Sabin’s head swam, his vision graying at the edges. Too little food. Too little sleep. Too much pain. His broken fingers throbbed in time with his racing heart, and the room seemed to spin around him.
It was Cade.
It had to be Cade.
He repeated it to himself like a mantra as consciousness slipped away.
Cade.
Not Brennan.
Because Brennan was dead.
seven
Dom woketo the sound of a metal tray hitting the kitchen counter. He sprang up from the bed, adrenaline surging through his system before his brain caught up to his reflexes.
The apartment.
Greece.
Praetorian.
Vivi was gone from her side of the bed. His gut dropped out.
The bed beside him was empty, covers thrown back, the pillow still dented from her head. He was off the mattress and moving before he’d fully processed it, bare feet hitting the hardwood, every nerve ending firing at once.
“Vivi.” Too loud. He didn’t care.
Nothing from the bedroom. Nothing from the hall. He hit the doorframe going too fast and ricocheted into the corridor, scanning both directions in the half-second it took his brain to catch up. Bathroom door open. Empty.
Shit. Shit.
They’d taken her. While he slept, they’d come and?—
Then he saw her.
She stood in the kitchen, arms crossed, staring at the kitchen island.
“They’ve decided it’s time to get to work,” she said without turning around.
Dom took a second to breathe—and to tell his heart to calm the fuck down before it leaped out of his chest—then crossed to stand beside her. On the kitchen counter sat a sleek black case, several rolled blueprints, and two tablets. Next to them, a tray with fresh fruit, pastries, and a carafe of coffee steamed in the morning light.
Breakfast and burglary tools. How thoughtful.
“Looks like we got the deluxe prison package,” he muttered, reaching for the coffee. He needed caffeine before dealing with whatever fresh hell Praetorian had prepared for them today. “Did they leave a note? ‘Thanks for being our unwilling accomplices, enjoy these complimentary croissants.’”
Vivi didn’t crack a smile as he’d hoped. She reached out and flipped open the black case. Inside, nestled in custom-cut foam, lay an array of tools that would make any thief drool—electronic bypass devices, custom lock picks, signal jammers, and a thermal imaging scope. Top-of-the-line equipment, the kind that costs more than most people make in a year. The kind that Dom had used on missions he couldn’t talk about in countries that he wouldn’t admit he’d been to.
“They certainly spared no expense,” she said, running a finger along a particularly elegant lock pick. “How nice of them to provide such quality tools while holding my brother hostage.”
The bitterness in her voice was wrong. He’d spent years learning every register of Vivianna Cavalier’s voice. The honey was her default, the sweetness she deployed like a weapon—it disarmed people, made them underestimate her, made them hand over things they’d never intended to give. He’d only everheard this bitterness from her one other time, and that was when he’d kept a promise that destroyed all the love she had for him.
He reached past her and picked up one of the tablets. It unlocked at his touch—no passcode, because of course. Raines wasn’t worried about them accessing the information. He wanted them to access it.
The screen loaded a schematic. Villa Pandora’s layout, clean and detailed, with vault locations marked in red. Vault 237 on the upper level. Vault 485 below, separated by what looked like a reinforced floor and a secondary biometric checkpoint.
“They’ve been planning this for a while,” he said, swiping through the files. “Security rotations, access codes, patrol patterns. This is military-grade intelligence.”