Ruthless

Chapter 26

Xander's POV:

I barely had any time to think before Keanu jumped up from his seat and practically ran into the other room.

I followed him into his office and watched as he went through papers trying to connect something.

"Palmetto.... where have I heard that before?" He says under his breath frantically. I decide to help him and look through some other papers. After a solid five minutes, I'm starting to lose hope on this until I flip a paper and see blueprints for a warehouse that has Palmetto at the top.

"Look" I say. He comes over to me and looks at it. "You think she is there?" I ask. He softly shakes his head and I can tell he is thinking really hard, "They wouldn't be stupid enough to say where she is around her."

"My bet is that something in this warehouse will lead us to her."

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"I think this is a huge stretch." Rian protests as we start to get ready to go to Palmetto. "I mean for all we know she could just be in pain and hitting the floor!"

"No, it's too precise, just look at how she holds it." Keanu tries to convince his son of what he sees. "I taught Audenzia dozens of languages. I also taught her Morse code and how to use in in emergencies."

"It's worth a shot." Gray chimes in.

I don't need any convincing, if anything can give us any information about her whereabouts, I'm all in.

"We are going tonight." I tell everyone, even though the plan was for tomorrow. Luckily, nobody protests so we all load our stuff into the car and head for the airport.

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"We don't know how many men they will have, so expect a lot." Keanu says, unzipping his bag and taking out his AR-15. We are about five minutes away from the warehouse, and are starting to get ready. We brought dozens of cars with men in them. The car at the front, (my car), has Keanu, Rian, Isaac, Cole, and Gray.

I nervously bounce my knee on the floor, and observe our surroundings outside the window. It is flat for as far as the eye can see, with a few random buildings every once and a while. Meaning, they will be able to see us coming.

"Act fast once we get there, get all of them dead before they can report an issue to anyone." Keanu tells us.

Finally, we pull up to a old warehouse. Right away I can see five men outside guarding. I roll down my window and quickly shoot each of them in the head before they can even take a second glance at the vehicles approaching.

Within seconds we are all out of the cars and storming into the warehouse. I get deja vu back to when I stormed into the warehouse back in Sicily, and how Audenzia chased after me.

"Behind you!" Isaac shouts at me. I duck right as Isaac draws his gun and shoots a man who was seconds away from shooting me. "Thank me later." Isaac says before peeling off to go and find any other men still alive.

"We are clear" Gray shouts, poking his head around the corner. A few of the men start cheering like we have accomplished something. "Stop your damn cheering and check if she is here." I snap at them. They instantly nod and take off, checking the whole area for any sign of Audenzia.

I spot Keanu looking through boxes for something, and mentally roll my eyes. If she knew something was here, I doubt it would be in a box. "You gonna help?" Rian asks Gray who was looking around but not touching anything. "He's scared of getting burned again." Isaac teases.

"What happened?" I ask, noticing how Gray's finger had a bandage on it. "At the last warehouse Gray grabbed a cut wire and burned his pinkie." Isaac says, earning himself a light shove from Gray.

I would laugh at the two of them, but instead my mind was racing. My eyes find a wire on the floor that leads into the wall. "A wire like this?" I ask, finding the wire and following it to a table where an old phone is hooked up.

"Exactly like that one." Gray says, now intrigued. "Our plan was to attack in a pattern to mock them, meaning if we kept it up they would have known where we would attack and expect us." I start thinking out loud.

"Since they expected us before, they made sure to cut the wire. Now that they don't, it's running. Meaning this is important enough for them to not want us finding it." My hands pick up the phone, right as I spot Geo. "Geo come here, bring your computer."

He immediately comes over with his bag, unzipping it and sliding out his computer. We always bring Geo to these places  just in case we need him to hack something on site. Already knowing what I need him to do, Geo plugs something into the burner phone and starts typing away on his computer.

"Last call was made an hour ago to Messina, Sicily."

"Anything else?" Isaac questions. "There have been calls to Messina every day for the past week."

"Can you get an exact location?" I ask. Geo starts typing again until a small map pulls up. He zooms in until we can see that the location is a small building in downtown Messina. "This is our best bet." He sighs.

"Looks like we are going to Messina." I say, getting up and leaving.

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Audenzia's POV:

It's been another day and all I can think is that I hope they got my message. I've overbought this so many times, how I could have gave a better message and how vague the one I gave them was. How stupid could I be? I don't even know what they are supposed to look for at Palmetto, how are they supposed to know either?

The only person who would catch onto my Morse code anyway would be my father, and by the sounds of it the video was just sent to Xander.

That's what has occupied my mind for the past few hours, until now when I made the decision I was going to escape.

Fred comes to see me at least once a day, all I needed to do was wait and try to overpower him. I haven't eaten in a week but what can a girl do. It's either I try now or I'll probably be way too weak if I wait any longer.

Almost on que, I hear the door unlock and swing open. A familiar blindness fills my eyes as the light blares into the once pitch black room.

"How are you today, princess?" Fred says, walking over and trailing his hand from my leg all the way to my chin. I keep my eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious.

Fred shakes me but I don't move, he starts to get more frustrated. "Wake up bitch." He says, hitting me across the face. Ignoring the pain, I continue being 'unconscious'.

When I hear him remove my hands from their chains I almost jump and start attacking him until I remember my whole body has been restrained. "Fat bitch" he mumbles as he tosses me over his shoulder. Right away I wrap my hands around his neck and choke him out in just seconds. "I'll kill you later." I whisper, knowing I don't have much time to get out of here.

I'm faced with a maze of hallways. I just take guesses as I'm turning through the halls. I am almost sure I see a door that could lead to freedom, but stop in my tracks when I hear a scream ring out.

A familiar scream.

A scream that has to belong to Harper.

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