Chapter Forty-four
Lorenzo
“Forty cars are ready.” Andres’s voice cuts through the hum of activity, calm and clipped, as if we were about to attend a business dinner instead of orchestrating a kidnapping that could start a war.
On the table, a neat pile of balaclavas waits. I take one for myself and toss another to Andres. He catches it effortlessly, tugging it over his head, his eyes hard but searching mine like he’s waiting for me to flinch. I don’t. I can’t.
Lev and the rest of the soldiers are already waiting in the basement, engines idling in their throats, weapons checked and loaded. They’re hungry for blood. I know it, I can feel it in the way the air vibrates with their anticipation. Tonight, there will be no mistakes.
It will be me and Andres who go personally to collect Thomas Beaumont and John Archibald. No delegating. No middlemen. I want my hands in this. I want to drag them by their collars into the dark, lock them into the basement, and finally rip the truth from their throats.
Kirill stays at the office. He trusts me enough to let me lead. Ice said he’ll join us once we’ve got them secured; interrogation is his art, and he paints with pain.
I roll my shoulders, the vest groaning against my muscles. My fists still ache from earlier, knuckles raw and cracked. It’s fitting. My body is a battlefield, always has been. Tonight will be no different.
I try, God knows I try, to push her out of my head.
Serena. Her face, her voice, the way her body caved to mine just last night even though she came here to end things.
I should never have touched her. I should’ve let her walk.
But how the fuck was I supposed to resist?
She’s not a woman, she’s a goddamn siren, dragging me into her storm until I can’t tell if I’m breathing or drowning.
Lev’s words echo in my skull: she’s like a siren.
And for the first time, I finally understand.
When she stormed into my suite, eyes blazing, jealousy dripping from every word when she saw Ashley there…
Christ, it made my cock hard. She doesn’t realize it, but I wanted that.
I wanted her to hate the thought of me with anyone else. I wanted her obsessed, just like I am.
But even as her scent still lingers on my skin, vanilla and sin, another truth gnaws at me: I’m about to make her hate me forever.
Because tonight, I’m going after her father.
And John fucking Archibald. If they don’t give me the answers I want, I’ll put bullets in both their skulls and burn what’s left.
Closure. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. To know what really happened to my father. To strip the fear from my mother’s eyes and finally bury this ghost. And if the price is Serena’s heart, then so be it. I’ll take her love and her hate. She was mine the second I touched her.
We head toward the club’s exit. Outside, the line of black G-Wagons gleams like a fleet of predators in the dying light. Each one packed with four armed men, faces hidden behind balaclavas, rifles resting across their knees. A hundred and sixty soldiers. My army. My war.
They can’t outnumber us. They can’t outrun us. Tonight, Florence was a memory, New York will be a battlefield.
As we step into the night, I catch sight of Alisa by the doors, her sharp little frame bristling with fury, her eyes cutting into me like knives.
Kirill had ordered her to keep the club loud and full, distraction wrapped in decadence.
Inside, the music is pounding, bodies grinding against poles and each other, laughter drowning out the sins already happening beneath their feet.
It’s fitting. No one will hear the screams when the Attorney General of the United States and the Chief of the FBI beg for mercy in my basement.
Andres pulls his balaclava over his face and slips into the lead car, his massive frame folding into the leather seat with soldier’s precision.
“We’re meeting back here,” he says, voice muffled but steady.
He knows this could go to hell in seconds, and yet he doesn’t waver.
That’s why he’s my brother in all but blood.
I nod once. “Drive.”
The engines roar to life, forty throats growling in unison. The convoy rolls out into the night like a black tide, swallowing the city whole.
And I sit in the front seat, AK resting across my knees, jaw clenched so hard it aches. My heart beats with one thought, one vow:
They should never have touched him.
They should never have tried to take her.
They should never have thought they could win.
Thomas Beaumont and John fucking Archibald, two men who wore masks better than anyone I knew. Respectable husbands, fathers, leaders. And yet here they were, chasing after girls young enough to be their daughters, tossing bills into the air while their wives rotted at home.
Pathetic. Filthy. Weak.
Cheating. The word itself made my blood pulse hotter, my jaw ache from clenching.
I never understood it. If you love someone, you don’t betray them.
