Page 158 of Captivated

“Fuck,” Joe muttered.

“We’ll go upstairs,” he heard Lucian say.

“We’ll begin clearing out and checking rooms downstairs,” Dante said from behind Joe, although he heard him just fine in his damn ear.

“We’ll take this hall, and check the rooms,” his uncle, Theo, said.

“Everyone out in ten.”

Lucian glanced back at his brother just as he had started climbing the stairs. “Dante—”

Dante was already moving downstairs with Giovanni on his heels. “Ten minutes is all we can afford, Lucian. There’s security on this house. It’s burning down. Someone is coming—they have to be. We can’t be here when they get here, okay? Ten minutes.”

“You can be gone in ten minutes if I don’t have her,” Joe said, done with any pretense that he gave a fuck about someone giving him orders, “but I will be here until I find her.”

Because she was here.

Liliana had to be.

Joe saw the dinner for two in the dining room, and the lipstick stains on the glass of water next to the nearly-finished plate of salmon. They’d found the dance studio set up specifically for a ballet dancer shortly after they stormed the house.

She was fucking here.

Somewhere.

He just had to find her.

The group split into three smaller ones, and separated to their respective areas. No one said goodbye, but occasionally, the comm in Joe’s ear would buzz with someone muttering something to their partner.

“I’ll start on this side,” Damian said.

Theo headed past the two men in the hallway. “I’ll hit the end first.”

Joe was already rearing back, and letting his foot slam into a door just below the knob. He didn’t think they needed a fucking update on what he was doing.

Kind of seemed obvious, didn’t it?

An empty bathroom stared back.

Fuck.

He moved on.

It was an office, next.

Then an empty room altogether.

He was getting fucking nowhere. And by the sounds coming from his ear, everyone else was in just about the same predicament. The rising upset continued between the men as more empty rooms stared back at them.

Joe was just getting progressively more and more pissed off. So, maybe when he came in front of the next door, and expected that room to be empty, too, he kicked it a little harder than was necessary to get it open.

And his whole world stopped.

Because there she was.

At first, Joe blinked at the sight in front of him. The grip on his gun loosened as he took in Liliana’s sobbing form—bruised, welted, and bleeding face, her dress a mess of blood, and rips, and the pointe shoes on her feet. She hadn’t seemed to notice the door open, or that he was standing right there.

Ready to save her.