Page 80 of Ruthless Scar
The smell hits first. Urine and body odor and something sweeter underneath, sickly and organic. A smell that had soaked into the concrete. It would never leave.
Stained mattresses on the floor, four of them, no sheets. A bucket in the corner that hasn’t been emptied. Metal rings bolted into the walls at wrist height with frayed rope still attached. Scratches gouged into the concrete near one of the rings. Fingernail marks. Someone clawed at the stone until their fingers bled.
Water stains on the mattresses. Dark spots that aren’t water. A child’s hair tie on the floor, pink, crusted with dirt.
No girls now. No Sofia. But they were here. The evidence of it coats my lungs with every breath.
A table sits in the center of the room with a laptop sitting open. The screen glows in the darkness, and as I approach, I see what’s displayed. A photograph. Isabella, taken through a long lens. She’s walking through the French Quarter, coffee in hand, looking at something off-camera. Weeks ago, before I brought her to us.
Below the photograph, a single line of text:Did you really think we didn’t know?
My blood turns to ice.
They evacuated. They left guards to make it look real, but not enough to stop us. They left evidence. A laptop. A message. Why? The Benedettis don’t leave evidence. They don’t leave traces. They destroy everything.
Unless they want you to find it. Unless they want you standing exactly where I’m standing right now.
My eyes sweep the room again. Fresh patches on the walls I missed. Wires running along the ceiling, disappearing into conduit. The faint smell I’d dismissed when I entered, too focused on clearing the space. Chemical. Sharp underneath the must and damp.
Accelerant.
I’m already moving. “Out.“ Running, taking the stairs three at a time. ”Everyone out. Now.“
“Renzo, what?—”
“The building is rigged. Move.“
I hear them running. Boots pounding above me, beside me. Dante and Nico don’t question it. They’ve run with me long enough. When I say move, you move.
The front entrance is too far. Side door. Kitchen. I change direction, shoulder through a doorway, past the cold coffee and the abandoned cups. The smell is stronger here. They wanted us in the basement. Wanted us deep in the building before it blew.
“Go go go?—“
We burst through the kitchen door into the night air. I’m counting steps, counting seconds, running the math on blast radius and accelerant spread. Twenty feet. Thirty. Not enough.
“Down—“
The world turns white. The shockwave lifts me off my feet and throws me forward into the dirt. I roll, cover my head, debris raining down as heat sears across my back. Then the sound catches up. A roar so deep it shakes my teeth. Ringing silence. Ash falling like snow. The taste of dirt and blood.
I force my eyes open. The building is gone. In its place, a pillar of fire clawing at the night sky. Secondary explosions ripple through what’s left of the structure, sending fresh waves of heat rolling over us.
“Dante.” My voice sounds wrong. Muffled. Distant. “Dante.“
“Here.” Movement to my left. He’s pulling himself up, face streaked with ash and blood from a cut on his forehead. “I’m here.”
“Nico.”
“Still breathing.” Nico staggers to his feet, brushing embers from his jacket. “Jesus Christ, Renzo. How did you?—”
“The smell.” I push myself upright. My ears are ringing. Glass shards bite into my palms. We made it out with five seconds to spare. “Accelerant. They wanted us in that basement when it blew.”
We stand there, the three of us, watching it burn. The heat is intense even from this distance. If we’d been thirty seconds slower. If I hadn’t caught the smell. We’d be ash.
“They tried to kill us.” Nico’s voice is flat. Processing. “This wasn’t just a trap. They wanted us dead.”
“They wanted us out of the way.”
Out of the way. The Santoro compound. Isabella. Locked in a panic room.
