Ryder's POV

10:07 am. Fifteen people in total inside the dormitory building. 10:10 am. A short circuit on the second floor. Wires sparking--an accidental mistake. Spread of fire, smoke, screams. 10:15 am. Everyone has rushed out except for four people.

Four people were stuck inside the building as the fire raged. I stared at the flash of flames--sudden, consuming, and entirely non-accidental. Nothing about this had been accidental.

There was a loud bang as the door to the interrogation room was shoved open. I paid a cursory glance to Rafael as he barged in, followed by the detective who'd given me the CCTV footage. Dismissing the both of them, I looked back at the screen and hit rewind.

"Ryder," Rafael spoke, loud and clear--his voice grating the barely-contained fury under my skin. I could feel his presence visibly deflating. "We need to go."

10:15 am, I zeroed in on it. Everyone was safely out except for four people. Two had later made it out with minor injuries, the third one strapped on a stretcher and taken to Central Hospital.

But Alice wasn't one of them.

"Close this shit." I heard Rafael speak to the detective.

I glanced up at him again, at the white-collar bastard playing detective--the man who had obeyed in seconds when I'd demanded the footage, but was truly in no position to bait me right now. Not right now, when I was seconds away from burning this entire precinct to the fucking ground.

"Mr. McQuillan--" the detective started, then stopped when he saw me already watching him, deathly still. He opened his mouth, "We've already reviewed the footage--"

"You touch the footage," I told him, slow and carefully deliberate, "and I'll  fucking end you. You won't get out of here alive."

He visibly paled at the certainty in my voice and pulled back from the laptop screen. I focused back on it and played the footage again.

10:07. 10:08. 10:10. 10:15.

It kept playing, the loop. Again and again and again. None of the timeframes showed me where Alice was. Where she'd gone. Disappeared. Missing.

I pulled away, raking my hands through my hair. Fuck. I couldn't think. It was a ticking time bomb--my mind--the situation--the seconds I was wasting while Alice was--

"Ryder."

"Shut your mouth, Rafael, and let me fucking figure this shit out." I bit out the words.

He frowned, but the tone of my voice, the violence simmering inside me didn't seem to deter him. Not even a little. "How will you figure this shit out when all you have been doing is watching this footage for the past many hours?"

I looked back at the screen--an instinct I couldn't rub off. It was the last instant--an evidence of it, of Alice being there, of her being safe. You fucking lied to her, the insistent awful voice kept repeating in my head. You said you'd keep her safe and look what happened.

The footage of Alice's dormitory building became a taunting blur in front of me. The sudden rage--the uncontrollable helplessness--the one that made me see red, was too much too sudden. I shoved the laptop off the table, the crack of it as it met the floor not even a little satisfying.

Alice, my mind kept playing the words in a loop. Not safe, not safe, not safe.

"That...was the precinct's property," the detective said.

Rafael turned to him before I could've. My response would've been slamming his pathetic head through one of the walls. His was much humane.

"Come on, man." He went around the corner and picked up the stupid fucking laptop, handing it over. "This being broken is the least of your problems. Get this out of here. We can have this room to us for a few minutes?"

The detective was a fucking stupid man, because it took him three fucking minutes to respond. Three fucking minutes wasted where I was no closer than this morning--than yesterday--than the night before yesterday to finding Alice.

Santiago, I thought--swore--the name igniting uncontrollable rage within me. Grabbing one of the metal chairs, I hurled it at the one-way mirror. There was a crack, and I wanted to shatter it whole.

"Jesus--"

"I will kill him." I snarled. "Fucking break him with my bare hands if I find out that he touched her--that he hurt her--"

"Are you off your fucking mind?" Rafael started the moment the detective left the room, leaving us alone. I curled my hands into fists. "Getting on the bad side of the cops here, Octavio? Tu malnacido."

"Half of these assholes already vouch for my father."

"Do you think that makes anything better? What the hell will you do when they shove you behind bars?" He shouted. I tensed, wound too tight. "How the hell will you search for Alice when you're stuck there?"

Burning with newfound rage--a kind that only grew more deadly when I heard Alice's name leaving his lips--Alice's name that fucking scared me because she wasn't here and I had no fucking clue where she was. Because it had been hours--days when I'd last seen her and it was a dying end I had never experienced before--a slow death, the not knowing. Grabbing him by the collar, I slammed him into the door the detective just left from. "Don't fucking test me right now, Rafael."

He gripped my hand, my fingers, clawing at them until the sight of his face turning alarmingly red--in need of oxygen--stopped me. I shoved him aside and he stumbled, coughing out, "Fucking hell. It's pointless talking to you."

