Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
Luca
“She’s pissed,” I said into the awkward silence growing in the car. My fingers drummed nervously at the steering wheel.
“Livid,” Ronan confirmed. “But Victor said there was a development and this was a priority.”
“I thought he wasn’t happy with our decision to come here,” Nikolai pointed out.
“He wasn’t. I told him that we had more leads this way. Apparently, somebody had a problem with that.”
Nikolai narrowed his eyes and Ronan was quick to reassure him. “Don’t worry, he’s not angry about that part.”
“I don’t give a fuck if he’s angry about it. I need time with my omega.”
“We have time,” Ronan promised. “But, apparently, word got out about where we were heading, and now Dad thinks someone on the inside is trying to weaken the Crows and make it look like we were involved, not fixing the situation.”
“A mole?” I asked, surprised. How was this the first we were hearing of something this big?
“He’s not positive, but after we took out Spectre and took time off, three missions were sabotaged. All three hit at once, in fact.”
“Holy shit,” I said, stunned. “Our surveillance teams are better than that.”
Hell, our intel was better than that. No one should have been able to find out three locations of our men and use it against us.
“They are,” Ronan confirmed. “It was a little too convenient when all three teams were hit the moment they went in. It was an obvious trap. Making a fool out of Victor Crow means he’s on a warpath.”
We’d witnessed more than one meltdown from the man, but this one seemed justified.
“I had to walk away from my omega on day fucking two while we were finally talking,” Nikolai said, slamming his hand against the dashboard hard enough that I was shocked he didn’t get an airbag in the face.
“We’re going to have to work our ass off to earn that trust back, and we have to make it a point that they know we’re not going to constantly walk away every time something happens,” I pointed out.
“What kind of pack are we if we’re fucking flaky?
We should’ve taken the five minutes to explain this to them at the restaurant, and then I bet she would’ve had no problem with us leaving. ”
“I realize that now,” Ronan said, his face tight. “I just didn’t want her to have to be involved. She has enough to deal with. We’ll bring them in now that we know more. I just needed to talk to my father somewhere that wasn’t in the middle of the fucking restaurant.”
“I just got her back,” Nikolai said again, his voice hard. “You’re fucking this up for me.”
“You walked out willingly,” I pointed out, “and us fighting isn’t going to fix that shit. We’re not turning against each other.”
Nikolai swung his glare to me, but didn’t argue further. He knew I was fucking right.
“So, what are we doing right now?” I demanded. “Why are we here?”
“Someone found out where we were going,” Ronan said.
“I’m not trying to bring any kind of danger to our omega and our fresh pack.
We have a location a few hours away. Minutes from the safehouse we snagged when waiting for our meeting with Widow’s Peak.
It’s a bit too close for comfort, we have to handle this. Now.”
“Noble cause. Poor execution.”
At my words, Ronan let out a low growl and slammed his own hand against the steering wheel.
“I’m doing the best I can.”
“Look, I get it,” I said. “At least I’m trying to. Either way, we need to get to the site and see what’s waiting for us there. I’m pulling over so I can switch to intel.”
I put on my blinker and navigated over, glad the roads were empty. Ronan swapped seats with me while Nik stewed in his anger.
“Two hours away from my fucking omega,” Nikolai growled again.
I couldn’t fucking blame him. I was feeling the same way. Every instinct in my body was telling me to turn around.
But if something was closing in on Widow’s Peak, we owed it to them to keep danger away. We’d promised. It wasn’t just about our omega anymore. It was all the omegas involved, because not one of them asked for their safety to be put in jeopardy.
This rested on our shoulders now.
“We will get back as soon as we can,” Nikolai said again, almost reassuring himself.
“I’m going to see what this intel is that they seem to have conveniently found,” I said, not trusting it for a second. Not if there was already a known mole somewhere in our ranks.
“Good plan,” Ronan offered.
He was grasping at straws, trying to keep us from losing our minds.
I ignored them now, focusing on my laptop and logging into the Crow security network. The one I’d created and someone was trying to use against me. Unlucky for them, I knew every back door, and I knew exactly where to look for Victor’s intel.
The earliest intel seemed to be entered manually, which shouldn’t be happening from anyone other than the security team. The signature attached was the same pattern as ours, but altered. Now that I was looking it stuck out.
