by Bethany-Kris
That sent his anxiety spiking.
Lucia went after Christian, the text read.
There was a part of him—the stupid part that still wasn’t very good at thinking things through, for the most part—that suddenly wanted to turn the hell around, and head for the door. It was dumb because as soon as he opened it, everything was going to hell. This whole place would be bombed sky-high, and every person inside—including him—would be dead.
That was reality.
And yet, that part of him still wanted to leave. He still wanted to go after her because what the fuck, Lucia? What was she thinking?
He wondered if their conversation at the hospital between him and her father hadn’t been as quiet as they thought it had been. Or maybe … the woman was just smarter than the rest of them gave her credit for, and she stayed close enough to listen.
Either way … what the fuck?
It was the only thing that felt appropriate.
Get her away from him, Renzo texted back.
What else could he do?
Fuck her for doing this.
Now his head was screwed.
“So, they send you in, huh?”
Renzo glanced up from his phone, and met the gaze of Johnathan Marcello. Lucia’s brother looked like he was dead inside staring back at Renzo. Like he couldn’t fucking feel anything, and this was just another day for him.
He knew that couldn’t be true.
But hell … a situation like this could do a lot of things to people. No one was going to react to it the same way. He wouldn’t expect them to, either.
Behind John, another man stood close with his arms folded over his chest. Andino. Lucia and John’s cousin. The main boss of the Marcello organization, as far as Renzo knew, while John was the boss of another New York faction for the Marcellos.
“Yeah, they sent me,” Renzo said. “Anyone find the bomb?”
John looked like he was chewing on his inner cheek before he muttered, “Toward the middle of the place. There are some … uh, car lifts and things. It was setup right between two of them. You know those lifts with the fucking cement holes beneath them for someone to go under and work on the cars?”
Renzo nodded. “Yeah.”
“Those.”
“Are there cars on the lifts?”
John shrugged. “On both, yeah.”
“So, he was trying to hide them, then. Or … make them blend in a bit.”
The man behind John let out a hard sigh, and passed the two of them a look. “How the fuck are we getting out of here, huh?”
“I don’t know yet,” Renzo replied.
“Well, don’t you think you better fucking figure it out?” Andino snapped. “Because I’ve got fifteen men inside this warehouse, not including us, and they send in you. You’re supposed to be the goddamn bomb specialist, right? That’s what John said. So, why don’t you stop talking about bullshit, and get on with telling me how you’re going to get me out of here and back to my wife and kids.”
Renzo arched a brow. “No.”
Andino turned to face Renzo head-on. “I beg your fucking pardon?”
“I don’t have to tell you or anyone else anything. This is my show. What I want, and how I work, and the way it’s done … that’s all on me. I can work while you watch, or I can work alone. I will work silently, unless I choose to do differently. My work? It’s fucking intense. I’m controlling, and focused. You don’t like it? Fuck off. Get used to it, man. Step up and let me do what I’m here to do, or step the fuck off.”
John cleared his throat as the silence between Renzo and Andino stretched on. “Listen, he’s wound a little tight right now. He doesn’t mean to be an asshole, he just doesn’t deal with this kind of shit well, that’s all.”
Well, that was all nice and great.
Except for one thing …
“I’m in here, too,” Renzo replied. “I’m going to die, too. So, fuck off, and let me work.”
• • •
This is not good.
Oh, this was so not good.
Renzo used the tip of an icepick-like tool from his small kit to peel up a cluster of wires so that he could get a better look at where it was connected to. The problem was that the setup used for this particular bomb was not the norm—it didn’t mean that Renzo didn’t understand what he was looking at, but rather … he understood what it meant to be looking at this fucking mess.
Actually, calling it a mess was … offensive.
This bomb was amazing.
Brilliant.
Deadly.
Typically a large cluster of wires on a bomb would go to the same fucking place—the cluster would connect into the same general area, but not on this bomb. No, on this one, the cluster then broke off into several snakes of wires that went to all different places on the bomb.
To several batteries to keep the electronics running. The problem with that? It removed Renzo’s ability to cut the power source when there were several, and he was sure, just by the electronic setup, that if he cut one power source, it would set the timer currently sitting still at ten seconds to start counting down.
Ten seconds.
That’s what he fucking had.
All of ten seconds after he cut a wire to move.
He couldn’t get to the other side of this fucking warehouse in ten seconds. That was a joke. This bomb was a guaranteed death trap, and he wished he knew who had built it for Christian. It could be any number of bomb experts. There were only a handful in the world who could create a masterpiece like this. If only Renzo could nail it down to which man had made this bomb, then he might know where to look for the failsafe.
Every bomb expert made a failsafe. The one wire to cut on a bomb, or the one piece to remove that would disengage the whole thing. They made sure to put a failsafe on because it was always possible during transport or creation that something could go wrong that would start the bomb’s timer before it should begin counting down.
Renzo couldn’t find the failsafe.