"Why the fuck are you here then?" To rub it on me? To gloat? To tell me I was fucking stupid--pathetic to not keep Alice by my side when I should've? That I should've gotten a hold of Santiago sooner and ended him before this very day?

Rafael scowled, rubbing his throat. "To let you know your father is here."

I stilled--felt the air around me still. Seconds ticked by in a haste. My skin itched with the need to go--do something to find where Alice was, where she'd gone, not waste time. She needed me and I wasn't doing anything about it. Go, go, go, my mind screamed. Run.

"Jesus." The scowl on his face flickered. I wanted to punch it off his face. "I...can't do anything about it now. I warned you, Ryder. But you still went ahead and did your shit and now your father is so livid that he is here. Right here. And he wants to see you."

"Fuck off." I dragged my hands up my face, hands itching with the need to punch something--destroy something. I needed--Jesus Christ.

I needed my querida.

I needed her right here, with me, like I needed oxygen to breathe. I needed her safe. I needed her to not hurt. I needed to know that she wasn't hurting right this very moment.

"You need to come with me." His voice hardened, all soldier and loyal confidante of my fucking father. "He asked me to get you. He's been waiting for you since this morning. You do not respond to calls on your phone, you do not respond to the men coming here to get you. How else was I supposed to tell you about this?"

"I said, fuck. Off." I snarled at him, pulling out my phone. "Get the fuck out of here before I make you." Switching it on led me to the text conversation I'd been obsessively stuck on. Alice's last text to me.

Love you, she'd typed.

"Mierda." I closed my eyes, counted to ten, then whirled around at Rafael, who was still stubbornly there. "We put two men near that building. I was specific about keeping an eye on Alice at all times, wasn't I? Any signs of danger and I was to be told. What the fuck happened? Where the fuck were those two men when she fucking disappeared from that fire?"

Rafael had the nerve to flinch. "You've already done a number on them. One can't speak anymore and the other hasn't gained consciousness yet."

I remembered the fury only--the blind rage. I didn't remember their faces or the blood and bruises.

"They didn't do what I'd asked of them."

"They're your father's men. What else do you expect?"

I clenched my fist around my phone, felt it digging into my palm. Could see the image of Alice in my mind, in front of me, smiling and happy. A taunt at all that was about to be ruined. Destroyed. Fucking shattered.

"I needed her to be safe, Rafael," I gritted out, the words alone a cruel reminder that I had promised. It killed me to know that fucking promise had meant nothing in the end.

"I know. Jesus, I'm stressed about this too, Ryder. I am telling you, we will figure this out. But first--"

"I'm not going to him." My father could go to fucking hell and rot there--it'd be the least of his penance.

"You have to!" He spoke loudly--aggravatedly. His hands grabbed his head as he started pacing agitatedly. "Do you not understand? If you don't go and see him, he's going to up and ruin everything."

I scowled. "You're just afraid he'll fuck you over."

He had the nerve to go quiet at that, like he knew I wasn't wrong but didn't have enough decency in him to agree with me. Of course, I wasn't wrong. I wasn't foolish to not know why Rafael was just too loyal to my father--why he was his fucking puppet. There was always something close at stake when it came to being loyal towards my father. He pulled the strings and they all fucking obeyed every single time.

"You think," I gritted out, words all laced with vitriol, "you're safe from his wrath as long as you play puppy to him? That's your biggest fucking misunderstanding, Rafael."

Rafael seemed exhausted all of a sudden--done with all of this. I had this sudden urge to grab him, punch him, hurt him until he realized. None of this would ever end for him or for me. There was never a way out when it came to my father.

"I am just trying to help you." He told me, and I truly hated him then. I always hated lies. He knew that. And yet he still went ahead and lied.

"Then help me find her." I ground out the words, hating that I needed him to understand right then. That I couldn't be wasting any more time right now, not when Alice was with Santiago. "Jesus, you know fucking well she's the only person in my goddamned life that I've ever wanted. For myself. The only one who truly fucking cares, Rafael."

His expression grew stricken as he moved closer. Maybe he could now see past the controlled haze my father always put him under--realize how dire the situation was, how I was seconds away from doing something he would later regret--because then he raised his hands almost placatingly--reassuringly, nodding. "We will, okay? Listen to me. We will find her. Alice will be okay."

"Vete a la mierda. She is with Santiago." I snapped.

