Chapter 85 Untitled Chapter

Chapter 85 Untitled Chapter
Roberto buried his face in her neck and breathed. Shaky and unsteady. Like he was holding the entire world together with his hands. His voice came out muffled against her skin. 
“If anything happens to them…”
Kendrix closed her eyes. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held him tighter.
She whispered, “Then we get them back. Together.”
Roberto did not answer. He just held her. Like she was the only real thing left in the world.

. .

The surveillance room buzzed with light and the kind of tension that made your skin feel too tight.
Monitors flickered with broken code and trace routes that collapsed the second Skyler pushed deeper, each failure landing like another weight on his shoulders.
Bash stood behind him, jaw locked so tight it had to hurt. 
“This is sealed,” Skyler muttered, fingers flying over the keyboard like he could force answers out of the machine. “Military-grade encryption. Whoever did this did not just hide the signal, they buried it so deep it should not exist.”
Bash exhaled sharply, and it sounded more like frustration than breath. “So we have nothing?”
“I did not say that,” Skyler leaned closer to the screen, eyes burning. “I said it will take time, and we do not have time, and that is making me sick.”
The words sat heavy in the room, thick enough to choke on.
A second later the main console beeped once, then again, loud and wrong.
Incoming encrypted call.
Both of them froze like they had been caught doing something they should not have.
Skyler’s hand hovered over the system, trembling slightly. “This was not here a second ago.”
Bash’s expression darkened until it looked almost dangerous. “Answer it.”
Skyler hesitated for one heartbeat, then clicked, because hesitation would not save Maya and Antonio.
The screen shifted and audio connected, and at first there was only static that crackled like something alive.
Then a laugh came through, low and amused, slowly growing louder like it had been waiting for them to pick up and had been laughing the whole time they tried to find him.
Roberto’s hand was already on the secondary screen before the voice fully formed, and he moved into view of the monitor with his face blank in that way that meant he was not blank at all.
He answered, and silence snapped tight between them, sharp and ugly. For half a second neither of the side spoke, like both were measuring how much damage they could do with words alone.
Then Victor’s voice came through, warm and mocking, laced with amusement that did not belong in anything human. “Well, you are faster than I expected.”
Roberto did not blink. His voice was flat and hard. “Where are they?”
Another laugh rolled out, longer this time, and it made Kendrix’s stomach turn behind him. 
“Straight to business. I remember that about you.”
Roberto’s jaw tightened until Kendrix was sure his teeth would crack. “Last warning.”
Victor sighed theatrically, like this was all a game and he was bored of pretending otherwise. “Always so dramatic, Luca. You act like I am the one who started this.”
The room behind Roberto went still, so quiet Kendrix could hear her own pulse hammering in her throat.
Bash stepped closer behind him, and Skyler stopped typing completely, like his fingers forgot how to move.
Victor’s voice lowered then, almost conversational, like he was discussing the weather instead of two people bleeding on a floor. “I only returned what you have been holding onto too tightly.”
A pause stretched out, thin and sharp.
Then a faint sound came through the call, a muffled struggle and the scrape of a chair against concrete, and Kendrix’s breath hitched behind them because she recognized the way Maya fought when she was scared.
Victor noticed anyway, and his voice lit up with something cruel and pleased. “Oh, she is there too. Good.”
Roberto’s eyes sharpened instantly, and when he spoke his voice was quiet in the way that meant someone was about to die. “If you ever think of touching her, I will erase you.”
Victor chuckled like Roberto had told a joke. “You always say that.”
Then his tone changed, just slightly, a shift so subtle it made the hair on Kendrix’s arms stand up. “I called because I wanted to hear your voice before I decided how badly I would ruin your day.”
Silence fell again, heavy and suffocating, pressure building in the room until Kendrix thought her chest might cave in.
Then Victor exhaled, slow and satisfied. “Tell me, Roberto, how does it feel to lose control in your own house?”
The line went dead, and the sound of it cutting off felt like a door slamming on something Kendrix loved.
For three seconds nobody moved, nobody spoke, and the silence was worse than the laugh had been.
Kendrix pressed her fist against her mouth to stop the sound that wanted to come out, because if she started crying she was not sure she would stop. Her eyes burned and her chest hurt and she hated that she felt helpless while Maya was tied to a chair somewhere by her own father.
Roberto stood perfectly still in front of the console, and his hand stayed pressed against the edge of it until the plastic started to bow under his grip. He was not breathing right. She could see it in the way his shoulders moved.
Bash finally exhaled and it came out shaky. “He wanted you to hear them,” he said, voice rough with anger and grief mixed together.
Skyler rubbed a hand over his face and laughed, but it was not a real laugh. It was broken and desperate and it scared Kendrix more than silence would have. “Of course he did. He is enjoying this. God, he is actually enjoying this.”
Roberto turned then, slowly, and when his eyes met Kendrix’s she saw everything he was trying not to show her. The rage was there, yes, but underneath it was fear, real and raw and terrified, the kind a man like him was not supposed to feel.
Kendrix took a step toward him before she could think better of it, and her voice came out thick and unsteady. “They sounded scared, Roberto. Maya was trying not to cry and I heard it anyway.”
Roberto stared at her for a long moment, and then his whole body seemed to sag like he had been holding up the ceiling with his back. He reached for her and pulled her against his chest hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs, one arm locking around her back while the other buried itself in her hair.
He did not say anything for a long time. He just held her, and Kendrix could feel his heart beating too fast under her palm, wild and angry and afraid all at once.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough and low against her hair, and it cracked on the words. “I should have known he would use them. I should have protected them better. I should have protected you better.”