Kidnapping the Assassin: The Mafia Don’s Fatal Mistake

The Empty House

Chapter 20

[Cassian]

The heavy steel door slammed shut at the top of the stairs. The lock engaged with a loud, definitive clack.

Then, absolute silence.

I sat in the cold, sterile basement, the rhythmic dripping of a loose pipe the only sound keeping me company. My wrists burned where the iron cuffs dug into my skin.

Leave him chained. If I don't come back, let him starve.

Her words hung in the air, cold and merciless. I should have felt relieved. She was a target. She was the enemy. Her leaving gave me time to figure a way out of these restraints.

But I didn't feel relief. I felt a sudden, violent surge of panic.

It wasn't a rational fear. I didn't care about the Rossi Syndicate, and I certainly didn't care about the woman who had just injected me with horse tranquilizer. Yet, the moment she walked up those stairs, my chest constricted. A phantom terror gripped me, whispering that if she walked out of this house, she was going to die.

Geneva. She had said her sister was in Geneva.

"Damn it," I growled, violently thrashing against the chains. The heavy chair shrieked against the concrete, but it was bolted down.

I looked at the floor between my boots. The matte-black combat knife lay exactly where she had dropped it. It was a taunt. A psychological test to see if I would hurt myself trying to reach it.

I stretched my right leg, trying to hook the handle with the toe of my boot. I was three inches too short.

I let out a frustrated roar, throwing my head back against the steel chair.

My eyes squeezed shut, and the headache returned with a vengeance. Behind my eyelids, the darkness shattered into fragmented, violent images.

A dark basement. Me, holding a photograph of a fragile blonde girl on a ventilator.

Elara, chained to a pipe, her eyes filled with absolute terror.

A sickening crunch. Her popping her own thumb out of its socket to wrap her legs around my neck.

I gasped, my eyes snapping open.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. The memory was so vivid I could actually smell the gunpowder and blood from that night.

"She wasn't lying," I whispered to the empty room.

I had been down here before. But I wasn't the prisoner. I was the interrogator. I had chained her up. I had threatened the very sister she was now flying to Geneva to protect.

The realization hit me with the force of a freight train. The Corsicans hadn't rescued me from the river. They had stolen me. They had erased my mind and turned me into a weapon to aim at my own wife.

Wife.

The word didn't feel foreign anymore. It felt like a branding iron against my soul.

I looked down at my left shoulder, tracing the jagged scar over the crown tattoo. I remembered diving in front of a shotgun blast. I remembered her cold, clinical hands stitching me back together in a rusty warehouse, her knuckles brushing against my bare chest.

She loved me. And she had just walked into a suicide mission alone because she thought I was too broken to help her.

A primal, terrifying fury erupted in my blood.

I didn't try to hook the knife with my boot again. I looked at my right hand, trapped inside the heavy iron cuff.

There are exactly three ways to dislocate your own thumb to escape a pair of steel cuffs.

The words echoed in my head, spoken in her dry, sarcastic voice.

I didn't know the slow ways. I only knew the fast one.

I gritted my teeth, locking my jaw until my molars ground together. I slammed the heel of my right hand violently against the sharp edge of the iron armrest, forcing the joint downward with all my brute strength.

CRACK.

A blinding flash of white-hot agony exploded up my forearm. My vision went completely black for a second. Bile rose in my throat, and a raw, guttural scream tore out of my mouth.

I didn't stop to let the pain settle. I yanked my mangled hand backward.

The skin on my knuckles tore away, leaving bloody streaks on the iron, but my hand slipped through the cuff.

I was free.

I slumped forward, panting heavily, sweat pouring down my face. I cradled my right hand against my chest, waiting for the nausea to pass.

With my uninjured left hand, I scooped the combat knife off the floor. I awkwardly jammed the blade into the locking mechanism of my left cuff, twisting it until the cheap internal tumblers snapped. I did the same to the leg shackles.

I stood up. The basement spun, but I forced myself to walk toward the stairs.

I reached the heavy steel door. It was locked from the outside.

I didn't care. I raised my heavy combat boot and kicked the door with every ounce of terrifying, rage-fueled strength I possessed. The deadbolt shattered on the second hit.

I burst into the main hallway of the Rossi estate. The house was dead quiet. The soldiers had all left with Elara.

I moved through the empty, opulent rooms, my mind rapidly piecing together tactical data. If the High Table was hitting the hospital in Geneva, they wouldn't just send mercenaries. They would send an extermination squad. Elara was walking into a meat grinder.

I found the armory on the second floor.

I grabbed a tactical vest, sliding it over my cheap white shirt. I strapped a Sig Sauer to my hip and slung a compact, fully automatic submachine gun over my good shoulder.

My right hand was useless for shooting, but it could still steer.

I ran down to the garage. A sleek, black Ducati motorcycle sat in the corner, keys resting on the seat.

I swung my leg over the bike, firing the engine. It roared to life, a mechanical beast echoing my own internal fury. I hit the garage door opener and tore out into the stormy night.

I didn't know if I could get to Geneva in time. I didn't know if I could save her sister.

But the Viper was about to find out exactly what happened when you unchained the Hound.