Chapter 48.

**Narrator’s POV.**

Thirty minutes and seven men silently taken down later, they were still roaming the halls of the castle-like mansion, it was safe to say that the entire home was like a maze and even having a map wasn’t helping their case, “We’re lost, aren’t we?”, Kevin asked,

Gabriel just couldn’t admit that he was somewhat bad at reading maps and he had placed them in some part of the house that was oddly discarded unlike the rest of the house, “I don’t think we’re lost”, he shrugged as he stuck his head into his phone for the hundredth time, “I think we’re in the west wing, maybe that’s why it’s so discarded”,

“Where do you thing we are, fucking beauty and the beast? I’m quite sure that there isn’t a magical flower here anywhere so can you tell me why the west wing will be completely empty?”, Kevin scowled but Gabriel replied him with a shrug,

“Maybe Tessa is here somewhere”, he hoped this was true, he really did, “Might as well check all the rooms here, right?”,

“Our father is a paranoid shithole. If Tessa was here, the door will be heavily guarded by men jacked up more than said beast himself”, Gabriel ignored his brother’s pessimistic sentence- he had been hoping to be positive true out the day, throwing his father in jail was an exception. But then again, who said throwing his murderer father into prison was a bad thing? In his opinion, it would be the best thing that could happen that day, except from him finding Tessa- that would be astronomical.

“Let’s just scan through the area and pray she is here”, he went to the first door and pushed it open with his gloved-up hands, the room was relatively empty with only a chair right in the middle of the room, why the hell did this chair look like a torture device? He looked in on it and found out that it was actually blood that made the dark brown stains on it, his eyes widened- what on earth was his father doing in this place?

The next room they went to was completely empty but it was dark and completely silent- soundproofed if you will. The room’s widows had been sealed and covered up, and all the walls were covered in thick black paint, “Holy shit”, Kevin said in bewilderment, the sound of his voice being swallowed up by the soundproofed walls, “Is this what I fucking think it is?”,

“The silent room torture? If that was what you were thinking, then yes, you are correct”, he shut the door quickly will a low thud wondering why his father would want to torture a person in the most evil, archaic way possible. It was all types of wrong and he could already see Kevin twitching beside him- hence the reason why he had shut the door so quickly.

He was reluctant to open the other doors but he didn’t really have much of a choice. They weren’t necessarily freaked out about the other rooms as the most contained drugs, cannabis, weapons and gear but when they got to the last and final room, they realized it was time to hightail out of there. There, right in the middle of the room was a mutilated body that looked to be almost a week or so old, the body had flies playing on it and it was just a horrible sight to behold. It was so horrible that neither of them could stomach it, Gabriel gagged harshly while Kevin outright vomited at the sight- they were both scarred for life.

Another thirty minutes had passed and they still hadn’t found Tessa. They were both starting to think that she actually wasn’t even there at all, they were far behind on schedule and it seemed as though the time was ticking faster than ever, “Gabriel, Kevin, come in”, Drew’s voice had come in from their communicators,

“We can hear you, go on”, Gabriel urged as they made their way to the other wing of the house, they had scanned the west wing from top to bottom but it was clear that she wasn’t there.

“The men are here”, he stated, “They have taken the evidence and are ready to bust in. It may get messy, have you found Tessa?”, he then asked,

“No, we haven’t”, Gabe said through clenched teeth, he really did not need that constant reminder that he was terrible at this.

“Find her and get back to me. They want you guys out before they do anything but if you aren’t out in the next five minutes, they are coming in”, maybe Gabriel had a hero complex but he wanted to be the one to rescue Tessa, he had come all this way to save her from his father and that was exactly what he was going to do, save her.

They paused in their tracks in their tracks when they saw two men at the other side of the hallway they were walking in, they had heavy duty machine guns in their hands and they looked as though they were guarding a door, “Are those your beast-like men?”, Gabriel asked Kevin in a whisper. He could feel his hope igniting and he took a step forward, only to be dragged back by Kevin,

“Have you lost your damn mind? Jesus! Are you senile or stupid? You just want to walk on over to those men and say what?”, Kevin’s voice was hushed but he was clearly yelling, on the inside. “They will shoot you on sight you idiot”, Gabriel’s hand went to the back of his neck and he rubbed it sheepishly,

“Damn, I wasn’t thinking”, he admitted, he really wasn’t thinking about anything else other than what could be at the other side of the door- or who. “What are we going to do?”,

“We can’t shoot them with actual bullets”, he pushed his jacket aside and brought out a different type of gun- a dart gun, “But we can sedate them”, he smirked,

“Where did you even get that from?”, Gabriel was starting to get wary of Kevin and for good reason as well, the dude could make grown men unconscious by ‘hitting their nerves’- the fuck was that supposed to mean?

“Do you really want to know?”, Gabriel nodded his head and Kevin sighed, “I have a guy”, he aimed the gun at the closer one’s neck and hit the bullseye, he did not allow the second goon to register what had happened before he also knocked him out.

Once they had both fallen to the ground, Kevin and Gabriel made their way to the door, “We should let them know where we are”, Gabriel just had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be as easy as it looked. He hit a button on his communicator, “Alex, Drew, come in”,

“Here”, Alex said, “What is taking so long?”, he asked, worry evident in his tone,

“We might have just found Tessa but to be safe, please tell the men that we are going to be needing back up, loads of it”, Gabriel said,

“Copy that”.

With a sigh, Gabriel pushed the door open and halted in his tracks- his intuition was correct, there she was, the love of his life sitting on the king sized bed the room had to offer with her hands tied to the bed post, his eyes narrowed in on the rope that was binding her to the bed and the duct tape that was placed on her lips before meeting her beautiful blue eyes.

Her eyes read a lot of things, they changed emotions almost five times in a second but the one that really got to him was the panic. That was when they were suddenly pushed to the floor with their hands behind their back. A familiar man came out from the joined toilet, clapping like the maniac he was. This was a set up, he knew they were inside the house.