He stilled, jaw clenching. But since he was nothing but my father's lackey, he only responded with, "Go see your father, please, and I will send a trusted man to get the answers we need. I promise you we will find her. You know I don't break on my promises."

I bristled where I stood.

"See him, Ryder. Or we all will be regretting every single bit of this."

•••••

Dacio Octavio McQuillan was a man who didn't speak much--didn't have to. He had the kind of sick, twisted power from the very start where he would just look at his men and they'd obey without a second thought. They would kill, ruin, destruct the way he wanted, never questioning him, never letting their shattered morale stop them. That's how he trained them--recruited boys with broken homes and controlled them through emotions. He geared their brains and their thoughts until there was loyalty borne from absolute terror.

A Spanish-born cartel lord, all of this was natural to him. He was born into this sick reign, his father before him--the cartel blood running securely through generations. There were carefully controlled connections to networks of trafficking deeply ingrained within the family. And he always got away with the monstrosity he carried out on the daily.

My curse was this--this bloodline.

"Él está hablando por teléfono ahora mismo." One of the four men stationed outside the meeting room spoke the moment he spotted us--spotted me. I glanced over at the closed doors. He grunted, "El jefe esta ocupado."

I didn't stop and they didn't try to physically keep me out of the room either. Instead, I barged right past him, shoving open the doors, aware that Rafael was still outside, speaking to the guards and trying to save face. But none of it mattered, not when the only few steps I took inside the room, I was instantly met with the sight of the man I loathed--the man I knew I would forever carry deeply repressed hatred for.

My own father.

He looked up the moment I threw open the doors, casually lounging on one of the chairs, dressed in a suit so deeply black--a camouflage to the walls of this room--so pristine that it clashed horribly with the scars on the right of his face--a jagged one running down the corner of his eye to the tip of his ear--the one scar so horribly ingrained into my memory that I felt my body still, my muscles tensing in memory--habit--routine. Years of the same muscle response conditioned into me had me fucking freezing the moment his eyes clashed with mine.

Eyes the exact replica of mine.

I felt, more than saw, the two men guarding his back spring to attention. I didn't recognize them, but I think they recognized me.

There was the click of the door closing behind me. Rafael stepped inside and I felt the muscles of my back tense. I tried to unclench my fists but the years-long trained adrenaline pumping through my body kept me on edge.

It was just Rafael, me, and my father. Like old fucking times.

"Ryder." He spoke, breaking the silence, voice a deep command. He didn't have to shout--never did. He had the twisted courtesy of letting other people scream. I watched him hang up on the call he was in the middle of, letting the man on his left take the phone from him before he regarded me with his demented gaze. "My son."

A string too tightly pulled until I snapped. "What the fuck do you want?"

It was always something he wanted from me. Something he required of me. I'd left and he had still followed me here.

He smiled--an ugly fucking thing like the rest of him. I felt Rafael bristle behind me. The phantom ache of memories traced the edges of me--my back--and made me want to punch a hole through one of these walls. Turning around, I hissed at Rafael, "Go fucking stand somewhere else."

He exhaled sharply, face a blank slate of emotions as he moved away.

"Rafael." My father's voice followed mine. "I see that you convinced him to come here. You will be rewarded adequately for that."

Wasting my time, he knew what he was doing. Alice needs you, my mind raged at me. Why are you here?

"Why," I gritted out, "am I here?"

His gaze narrowed, only slightly, but since I had learned to catalogue every minor change in him--the need to know when he'd flip ingrained within me--I noticed it.

"You have somewhere else to be?" The thick accent was laced with memories of childhood and home and the country I'd never fucking wanted to belong to.

"Dacio--" Rafael started, but just a gesture of my father's hand had him silenced.

I let my eyes roam across the room, a quick and efficient check. An artificial study made for when father called to get a job done. This is where they--his men--discussed the strategies to appoint and the cartel routes to go after. I noticed two thickly encased files opened before him on the mahogany table, right where two other sets of phones lay. Burner phones. The page of photographs halfway out of the topmost file made me move towards it.

"Tell me, son, what is the progress on Santiago." Not a question, but a demand. I looked up because my mind insisted that he required eye contact, but then had to fucking force myself to look away.

He did not fucking control me anymore. I snatched up the page of multiple photographs--a grainy set of still shots from an alley, dated a week back. A silhouette was blurred across them, running.

The page beneath it had more photographs. These were taken a few days ago.

"Ryder." There was the familiar ice in his voice--the cruel pride that took a blow when he wasn't answered. "Speak."

I did, because some things I had been trained against my will, and those things were much difficult to let go of. "You will know when he's dead."

