Page 55 of The Enforcer’s Revenge (Untamed Hearts #4)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

C arlo’s closet smelled like men’s cologne.

It lingered on some of his suits like a memory. Inviting and sexy, reminding Brianna of Tino on a good day, all dressed up and fun. She breathed it in. The scent was comforting, and she was trying very hard to stop herself from completely losing her shit.

“We have to find the laundry chute. All the main bedrooms have them in the closets. It’ll be a small door near the floor.

Feel along the wall,” Carina said in a rushed whisper while the darkness pressed in on them.

A thin sliver of light from under the door was all they had, and it wasn’t much.

“We can crawl down to Nova and Carmen in the basement.”

“A laundry chute? Are you sure?—”

Brianna stopped when she heard more muffled yelling from downstairs. She couldn’t discern what they were saying but could sense the pulse of it, the energy, high-strung and riddled with fear. Whoever was attacking them must be close to the stairs.

“It won’t have a handle.” Carina dropped to her hands and knees and started looking. “It’s just a small notch in the wood about a foot off the floor. They disguised them, just in case, but I never looked at Carlo’s.”

Brianna followed Carina’s lead, crawling on her hands and knees in the darkness, feeling the walls for something she wasn’t even sure was there. She took one side of the closet, and Carina took the other.

“How do we know it’s not the heat busting in like that?” Brianna barked at her.

“It’s the Brambinos.” Carina crawled over to the door, obviously trying to listen to what was happening. “What cop threatens to make someone fucking eat it?”

“What if they were talking about cement? Dirt. The floor. Maybe they were telling them to get down, or they’ll make them eat it,” Brianna argued in a voice that was barely audible.

“There was a gunshot.”

“Are you saying cops don’t shoot people? Is that your theory?”

Carina was quiet after that, back to listening.

The two of them were so deadly silent that Brianna could feel the feet on the stairs pounding up to the second floor where they were hiding.

“Find it.” Carina crawled back over to the corner, and it sounded like she was running her hands along the wall. “Find it, Bri. Find it. Find it. Find it.”

Carina kept chanting it, her voice getting more and more frantic.

“I’m trying. Oh—” Brianna felt something stab her knee, which was jarring when she was wearing shorts and had no protection. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“Something stabbed me.” Brianna felt on the ground, trying to find what it was, and discovered the splintered wood along the edge of the floorboard. “Floor feels broken here.”

Carina crawled over to Brianna and felt the floor herself, except they were both near blind in the dimness. “Where is it? I don’t feel anything.”

Brianna grabbed Carina’s hand and physically put it over the split wood in the floor.

The loud chaos of the raid echoed from the upstairs hallway, getting closer and closer. “NYPD! Show yourself! Hands up!”

Carina kept feeling around the damaged floor like she hadn’t heard them.

“NYPD SWAT! Come out, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

It sounded like they were tearing the house apart, room by room, quickly getting to Carlo’s toward the end of the hallway.

“We have to go out,” Brianna growled at her. “It’s NYPD. We go out. We play stupid. It’ll be fine.”

In response, Brianna saw the inky outline of Carina jerking open a small door that lifted up from the floor instead of sideways from the wall like they had been looking for. She grabbed Brianna’s arm like she expected her to crawl into that thing—blindly—with NYPD closing in at any second.

What were they going to look like, stuck in a laundry chute, when the cops found them?

Stupid as hell.

Guilty as fuck.

Brianna was sure of it as she found herself crawling into a hole in the floor, praying that she wasn’t going to end up a pile of broken bones on the bottom. She had to go feet first in the dark, which was no easy task.

“Go.” Carina pushed at Brianna’s shoulders.

It was like crawling into a deep, bottomless, unlined coffin. The wood was rough, splintery, and everything was so fucking dark. It was completely oppressive. The stuff nightmares were born from. She braced her legs once she got deep enough but was still leaning halfway out.

“NYPD!”

The room shook with the sound of Carlo’s door being kicked, only Brianna had locked it.

SHIT!

“Hey! They’re in here! Help me take it down.”

The response was immediate as more than one person started kicking at the door, but Carlo’s deadbolt was clearly not an ordinary deadbolt.

It held them off a few extra seconds, but Brianna needed to quickly make room for Carina.

She didn’t realize she had made the decision to let go until she was sliding down the laundry chute.

