUV. The windows are blacked-out. I can’t see shit. Christian and Romeo fall into step beside me. I look over to see Theo and Luca on the opposite side of the vehicle. Pops and a few of our other soldiers approach the second car, while at least twenty of our men surround the area, weapons drawn and aimed.

  I glance at Theo again, and at my nod, we rip open the back doors. I don’t ask questions or consider who’s in the driver’s seat before I’m pulling the trigger and putting a bullet in the back of the fucker’s head. Theo follows suit. My eyes scan the interior. It’s empty. No one else is here. She’s not here. Spinning around, I approach the second car.

  Pops has the driver ripped out of his seat and is holding him against the hood by his throat. “Where the fuck is she?” he asks. The fucker’s turning blue from the lack of oxygen. Pops gives him a little shake before releasing some of the pressure around the guy’s neck. I walked past them to peer inside the SUV.

  She’s not here either. Turning back, I look to my brothers. They’re standing around with pity on their faces. I don’t need their fucking pity at the moment.

  “Where the fuck is she?” I ask no one in particular. I storm to our car and jump behind the wheel. But before I can get away from here, away from everyone, Theo slides into the passenger seat. He doesn’t say anything as I shift into gear and drive off. It doesn’t take long until I have two cars tailing me.

  Fuck them. Fuck everyone.

  27

  SAVVY

  So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

  1 Corinthians 13:13

  The sun streams through the openings in the trees above me. It’s morning. I must have fallen asleep. I’m so cold. I know I need to move. I know if I stay here, I might as well give up now. I can’t do that to Matteo.

  Where is he? If he’s looking for me, he must be going out of his mind. I need to get out of these woods. Attempting to pull myself to my feet—at least my knees—I fall straight back down as searing pain radiates up my leg.

  “Ahhhh.” I scream out loud, not really caring who hears me now. The pain is almost unbearable. I can’t just sit here and wait to be rescued though. If I do that, I’m not going to make it out of here.

  Not alive anyway.

  Tucking the pistol into the pocket of my jacket, I search for a branch I can use as a makeshift walking stick. I can’t put any weight on my foot. I’m going to have to hop my way out of here. Why the hell did I think running into the woods was a good idea anyway? You’d think I’d never seen a horror movie. Everyone knows you don’t run upstairs or into the dark woods. I’m surprised I still have a heartbeat at this point.

  I shuffle on my hands and knees towards a branch that might work. Slowly rising while putting my weight on the broken tree limb, I get halfway up before the wood snaps and tiny pieces splinter into my hand. “Fuck!” I cry out and fall to my side, my palms taking the brunt of the impact.

  I need to find a thicker branch. Something that won’t crack under my weight. Either that, or crawl my way through these woods. When I get out of here, I’m making Matteo sell this damn house and buy something in the city. What was he thinking, moving us so far out of civilization? I know I’m exaggerating. This is a really nice neighborhood. Reserved for the one-percenters who can actually afford to live out here. But fuck, if he’d just picked something in the city, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.

  Five minutes later, my hands are scratched up and bleeding. I’m thankful I’m wearing jeans. I’d hate to see the state of my knees if I weren’t. At least the denim is giving some sort of protection, even if it’s just a little bit. My stomach growls. I’m hungry, thirsty, sore, and tired. All I want to do is lie down, go to sleep, and wake up in bed with Matteo—realizing this was all just a bad dream. I push through, ignoring my stomach while doing my best to block out the pain. Although that’s nearly impossible. I ache everywhere. I’m not giving up. I will find my way back. I can’t be that far into the woods. I’m trying to recall how long I was running, but I can’t for the life of me remember.

  “Thank you, God!” I look upwards, eyeing the long thick branch before taking it in my hands. This one feels stronger than the last one.

  As carefully as I can manage, I rise to my knees, slowly transferring my weight onto the tree limb, and push to my one foot. My head spins as I stand upright. I reach out an arm to steady myself on the closest trunk.

  “You can do this, Savvy. You have to,” I tell my subconscious. Holding the branch in front of me, I hop on my good foot while hovering the other one above the ground. Pain shoots through my ankle as the blood rushes downward and it throbs with the beat of my heart. “Fuck, ow, fuck,” I cry out.

  Tears stream along my cheeks as a sense of hopelessness washes over me. I’m stuck in the middle of the woods, it’s freezing cold, and I’m probably going to die out here. And Matteo is going to find my lifeless body…

  No. I can’t do that to him. I have to get out of here. I will get out of here, even if it takes me all day.

  It’s been hours. I don’t even know how long I’ve been making my way through these woods. It’s getting colder again. My energy level is almost depleted. My mouth is dry. How on earth did Jesus make it forty days in the desert? I can’t even make it one day in the woods.

