Page 70 of No Longer Mine (Rags & Riches #2)

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Dimitri

My fists clenched at my sides as I stalked across the private drive, rage a cold blade in my chest. They thought hiding Scarlett here, in his apartment, would keep me from getting to her.

They didn’t know who the fuck I was.

Don parked two blocks down, per my orders.

I didn’t need backup. I didn’t need a gun.

I needed my hands. But I also knew I could only think about her.

I was blinded by my rage and determination to get to her, which meant Don was on my heels.

He would be coming as backup, but he wouldn’t get in my way.

I bypassed the lobby with a security badge stolen from one of Father’s men.

The first guard I encountered stood in the service hallway—lazy posture, eyes half-lidded.

He didn’t see me coming. My elbow drove into his windpipe.

His body hit the floor without a sound. I caught his fall with one arm, dragging him into the shadows.

I slipped the service key from his belt and kept moving.

They had men posted on every floor, just like they’d said. I welcomed it.

The next guard was stationed by the maid’s elevator. I waited until his back was turned—then I moved. Two steps, silent. I slammed his head into the wall once, twice. He slid down in a heap.

The elevator chimed. I slipped in. I punched the 14 that would take me to my father’s floor.

As it rose, I rolled my shoulders. The elevator doors opened.

Three men waited. I moved first.

The closest lunged. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and I heard the satisfying crack. I used his momentum to drive his body into the second guard. The third aimed a gun. I ducked and drove a heel into his knee. He screamed as it buckled the wrong way and he collapsed.

The second was back on his feet. Sloppy. I swept his legs, caught him mid-fall, and drove my knee into his chest.

Breath gone. Fight gone. I didn’t stop to check.

Scarlett. Scarlett. Scarlett.

Her name was a rhythm in my head, beating in time with the carnage.

I moved through the hallway like a ghost, fast and efficient. One after another, they fell. Bone met bone. Flesh met fury.

By the time I reached the apartment door, blood coated my knuckles.

I kicked it in. The door shattered off its hinges.

A startled shout echoed inside.

I stepped over the threshold. A man ran from the hallway, swinging a baton.

I caught his arm mid-swing, twisted, and drove his head into the marble island.

“Where is she?” I snarled.

He didn’t answer.

I dragged him by the collar and threw him through the glass coffee table. He didn’t get back up.

Then I heard it.

A muffled scream down the hall.

I raced to where I thought it was. But instead of Scarlett in the chair in the middle of my parent’s bedroom, it was my mother.

She was gagged with a thick rope and my father held a gun to her head. My breath left me and it took everything in me to remain standing.

Right at that moment, I knew I needed Don. I didn’t know why I hadn’t let him trail me closer. I’d never expected this.

“What a surprise.” My father shook his head.

“Where’s Scarlett?”

My mother’s mascara was smeared under her eyes as she cried silently. How could he do this to her?

All I wanted to do was rush to her side and fall to my knees. How had she gotten dragged into this?

My mother’s body trembled and her blonde curls bounced around her face. It was something I would never be able to get out of my head, I knew that. I would live the rest of my life seeing my mother like this… Replaying it. Which terrified me of what I would find when it came to Scarlett.

“Just let my mother go, Father. She isn’t a part of this.”

My father’s brows raised on his forehead. “You think so? You think she wasn’t trying to set a little bird free before you blasted in here?”

A little bird? He had no idea that she was nothing delicate and everything he should be afraid of. She was a fox. She was sly and cunning and lethal. I hoped I got a front-row seat to it when she got ahold of him, if I didn’t first. But right now, I had to be careful.

He had my mother and my girl. I wouldn’t find Scarlett if he was dead. I could see that in his eyes. He was going to drag this out. He was going to make me beg.

“I don’t know how I raised you to be so soft. I was attentive. I spent my time with you teaching you the ways my father taught me. I thought for sure you would end up harder than the rest of them but now I’m not so sure.”

Hurting women didn’t make you tough.

I bit my tongue.

His hands didn’t shake as he held the gun up to my mother’s face.

He was too casual, too excited to do this to the first woman I’d ever loved.

He knew this would mess me up more than anything else he could do to me.

I wondered if this was a part of his plan, to begin with.

Why else would he have sent Scarlett here?

He must have known my mother would be home.

Where the fuck was Don? This was getting sticky.

I was regretting not having a gun on my person now.

It was stupid and reckless. I thought I was dealing with my father’s goons, not my actual father.

I thought I would be going up against men I could handle…

but dear ole dad? I wasn’t sure I could go up against him now that I was standing not even fifty feet from him.

I’d been so blinded by my rage and determination, I hadn’t thought any of this through and now here I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“Not going to speak, boy?” My father sneered and shook his head. “I didn’t raise simpletons.”

“I’m merely shocked that you dragged Mother into all of this.”

He rolled his dark eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this moment, to tell you the truth. It was getting old taking care of her.”

Mother’s blue eyes widened as her world came crashing down around her.

We both thought he wasn’t serious, that this was just a ploy for power and control.

I prayed Don was in the building and looking for Scarlett.

The longer this dragged out with my father, the higher the chance was for them to slip my girl away and I would never see her again.

“Why don’t we settle this like gentlemen? I know you don’t like to get your hands dirty.”

His eyebrows bounced on his forehead. “I’m tired of your stalling.

Do you have the drives or did she sell them to someone else?

” A small smile curled his lips. “Have you seen your sweet Cassie’s name on there yet?

The part where I wired her money. It was unfortunate that she had to go like she did, but she was getting soft on me.

I couldn’t have her ruining it all before it had even begun. ”

His words were like a punch to the gut. I mentally shook myself out of it. He was trying to get in my head and it was working. This was what Ace had been trying to warn me about before.

“Is that really what all of this is about?” I clenched and unclenched my fists at my sides.

“Do you think I’ve turned a blind eye and chosen to ignore your insolence and your betrayal to this family?” The gun turned from my mother and pointed at me instead.

Progress.

If he pulled that trigger, he’d lose his leverage. He knew it. And I knew it too. So I smiled.

“You’re angry,” I said, voice low and calm. “Because I made you bleed. Not publicly. Not yet. But it’s coming, isn’t it? You can feel it.”

His eyes narrowed. The lines in his jaw locked.

“You always wanted a soldier,” I continued. “But I became something you never expected. That’s why you hired Cassie. That’s why you tried to break me because you couldn’t control me anymore.”

“That mouth of yours?—”

“—Is still speaking,” I cut in, taking one step forward.

The gun didn’t waver. But his hand did.

I was close enough now to hear the faintest click from the hallway behind me.

Right on time.

I exhaled through my nose, slow and sure. “You think you’ve won. But Scarlett’s still alive. You made a mistake bringing her here.”

He laughed—cold, cruel, practiced. “I made no mistake.”

And that was the last thing he said before the hallway door exploded open.

Don came in like a grenade—shoulder to the first guard’s throat, blade to the second. The gun fired, but the bullet went wide, smashing into the wall behind me.

I was already moving. I grabbed my father’s wrist before he could get another shot off, and slammed it down onto the wooden bed frame with a sickening crack. The gun hit the floor. His howl of pain followed. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.

Every punch was for my mother. For Scarlett. For every woman he’d hurt, every deal he’d brokered, every drop of blood he thought he had the right to spill.

His body hit the floor hard, but I didn’t feel it. I was already running—through the apartment, through the chaos, calling out the only name that mattered anymore.

“Scarlett!”