89 - Bracelet

"They've promised that dreams can come true, but forgot that nightmares are dreams too."

- Oscar Wilde

. . .

Xerxes

I hummed, opening the door. "Fucking finally."

Alarick Woods smiled and it took everything in me to not bash the motherfucker's head on the wall.

Zavier and Ashton entered behind me. Ashton slammed the door shut and I grabbed a chair, put it in front of Alarick, and sat down. He was big, as big as me, and less as muscled. He was covered with tattoos from head to toe, black hair down and brown eyes holding nothing as they looked at me.

His eyes looked like Olivia's, yet they couldn't be more different. "Dante works fast," he said.

I didn't say anything for a while. "Ashton."

Ashton had already worn his beloved brads knuckled. His fist collided with Alarick's face, making blood blow out of the man's mouth.

"He does," I agreed. "Why did you come after Olivia?" "You know why." His voice wasn't as cocky as before.

The tip of Zavier's knife disappeared into Alarick's tied arm. Zavier dragged it down slowly, smirking as Alarick screamed. Blood poured out of the wound.

"Why did you come after Olivia?"

He shrugged. "Wanted to see my daughter."

I hummed, standing up. "I'll be in my office."

Zavier smirked his bloodied knife in his hand. "Alright."

Knowing that screams were soon enough going to flood out of the basement, I made sure to carefully close the door. The last thing Olivia needed was to hear the screams of her father.

I walked to her studio and it was closed. I could hear nothing from the other side. I knew the kittens were in there with her.

I leaned on the wall beside her door, sighing. I knew she knew. Janice had a big fucking mouth. It wasn't hard to trace back to who would have fucked the whole thing up and of course it was Ashton's ex sub.

I knocked lightly. "Baby." Nothing.

I sat on the ground beside the door, taking my phone out of the pocket of my suit.

I stayed there and eventually I fell asleep. Still, she didn't open the door.

. . .

"He hates her because he blames her," Zavier said, shrugging off his suit jacket. "Like she pulled the fucking trigger."

"Did he say where his boss is?" Fabiano asked, grabbing Alarick's file from my desk.

"No, but I discovered something interesting, " Ashton said, putting down a picture on the desk.

It was a tattoo - probably Alarick's. And it was familiar.

"The Snake MC, the one we interrogated and threw out of the city," I said. "We didn't see if any of them at a Bratva tattoo but they had this one. A red circle within a circle."

"Do we know where the MC is now?" Gio asked. Ashton nodded. "Yes."

Just then, my phone buzzed.

I sighed, taking it out. It was probably Kylie sending me her Amazon wishlist worth thousands.

It wasn't her number. But it was her.

It was a picture of her tied to a metal chair, looking to be in a factory of some sort. Her leg was still in a cast, the white of it smudged with dirt and her big eyes were looking into the camera, terrified. Blood was trailing down her forehead.

And a message was with the picture.

Leave New York. Leave the mafia. You won't find me. I'll release her when I am done with her - alive, I promise.

- A.S.

I scanned the picture. It looked familiar.

Ashton leaned down to look at the picture, tension visible in his jaw. "Guess who it belonged to back in the day?"

It was ours. It belonged to our father. We had shut it down. How the fuck did Alexi know of this place?

We were out of the mansion in half an hour with dozens of men with us, half of them Italian.

As I rode away from the mansion on my bike, I looked at the mansion through the rearview mirror, my eyes lingering on the balcony which belonged to Olivia's room.

I didn't know how today was going to end.

Leaving her without being forgiven didn't feel right. We didn't know how dangerous this was. Maybe there would be a hundred men there and we'd be outnumbered. We didn't know what we were walking into.

My leather-covered hands grabbed the handles tighter.

At least she wouldn't have to deal with us anymore. She'd get a boyfriend, probably a guy as obsessed with art as she was and they'd live happily ever after with cute fucking babies and white fucking fences.

The thought made me want to punch something.

. . .

Ashton crouched down next to me, both of us hidden behind a large drum that was filled with gasoline from what I could tell, years old gasoline. A fucking oil refinery. They were hiding in an abandoned oil refinery. We had seen many people with the Snake MC mark and Bratva mark, some of them had both of them visible. This meant that they were working together.

Or that they were one.

Both of the possibilities were shit. We could light the whole refinery up. But we had to find Kylie first.

"How many?" Ashton asked.

"Fifty outside, give or take," I muttered.

"Kylie is in one of the warehouses," Zavier muttered from my both side, signaling three men to keep moving to the west, where the warehouses were. We were still out of the refinery, measuring up the place before we moved to the good part. It had been too fucking long since I short someone. The last one had been James, and he was probably rotting in Zavier's destroyed maze.

"Olivia?" I asked. "Still in her studio."

"How many guards are with her?"

"Ten in the hallway. She's safe," Ashton said.

I removed the safety off my gun, the cold metal was as familiar as a pen in my hand.

"Valentinos?"

"From the south with fifteen men."

I looked over my shoulder. We had fifteen, too. Three of which had gone off the warehouses. Thirty men. Backup would take time but I knew many men were on their way, we had grabbed everyone from the mansion who were there, making sure Olivia and Miss Summers still have protection.

We were outnumbered.

I looked at Zavier. His hand was clutching the bracelet he was going to give Olivia, still wrapped in a sparkly red paper he said Olivia would like. That bracelet was the first thing he bought when he made money after we escaped Igor Sokolov after five years of torture. He said it just 'felt right' to buy it from the hard-earned money he made by working in a shitty diner.

I took a deep breath, putting my one finger on the Bluetooth in my ear. "Dante."

"This place smells awful." "Good. So don't die here." "No promises."

I rolled my eyes pointed my gun at the closet men, who seemed to be guarding the refinery, as Zavier motioned the men to aim.

I shot and my shot was followed by fourteen others. In a flash fourteen men were down, bleeding on the filthy ground.

And then the yelling started, followed by shouts and gunshots. The sound of death.

A smirk came on my lips unintentionally, the peace of chaos settling in my bones.

A monster makes a monster. I was here to kill another monster Igor had made.

. . .

Okay. I don't ENTIRELY hate this chapter but I think I will rewrite it soon, not changing anything major.