  Stopping, I brace myself against a tree. I don’t even know if I’m going the right way, or making my situation worse by going farther into the woods. I think I need to rest for a bit, and then I’ll keep moving. I just need to close my eyes for five minutes, regroup, and somehow find the energy I need to keep pushing forward. Just five minutes.

  I’m not sure how long I dozed off for. But when a pair of strong arms wrap around me, lifting me up, I snuggle into the warmth of the body. “I knew you’d find me, Tao,” I mumble before fully giving in and allowing the darkness to take over.

  28

  MATTEO

  In difficult ground, press on; in encircled ground, devise stratagems; in death ground, fight.

  ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  It’s been over twenty-four hours. She’s gone. I don’t know where the fuck she is and it’s my fucking fault. How the hell am I supposed to find her when I have no idea who has her. The Russians seem to be as clueless as we are. That much is clear. We’ve had one of them chained up in the basement, and he’s not saying shit. The dumb fucks screwed themselves, all because of a little spilled blood at a furniture store. They should know better than to try to attack us on the home front. But that’s a problem for another day.

  All that matters right now is my wife. Finding her and getting her back.

  I pour myself some whiskey and bring it to my mouth, only to hurl the glass at the wall at the last minute. I don’t deserve a goddamn drink.

  Savvy is out there somewhere, probably scared, hurt, and enduring the worst possible treatment I can think of. Women do not fare well in this world of ours, not when they’re weaponized. Whoever the fuck has her knows that she’s my weakness. I will give up everything for her. Why the fuck hadn’t I done it sooner? She begged me when we were teenagers, not to join the family, not to take the oath.

  I should have fucking listened to her.

  Falling to the ground, I let my head hang over my knees. I don’t get to shed a tear. I don’t deserve to wallow in the turmoil I’m feeling at not having her, not knowing where she is. It’s my job to find her, and right now, I don’t have the faintest clue as to what to do next. We’ve searched everywhere. Every nook and cranny of this goddamn house. The grounds and outer buildings. I look up and stare out the window. It’s starting to get dark again. She’s going to spend another night in hell.

  “I’m going to need something of hers, Matteo. I’ve got a guy bringing the dogs out here. We need a scent they can follow.” Theo squats in front of me.

  My gaze moves from the window to his face. “I need to find her, Theo. I can’t… I don’t know how… I need her,” I plead with him.

  “We are going to do everything we can to find her, Matteo. Don’t give up just yet. Savannah is strong—remember that. She’ll be fighting to get back to you.” He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

  “I don’t think anyone is that strong, Theo. Look at what happened to Hope, how much it changed her,” I remind him. Our cousin has never been the same after being date raped by her so-called boyfriend at sixteen. I know Savvy is strong, but no one is that strong.

  “You don’t know that’s happening to Savannah. Let’s not make shit up in our heads, and work with facts instead,” Theo says, pushing to his feet to tower over me.

  “Facts? The fact is my fucking wife is gone. Where the fuck is she? The fact is I was supposed to protect her from this sort of shit. And the fact is I fucking failed,” I yell at him, rising to meet him chest to chest.

  “You’re right, and when we find her, you’re going to do everything you have to do to fucking make it up to her. You’re going to take her away, go on that fucking trip to Australia you were dead set on taking. Now, I need something with her scent on it.”

  I walk past him and head upstairs to the bedroom. I rip the pillowcase off the pillow she slept on. Bringing it to my nose, I inhale. It’s all vanilla and cinnamon, all Savvy. Then I find a shirt she wore that’s still sitting in the hamper before bringing the items back downstairs and handing them to Theo.

  “Come on, they’re waiting,” he says, leading the way to the front of the house. “Jaxon.” Theo nods to the scruffy-looking blonde guy with a dog.

  “Theo, good to see you. Wish it were under better circumstances though,” he offers in reply.

  “This is my brother—Matteo.” Theo introduces me to the man. He doesn’t say anything, just gives a nod, which I’m thankful for. I’m not in the mood for small talk.

  “You got the scent?” Jaxon asks.

  “Yeah, here.” Theo passes him the pillowcase and shirt.

  “Where was the last known location?” This comes from a guy standing to the left of Jaxon with another dog.

  “Around the side of the house,” I tell them.

  “Okay, it’s best to start there. Lead the way,” Jaxon says.

  When we get around to the other side of the house, my stomach sinks. This is the last place she stood—as far as we’d determined.

  Where did you go, Savvy?

  I watch as Jaxon hands the shirt over to his counterpart, whose name I never got, not that I care who the fuck he is right now. If these dogs can find Savvy, I’ll be eternally indebted to them. As soon as the dogs get a whiff of the fabric, they both start charging towards the woods. No, that can’t be where she is. Those woods are dense, wet, and fucking cold. There’s only one reason a man in our line of work would take someone to a place like that.

