Chapter Forty
In which Alexsey has had enough of this shit.
Alexsey…
The alarm hits all five phones at once.
I pause; my fist poised above Roan's bloody face. My phone and his are rattling on the tool bench where we keep tools for 'persuasion.' Tolya pulls his phone out of his jacket, frowning, the two other guards do the same.
Striding over to the bench, I grab my phone, smearing Roan’s blood on the screen. "Fuck! It's Danyl- an invasion alert." My heart drops with a thud. "At the loft."
"How the fuck would anyone get into your place?" Tolya says.
Roan violently pulls and thrashes against his handcuffs. "Let me loose!" he says, eyes wide and blazing. "Liria needs me, untie me now!"
"Tolya," I say, not taking my eyes away from Roan who's still thrashing as if he can rip out the iron chair bolted into the cement floor. "Get all the information. Notify my brothers and pull together fifteen men. I need to know who's there before we can decide how to go in."
"On it," he says, already putting his phone to his ear, speaking in low tones as I stare at Roan. His heart rate barely went up, the first time I punched him, and now he's tearing and pulling at his bonds. His wrists are bleeding from trying to yank free of the handcuffs.
"Let me loose!" he roars. "Liria is in danger and you are standing here like a fucking idiot!"
Tolya leans closer. "You're not thinking about it, right, boss?"
Groaning, I cross the room, unlocking the handcuffs and then his legs from the chair. He bolts out, grabbing a towel to stop his bleeding nose and the gash I've opened on his lip.
Tolya is staring at me in shock, and I shake my head irritably, moving to the stairs. "He would give his life for Liria and she trusts him. It has to be enough. That's something I should've thought of before I brought him here."
"Oh, now you decide to think this through?" Roan says, taking the steps two at a time, following me to the cars.
Fifteen minutes. We're fifteen minutes at least from the loft, no matter how fast we drive. Five minutes in, I get a notification and pull up the footage from a drone our tech crew has hovering over the roof.
My sniper is dead, shot in the back.
The private garden next to the loft is empty. The two men I had patrolling the perimeter are not answering their comms, so likely, also dead.
"Liria is inside with what security?" Roan says in a clipped tone. "Danyl, I'm assuming."
"Yes," I say, "I also assigned Matvey to her security detail today."
"According to the drone footage," Tolya says, “there are no signs of forced entry from the roof. Our sniper must have been taken out by someone in one of the buildings to the east. It doesn't look like they gained entry from the basement. None of the exterior alarms went off."
"Which means the intruder came in through the front door," I say, rubbing my forehead.
"Someone opened it for them, willingly. Whoever it was that got in, Liria or Danyl knew them.
Danyl managed to get the alarm out on his comm.
" I turn to Roan, who's wedged between Tolya and me. "What do you think?"
"Liria knows so few people here in the city. Aside from your family, I'm not sure who she would ignore security protocol for to allow in." He frowns, then shakes his head in profound self-disgust. "Of course."
"Tell me." I demand, wanting to pry his fucking brain open and get the information for myself.
"You said you had two separate security breaches where the loft was bugged," he says. "I'd have to look at the dates, but her cousins have visited twice since their sister Caroline left. They would have been allowed some movement around the loft."
"Fucking Bobby and Mikal?" I punch the roof of the car. It feels good. "What would they have to gain?"
Roan closely watches the drone live footage.
"They're not directly related on the Krasniqi side, but they are Albanian.
If Dritan - or one of his lieutenants - got to them and promised them a chunk of money, they would be all in.
Neither one of them is very bright, but they could have convinced Liria to let them in. "
My phone buzzes, it's Roman. "We're on our way," he says. "The tech crew located the street camera footage. The car pulled up fast. Two men went inside, one looked like he was being dragged before the door closed. It opened again in a few seconds up another ten men surged through."
"So, we're looking at least twelve men inside," I say. "Tell your drone operator to pull back and sweep the block. See if it looks like there's anyone else moving in."
"Not that we’ve seen," Roman says. "The street is quiet. There are two vans parked halfway down the street. What's your plan, brother? We're ready to follow you."
"The private garden between my house and the next has two secret entrances," I say.
"One goes down through the garden into my lower level.
They'll see us if we try to go through the front.
We can go through my neighbor's house, he has a private entrance to the garden, too.
There's an overgrowth of ivy along the parallel wall. We’ll move behind the ivy and into my house.
If there are no shooters on the roof, we can run along the top of the garden wall and jump onto my second story terrace. "
"That's slick," he says, sounding pleased with me. "I always wondered why you allowed that garden. However, that only gives us one access point."
"I know. But we can't risk a helicopter landing on the roof."
"Brother, we've got this," Roman says.
"She's pregnant." My throat is strangling on the words.
"I know," he says gently.
Roan has been silent until now. "Give me guns. Preferably mine. I'm assuming they're in here, since you disarmed me. What about your remote access for the security camera feeds through the house?" Tolya reluctantly hands him a .357. He snatches it from him and checks the ammo clip.
When we pull up the feed on my phone, the screens are black.
"Fuck!" I slam my fist against the window. It doesn’t feel that good this time and I think I better be careful.
I only have one firing hand now. "They cut the feed. That means they got into the security room. Now there’s no telling where they have Liria. "
"Flash bang grenades," Roan says flatly. "Shoot them through the front windows, and on the back side of the second story in case they're up there."
I nod grudgingly. "It's a solid idea."
"Some people," Tolya says sharply, "would find it quite a coincidence that there was a home invasion just as you were taken. You could have sent a message so they knew Liria would be vulnerable."
Roan stares at Tolya before headbutting him, knocking my Second's head against the window, cutting open his forehead.
"You may kill me after this," Roan says sharply, spitting out each word like a bullet.
"But for now, everything is focused on saving Liria.
You can enjoy your bullshit accusations later.
When they're all proved wrong, I will beat the living shit out of you, even if I am dead.
Now, mop up that mess. You're getting blood all over the seat. "
Tolya's hand reaches into his jacket for his gun. I shake my head firmly. "Leave off the fighting. We have far more interesting people to kill.”
Pulling into a driveway about a block down from my place, I can see my front door. My wife is inside there with twelve gunmen.
"It has to be an Albanian group, another faction," Roan says suddenly. "It is Bujar. It must be. He's a second cousin; he might think he has a right to succession. He thinks this is his last chance." The color drains from Roan's face.
"What?" I say sharply.
"He is the worst possible person to be inside there with Liria," he says, his words thick with disgust. "She never told me the whole story, but I know he tormented her mercilessly when she was forced to spend the summer with her father when she was younger."
"Did he rape her?" Four words torn from me.
Not that. Not Liria.
"He didn't get that far. But I know her father didn't protect her from him," he says grimly. "If he's in there, she won't be… capable of helping us."
"We're going in now," I flip the safety off on my Glock and speak into my comm set. "Everyone. We're entering the secret garden from my neighbor's house. Liria's safety is the only thing that matters."
We scramble out of the cars and into the back entrance of my neighbor Marcus’s place. I know he’s out of the country. Unfortunately for his housekeeper, she's by the sink. She stares, frozen, as a parade of armed men come into his kitchen.
"Not a word," I put my finger up to my lips.
She nods violently.
My comm crackles to life. Roman's team is on the other side of the street. "There's activity on both levels," he reports. "We can see five or six people moving around the first floor and four others heading up the stairs. We can't tell yet if Liria is one of them."
We are all in position. I close my eyes, offering a silent apology to Liria. Flashbang grenades are horrendously disorienting.
"Positions ready, everyone set?"
The four men handling the grenade launchers count down.
"Three… two… one."
I take a breath. "Fire."