If you don’t, then let them go. It’s simple.
But then Serena’s face flashes in my head, the contract, her silence, her father’s venom.
I tell myself she was forced into this engagement, that she didn’t choose it.
Deep down, I know it. But another part of me, the darker, wounded part, remembers the photos of her with Ian, smiling, leaning into him, his hand on her waist like he had any right.
And it feels like betrayal, even if it wasn’t.
She didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth. She let me find out through bloodstained lies. She let me think I wasn’t enough. That’s what cuts deepest.
I shove the thoughts down, because if I let them breathe, I’ll put a bullet through the first man I see, and tonight I can’t afford mistakes. Not yet.
I slide the Glock into the waistband of my jeans, the metal pressing against my hip bone like a promise. “Everything ready?” I bark into the radio, my voice a razor’s edge.
“Yes, sir,” the unit leader responds without hesitation.
One by one, the other voices check in. Ten cars filled with snipers already stationed on rooftops, scopes trained on every possible exit.
Forty men covering the perimeter, forty more scattered inside the club like shadows in suits.
The rest, fully armed, wait in formation, engines purring low like predators ready to pounce.
I step into the alley behind the club. Neon light bleeds from the back door, flickering pinks and purples across the wet asphalt.
And there she is, Clara. Of all the people Lev could’ve chosen, he sent her.
Serena’s friend. The girl who had held her while she broke apart, the one who looked at me with fire in her eyes, like she knew every bruise on Serena’s heart had my fingerprints on it.
Her gaze collides with mine now, sharp and venomous. She looks like she wants to claw my face off.
“Are you ready to go inside?” I ask, my tone calm, controlled, though my blood runs like gasoline beneath my skin.
“Yes,” she hisses, the word tasting like poison in her mouth.
I study her carefully. “Do you know who the targets are?” My voice drops lower, quieter, because if she doesn’t… if she realizes too late who she’s luring into the dark, I don’t know what the fuck she’ll do.
Her jaw sets. “Yes. I know who they are.” Her eyes narrow into knives. “I just hope you do.”
I don’t flinch. I let my face go cold, empty. “I organized this.”
She blanches, the fury in her eyes cracking into shock for half a heartbeat before the anger comes back, hotter, sharper. Without another word, she spins toward the door, but I catch her wrist.
“Remember the plan,” I murmur, tightening my grip until her pulse hammers against my fingers.
“You go to John. He likes brunettes. That’s you.
” My stomach twists even as I say it, the thought of her hands on that bastard making bile burn my throat.
I shove it down. “Dahlia,” I glance at the other girl, tall, curvaceous, practiced in seduction, “you go to Thomas. He doesn’t care what hole he fucks, as long as it’s tight. ”
“Charming,” Dahlia mutters, rolling her eyes, though her voice is steady. She’s done this before. She knows exactly how to bait a man.
Clara doesn’t. She stares at me with all the fury of a woman who’d burn down the world for her best friend. “You know she’s never going to forgive you for this, right?” Her voice cracks, but her glare doesn’t waver.
For the briefest second, the words sink into me like shrapnel. Serena. Her soft lips whispering I love you. Her trembling body under mine last night. And now, me, standing here, orchestrating her father’s downfall.
My chest tightens, but I don’t let it show. I lean closer, my voice dropping into a low growl. “Will she forgive you for being part of it?”
Clara’s eyes flicker, just slightly, and I know she feels the knife of guilt sink in. She rips her wrist from my hand, her chin lifting in defiance, but her breathing betrays her.
I smirk, cruel and hollow. “I guess that’ll be our little secret.”
She looks like she wants to spit in my face, but she turns away, heels clicking like gunshots as she storms inside with Dahlia.
I exhale slowly, then raise my voice so both of them hear me before the bass from the club swallows my words.
“Quick reminder. You’ll have four men shadowing each of you.
When Beaumont and Archibald take the bait, and they will, they’ll drag you into a private room.
There’s a wall. Behind it, my men are waiting.
All you need to do is get them to drink.
Doesn’t matter how, sweet words, a smile, pour it down their throats, pour it off your tits, I don’t fucking care.
Make them drink. Once they’re out, you walk.
A car will be waiting out back. Your job ends there. Ours begins.”