She knew she was agile enough to catch herself before she got very far. It was a long ride down to the basement, and the space was very narrow. Only she didn’t think about nails in the wood, and she really wished she would’ve.

Something ripped through her arm, and it was one of those white-hot terror moments. She used her legs to catch herself, and Brianna knew instantly she was very hurt.

Emergency room hurt.

She couldn’t warn Carina. She didn’t dare speak, and they couldn’t afford to have both of them injured if they had any chance of surviving this.

Brianna braced herself with her knees and reached up to feel for the nail.

When she didn’t find it, she started to slowly inch her way up with her back braced against the side wall and her legs doing all the work.

Luckily, Carina didn’t drop blindly like Brianna had. It sounded like she was slowly lowering herself down, using her legs to give her leverage.

Then the door from the outer room burst open.

The wall vibrated with the sound of feet as the intruders came into the room.

Carina obviously gave up on going slow and let go.

There was the click of the chute door closing, which meant Carina pulled it shut on her way down, and Brianna braced her knees harder a moment later when she ended up catching a large part of Carina’s weight.

In the next second, the sound of gunfire deafened them.

It exploded inside the closet so violently that Brianna lost her balance and slid farther down the chute. Carina slid with her, and there were a few heartbeats where death felt everywhere.

They were either crashing to the basement.

Or they were getting shot and then crashing to the basement.

Brianna managed to catch herself again, only because her foot caught on a ledge. She used her other foot against the wall to stop her fall, but gravity still left her responsible for a lot of Carina’s weight, too.

It was a fucking miracle and, more likely, five hours of dance practice a day that let Brianna keep them balanced and alive.

The gunfire stopped, but Brianna and Carina were struggling in the laundry chute. It was so dark, it felt like Carina was all over the place, smothering her. Brianna had to turn her head to find a small space for air.

Some of the weight eased up, and Brianna realized Carina was using her arms to help keep herself balanced. Brianna thought she felt one of Carina’s knees near her ass, bracing against the wall, but it was impossible to tell.

At the same time, voices drifted like echoes from upstairs.

“Dumbass, what cop just fucking blows away the closet like that?”

“Yeah? And what Moretti wouldn’t gun down NYPD if they’re feeling trapped? I’m not risking it for this little charade. Crazy motherfuckers. Everyone knows it.”

“There’s no one up here. Just our guy and the other one we found on the ground floor,” one of the men said over the screech of clothing hangers being pushed back and forth. “Whoever was in here probably crawled out the window, but check under the bed to make sure.”

“Call Gus and tell them to go around the outside again. Maybe we’ll catch one on the run,” a voice suggested over the thump of someone obviously falling to the floor to look under the bed. “I knew this was a mistake. I have a sense for these things.”

“Let’s just get it done. I’ll double-check the other rooms while you finish in here.”

“No way, man. We’re staying together. I hate being in this dark, creepy house. It freaks me the fuck out.”

This house was built so solidly that it was hard to hear more as their voices drifted away. Brianna was mostly focused on not slipping again. She dropped her other foot down to the ledge that saved them, and having a place to rest her feet helped a lot.

“I’m going to move my other leg,” Carina whispered.

Brianna nodded. “Okay.”

Carina shifted her foot and ended up sliding down more, so she sat straddled over Brianna, with one leg on either side of Brianna’s hips, using her knees against the wall to stay balanced.

Brianna was trying not to black out. The pain in her arm pulsed a dangerous warning behind the adrenaline.

Her heart was beating hard and fast, and she kept her head turned toward the corner to breathe because she was so suffocated.

She rested her cheek against the wood and tried to think clearly, knowing they needed help.

Nova’s burner!

“Why’re your shorts all wet?” Carina was still wiggling and jerked when she touched Brianna’s elbow, which was dripping. “Oh my God.”

“Shh,” Brianna whispered as she tried to grab Nova’s burner phone in her pocket, only she had to use her injured arm, and it was slippery and awkward. “I can’t reach it.”

“Why are you bleeding?” Carina’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Shh, don’t worry about me. Get the phone. It’s in my right pocket.”

Carina shifted her weight and leaned forward, feeling blindly around Brianna’s bloody shorts. She grunted and had to dip her shoulder to slip her hand into Brianna’s pocket.