He didn’t know which wire to cut because there were too many—too many leads to be cut all at once. He didn’t have enough hands to cut every single power source at the same time. He didn’t have enough tools to use the hands of the other men in the warehouse to cut the wires, either.
“Anything?” John asked.
For the most part, Renzo had to give John credit. And all the other men in the warehouse. They stayed away from him—they stayed quiet. They let him work, and didn’t step in. They didn’t make demands, or bark at him to hurry the fuck up.
That’s what he needed.
It still wasn’t going to make a difference, it seemed.
Renzo swallowed hard—an idea trickling up his spine. “They’re all at the back, right?”
John nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“And there’s no camera back there?”
“That’s why they huddled back there, yeah.”
“Is there a door?”
John cleared his throat. “There is … but—”
“It’s wired, I know.”
Renzo pulled his icepick-like tool away from the bomb with a careful hand, and rested his arms over his bent knees. Staring at the bomb, he ran through the only options he had. His chest felt tight because there was only one thing he could do—and even that wasn’t a total failsafe.
Christian still had a kill switch he could pull, but if he couldn’t see the men on the cameras escaping the warehouse, then would he pull it? If he didn’t have a reason to pull the kill switch, would he set it off?
Renzo didn’t think so …
But it was still a risk.
“What are you thinking?” John asked.
“I can get you all out. You’ll have—at most, John—two minutes. That’s it, all right. Two minutes, and you gotta run as far and as fast as you can. Get these guys in alleyways between buildings. Huddle down to the ground, and cover your heads. Even better if you can get inside something.”
/> “I don’t understand—”
Renzo pointed the tool at the wires on the bomb leading to just one battery source—it connected the Wi-Fi for the bomb, but was also a failsafe power source. “These wires that are twisted … unless I cut through the latex tubing around them, I can’t see which is which inside. One is leading to the Wi-Fi, and the other … to the power source for one of the batteries for the timer.” He gestured at the timer in question sitting at ten seconds. “There is a split second at which a wire is cut where power is still running through the wires. As long as I can see the exposed wires, I can hold together the wires leading to the timer to stop it from counting down.”
Tipping his head to the side, he sighed. “I can let the other wires hang—the ones that’ll override the tripped doors. It’ll allow you all to get the fuck out of here, but I gotta keep my hands on the other wires beneath the latex tubing to keep the timer from starting.”
“Ten seconds won’t be enough to get us all out of here,” John pointed out.
“I can hold the wires after I cut them to keep them connected, so the brain on the bomb won’t know the difference until I let them go.”
“You couldn’t twist them—”
“Not these types of wires. I have never been able to twist them in such a way that the brain couldn’t tell the difference. It isn’t a risk I am willing to take. So, while I hold it, you all can get out.”
John quieted above Renzo before he quietly said, “But you won’t get out. You have to hold the wires. That’s what you’re saying.”
Ah, so the fucker was finally getting it.
Renzo’s jaw ached from clenching his teeth. It ached like his heart, and his chest. His lungs beneath his ribs felt like they were expanding beyond the point that they should. It hurt. Like his mind, and his soul.
Because this meant one thing.
One person would die here today.
Him.
“Ren,” John whispered.
He didn’t look away from the bomb. “I don’t want to get inside my head about it, okay? Get them all at the door, and waiting.”
“But you have to—”
“This is the only way, John.”
God, he knew it.
He’d spent the last twenty minutes going over every inch of this bomb, and the wiring. All the electronics. He looked at every possible angle he could to find that failsafe, but he couldn’t see it. He didn’t know where it was.
Because it didn’t exist.
There was no way to disengage the bomb.
It was Christian’s last backup, Renzo realized. Making sure that there was no way to disengage the bomb just in case because the man planned for everything here.
Renzo dragged in a hard breath as he pulled that one latex tube out with the two twisted wires, and held it there with his icepick-like tool. “You’ll tell her I love her, won’t you?”
Because he couldn’t call Lucia right now to tell her himself. Who knew where she was? Still with Christian, probably. Nobody had updated them like they promised they would when they got Lucia away from the asshole.
Renzo glanced up at John. “You’ll tell her that for me, won’t you?”
John stared back, and the deadness in his eyes from earlier was gone. Instead, it’d been replaced with thick emotion, and a line of water. “Every single day, Ren. I’ll remind her every day.”
Yeah, okay.
That seemed like a fair trade.
“Get to the door, John. I’ll call it out.”
“Fuck.” John gave Renzo one last look, and muttered, “At least try, okay?”
“I don’t know how I could.”
“Me either, but try.”
As John passed the cars on the lifts, he struck out with a fist and it connected with the metal control box. It caused the control box to go off, which made the cars on the lifts lower until they were almost level with the cement holes beneath them.
Like a cover.
Metal on top of a cement box.
He stared at it for longer than he should have … because was it possible?
“At the door,” he heard called out.