  To dig a shallow grave. To bury something they don’t want found.

  I follow after the men and their dogs. They’re sniffing wildly, not stopping. Not slowing down. My heart hammers in my chest the closer we get to the clearing before the grounds turn into straight-up woodlands. And sure enough, the dogs keep going, disappearing into the tree line.

  The sun’s going down. It’s going to be dark soon. “Theo, get all the men, flashlights, whatever fucking lights the fuck up. I want this whole goddamn area searched,” I tell him.

  He nods and runs back towards the house. As my feet pound the soft earth, I try not to think of the worst, not picture her lifeless body buried in a fresh grave. It’s fucking hard though. I guess that’s what I get for having buried one too many bodies myself. Is this my karma? God’s way of laughing at me? Teaching me a lesson? Giving me what I’ve always wanted, only to take it away? To make me suffer the most agonizing pain imaginable?

  I make a vow to follow her. If she’s left this world, then I’m not far behind. Because there is nothing here for me without her. I’d like to think I’d feel it, feel as though I were being cut in two, as half of my own soul—the good half—went up to heaven. While the rest of me is left to rot. Because, let’s face it, Savvy’s the only good part of me there is.

  I have to believe she’s still alive, because I don’t feel… that. I feel a lot of things right now, but that isn’t one of them. “How accurate are these dogs?” I ask Jaxon.

  “Very. She definitely went this way,” he says. Ten minutes later, the dogs stop by a tree. I look down and see tiny droplets of blood on the trunk.

  “Fuck,” I curse under my breath. I touch the blood. It’s dried up. Not that fresh. Is it hers? With the way the dogs are sniffing at it wildly, I’m betting it is.

  “You might want to call in every resource you have at your disposal. It’s getting dark and she’s out here, hurt…” He lets his words trail off.

  I don’t need him to finish them. I know how dire the situation is. It’s so cold. Could she have even survived the first night? I’m not sure. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I call Pops.

  “Anything?” he asks.

  “She came into the woods. Why didn’t I think to check the goddamn fucking woods? Fuck. We need… I don’t know… Get some choppers flying overhead, get every man we have available out here searching. She’s in these woods somewhere,” I tell him.

  “Got it. Matteo, hold it together just a little longer. We’re getting close. We will find her.”

  “It’s not the if we’re going to find her I’m worried about. It’s the state she’s going to be in when we do.”

  “Let’s just find her,” he says before ending the call with a click.

  “It looks like she’s crawled through here.” The nameless guy points to a trail of crushed leaves.

  “Why the fuck is she crawling?” I say out loud. Neither of them answer, not that I expected them too. The dogs follow the flattened path. We walk for another twenty minutes, going deeper into the woods, before they pause again. “Why are they stopping?” I ask.

  “The trail ends. They’ve lost her scent,” Jaxon says.

  I look around, the crawl marks have stopped too. “Where could she have gone?”

  “I don’t know, man.”

  I’m looking around for any signs of someone else’s presence when I see faint boot prints in the dirt. “Here. Someone walked here.” I point to the markings.

  They bring the dogs over to track the scent. “They’re not hers.”

  “Fucking, fuck!” I grind out, pulling at my hair. “She has to be out here somewhere. Savvy!” I cup my hands around my mouth and start yelling. I continue to follow the footprints, calling out to her as I go. My throat is hoarse, but I’m not the only one yelling. I can hear all of my men echoing her name.

  It’s pitch-black now. I can barely see two feet in front of me. The light from three choppers flying overhead flicks across the ground.

  I lean against a tree and close my eyes. “Where the fuck are you, Savannah?”

  “Matteo, we need to go back to the house. Come on.” Pops’s no-nonsense voice makes my eyes pop open.

  “I’m not leaving here without her,” I tell him.

  “There are a hundred men in these woods, each more equipped to find her right now than you are. Let them do their jobs,” he says.

  “I can’t leave here without her.”

  “Okay, we’ll keep going. Come on.” He doesn’t argue anymore, placing a hand on my shoulder as we walk side by side through the woods. Both calling out her name.

  Family is everything to my father. I never doubted he’d always have my back, and right now it shows more than ever. He’s our rock. He will never know how grateful I am to have him in my corner. To have him as my role model.

  29

  SAVVY

  Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

  Romans 12:9

  The sound of machines beeping brings me back to consciousness. Where am I? My eyes slowly blink open, fighting the burn from the light. It’s bright in here, really bright.

  “You’re awake?” a deep, husky voice says.

  Turning my head, I’m greeted by a megawatt smile, all-white teeth, and dimples on a really handsome face. Do I know this person? Who is he?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18