He placed his arms atop the table, lacing his fingers together. The gold signet ring on his finger seemed to taunt me--it had belonged to my mother. "That is the problem, my boy. ¿Crees que puedes ser inteligente conmigo?"

I tossed the photographs aside and scowled at him. "No."

His stare hardened. "I have been made aware of your side quests."

"I am not answerable to you."

"You are." He stated--a mere statement that ignited raw fury within me all over again. Made me want to crack my fist against his face--make him hurt. He reached for the photographs and pulled the one at the very bottom, sliding it towards me. "As long as this family's blood runs through you, I control you."

I begrudgingly looked at it, at the figure captured on another set of still shots. It was unmistakably Santiago. Dated today.

Ice crawled up my spine. I looked up at my father, at the sudden realization.

"Alice Rhodes." He stated, gaze calm but deadly--calculating for weaknesses. "Is she yours?"

Yours. I felt the air around me still to its very fucking molecule. Nothing mattered except the rage clouding my vision, the red crawling up my veins. It was violent but familiar--it aimed to protect the name that had left his filthy lips--it was all of me finally able to get my hands on this man who was my father. To destroy him. I had him by the collar in seconds as the rage in its entirety consumed me, ready to let him know that he really fucking didn't control me anymore, ready to--

His men intervened, grabbing me from both sides, a blow to my stomach followed by a series of more. A grunt escaped me, but the blind fury within me didn't dim even a little.

"You fucking coward." I spat at him, fighting against the hold on me. Both of his men scrambled to keep me back--one of them readying to sock me in the face when he stopped him.

"Hold him," he said, adjusted the cufflinks of his sleeves, the gold of his ring glittering--still taunting me--before it ripped across the side of my face--a blow to my face that had blood dripping down my skin.

I yanked against the hands on me, would've broken his men's fingers--but then Rafael, stupid fucking Rafael was there between us--between my father and me, mandhandling me until I stepped back.

I grunted at him. He hissed at me, "Ryder, what the fuck." Keeping me away, keeping me back. I glared at my father, at the carefully constructed smirk ticking along the corner of his lips as he leaned back on the table. "Calm the fuck down."

"What have you done?" I spat at my father, eyes not leaving him even for a second. Alice Rhodes, he'd said. I wanted to burn this place to the ground. Burn him to the very last ash.

"Back off." Rafael gritted out, pushing me two steps backward. "Back."

"What the fuck did you do?" I bit out past the metallic taste in my mouth.

"I imagine you must need renewed correctional training, my boy. After all these years away from me."

Rafael swore before me. Quiet, low.

"What the fuck did you do to her?" I snarled.

My father only stared, didn't speak when I needed him to. I wanted to claw the answers out of him. He straightened and took measured steps towards me. Rafael tensed and stepped aside.

"Do you remember why Santiago, one of my most trusted men, went rogue?" He asked me.

I stilled, didn't need his men to hold me back.

"I fucked over the girl he was in love with." He stated--boasted in that demented way he stated every other fact--shook his head and took out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood from his torn knuckles. "Dirtied her, then him, because sometimes you need to remind your most perfect men that they too are made of flaws and weaknesses. Am I right, Rafael?"

I didn't need to look to know Rafael had gone pale. Maybe he hadn't known this truth about Santiago. I wouldn't be surprised. He had the sick fucking privilege of being born into the cartel--he didn't know the cruelest of things my father did to his recruited men on the daily.

"You've known," I gritted out, "all this time where Santiago has been."

His gaze alone was an answer for me. Another way to keep a control on me.

"Where is he?" I asked, voice shaking with restraint. Where's Alice, I wanted to demand--rage--destruct. But I didn't need him focusing on her. Not my father anywhere near her.

"I imagine with your Alice."

Rafael stepped near me. I shook with the whips of restraint holding me back. "You've been keeping tabs on Santiago's whereabouts. You know where he is right now."

His eyes gleamed with deceit. "Of course. Do you think I would trust you to bring me back one of my most competent men when you've been compromised?"

"You fucking lied to me."

"Lies are what we learn to grow up on, my boy."

"Tell me where he is," I bit out, felt blood dripping down my face, hated that I needed something from him but knowing I had no choice. Not right now. With him, I never did.

"I can." He placed the handkerchief--the white marred with red--on the desk. "But I require your word first."

I stilled, turning to stone. Because I knew what was coming. It was a threat that had always waited for me in the periphery. The bomb ticking towards its end--towards destruction.

"You surrender," he said. "Belong to me again and I will tell you where your Alice is."