That broke his daze.
Renzo turned back to the bomb, and pulled out the tool that he would need to cut the latex tubing, and the wires. A skilled, fast hand was the only thing that would make this work. Maybe, in those moments, he shouldn’t have been thinking about The League and their training … but he kind of wanted to thank Cree for cracking his knuckles with a flexible metal switch every time he didn’t move fast enough when he worked on wires.
He didn’t know how to be slow.
They made sure of that.
Renzo held the wire cutters against the latex, sucked in a breath, and cut as his fingers instantly pulled back the latex to expose the wires, so he could slip the ones he needed back together again before the circuit would realize it had been cut. It took all of a half of a second to do, and someone would have missed it had they been standing right there watching him do it.
At the same time, he yelled out, “Run.”
The timer stayed steady at ten seconds.
His heart, though?
It was dead.
TWENTY
Cars were pulling away.
Next to the sight of Renzo kneeled down in front of a bomb on one of the screens, that was the other thing that Lucia noticed. She had the hardest time trying to tear her eyes away from Renzo as he looked over the bomb on the cement floor of an unknown warehouse. Every single time he touched the bomb, she noticed his hands were fast but steady.
He made deliberate choices.
He thought before he touched.
He didn’t just tinker.
He was careful.
But fast, too.
Not that any of it made a difference to the way Lucia was currently feeling. Like her heart had suddenly jumped inside her throat, and was beating harder than it had ever beat before. Racing. Like a thousand hooves of horses.
If it kept up, she might puke.
But the other screen … the one watching the outside of the warehouse was the one that caught Lucia’s attention for a split second. The cars filled up fast, and backed out of the alleyway where they had all gathered. She recognized the faces of her uncles before they too disappeared into a car, and backed out of the alleyway.
Where were they going?
What was happening?
Lucia’s attention flipped back to the screen with Renzo. Well, he wasn’t entirely alone anymore. John had been watching over his shoulder for the last little while, but her brother didn’t look like he was speaking, and Renzo didn’t seem like he was talking, either.
Just working.
But would it make a difference?
“A good vendetta can last years,” Christian murmured beside her. “And the feeling when you finally watch it come together?”
The man made a rough, deep noise.
“Beautiful, really,” he said, smiling coldly.
Lucia had the greatest desire to strike out at him, but she didn’t think that would work out well for her. He’d already put his hands on her once—she refused to sit where he wanted her to, so he grabbed her by the hair of her head, and dragged her to the bed himself.
She was going to sit where he wanted her to sit whether she wanted to or not. Or, that was his fucking idea.
“Do they think this is going to work?” Christian asked, more to himself than her as he looked at the motions happening on the many screens. “There is no way out of here. Every backup ruins another failsafe for them. It’s impossible.”
“Did you expect them not to try?”
He looked over at her, and then nodded. “I did—I wanted to watch them try to figure it out only to finally breakdown when they realized there was only one way out of this.”
Lucia swallowed the thickness in her throat. “Death, you mean.”
Christian chuckled. “Yes, exactly that.”
She didn’t know how she was holding it tog
ether watching the scene play out on the screens. At some point, she had become a little too numb. Like if she let herself feel the emotions that were trying to ravage her insides … well, then she would be entirely useless.
She wouldn’t be able to feel anything but that.
Lucia couldn’t take that risk.
“Isn’t that the young man who interrupted us at breakfast?” Christian asked as he watched Renzo look over the bomb.
She opted not to lie. “Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“With everything that I am,” Lucia whispered.
Christian smiled again. “Oh, well, this is going to be difficult for you.”
Fuck you.
The words were right on the tip of her tongue, but somehow, Lucia managed to keep them inside her head. After all, her scalp and cheek were still burning from the last time she tried to do anything against Christian.
Christian got up from the foot of the bed, and inched closer to the screen while being slightly bent over at the knees. He tipped his head one way as he peered at the one screen, and then the other way when he looked at the others.
She didn’t know what he was looking for.
“The rest of them—they’ve all left the line of the cameras, haven’t they?”
“You should have put some in the back,” she muttered.
That’s where she had watched them all go. Whoever else was inside the warehouse with Renzo, John, and her cousin, Andino. They’d all headed toward the back of the place, for whatever reason. Maybe because they knew where the cameras were, and didn’t want to be watched like rats about to die in a large metal box.
But who was to say?
“I didn’t put the cameras anywhere,” Christian muttered. “They came with the damn place—an associate sold it to me before I came to America. I thought it would work well for my plans. I’m regretting not having someone go in and add more to the security system.”
“Fascinating.”
It wasn’t.
She didn’t even try to hide how dry her tone came out.
It wasn’t lost on Christian because he glanced back at her over his shoulder with an arched brow that dared her to continue without even saying a word. Her gaze darted to the screen behind him—the one showcasing Renzo nodding as John walked away from him. He pulled a tool out of his pocket.