I designed security tags for nearly everyone in the network, and someone had tried to spoof that. I always embedded failsafes for exactly this kind of situation.
“Victor was right,” I said with full confidence now. “There is a mole, and their signature is all over the assignments that ended in those ambushes.”
“What about the one we’re heading for?” Nikolai said carefully.
His voice was still full of gravel, anger coloring every syllable, but at least it wasn’t the hollow tone he’d always had before.
I hated that haunting tone.
“I’m looking into that now,” I promised, pulling up Victor’s correspondence and finding it easily.
“They didn’t send this directly to Victor,” I said as I followed the trail, “They slid it into the outgoing jobs. They just weren’t great at hiding their tracks. This absolutely reeks of newbie behavior.”
“So, they wanted Victor to find it? I don’t understand,” Ronan said.
“I feel like somebody was trying really fucking hard to get us here, right now,” I admitted. It was grim, but true.
“Wait. What does that mean for our omega? Or all of Widow’s Peak?” Nik demanded.
“I don’t know yet,” I said, still scanning the leads.
“I’m calling Syrus.” Ronan cursed, swerving over to the side of the road.
“We still have to go,” I pointed out. “If it follows the same pattern, they have an entire security staff, and we have to figure out what’s waiting for us. Maybe if we can figure out who hired them, one of them will surely sing for us.”
“Oh, they absolutely are—”
“Hello?” Syrus’s greeting cut us off.
“We have a problem,” Ronan barked out, briefing him on what we found. He didn’t hold back, just unloaded everything so they could be prepared. Keeping Widow’s Peak safe was the priority.
“Figure this out. We warned you not to bring trouble to this town,” Syrus growled. “I’ll make sure everyone’s vigilant, but you better handle this, and fast.”
The call ended and Ronan slammed his hand against the steering wheel.
“Drive, Ronan,” I told him. “We need to go in quietly. Whatever this mole has set up for us isn’t good.”
“I already planned to, brother,” Ronan said, his voice even but filled with fury.
“Either way, it’s ending tonight. Nobody’s going to get the jump on us, and nobody is getting back to Widow’s Peak. Not one of these assholes will be left alive to report back.”
“Luca, your job is to snatch one guy. Take your pick, anyone you think looks like they’ll talk. Tie them up, quiet them, and then we’ll kill the rest.”
“Affirmative,” I said, continuing to scour our security network for this rogue operative.
It was going deeper than I thought, but I needed my full setup to truly figure this out. I needed extra monitors, more than I brought with us. I needed a true data center again. If we were staying, what I needed to do was go home and pack mine up.
That meant leaving Widow’s Peak, or taking her with us, and I wasn’t sure which was more dangerous.
“Ten minutes away,” Ronan informed us, turning off the main road and heading to the rundown part of town.
“And here I thought the cockroaches always stuck to warehouses,” Nikolai deadpanned as he took in the houses that looked one strong wind away from collapsing.
Ronan pulled over, glancing at the GPS. “It’s at the end of the road. We’re walking from here.”
He’d already shut off the lights, and we had our guns tucked into our holsters. Mine was in my hand before I climbed out.
I opened the trunk long enough to grab restraints, tucking them into my pocket, then followed Nikolai and Ronan around back.
We moved into the trees lining the road, using them for cover.
Ronan’s arm slung out, stopping us in our tracks. He was silent as he looked around and we didnt utter a sound. I held my breath and listened.
Faint voices sounded off ahead.
I traded my gun for my hunting knife.
They were in the trees, waiting to strike, making it seem like no one was home before they rushed in and took us by surprise. This was an amateur setup, but if we didn’t know what we were looking for, it would have worked.
Nikolai tapped us each once before he disappeared deeper into the shadows of the forest.
Ronan pointed at the house and then himself before taking off that way. I forged ahead, staying on the path I was on.
The first man I found was far too big for me to restrain. He was leaning against a tree, and I easily moved around it, the blade sliding through his throat before he could respond.
He was not one I recognized, but he was wearing tactical gear, an assault rifle tucked at his side.
These weren’t just mercenaries… they were soldiers.
What the actual fuck was going on? Who was this traitor working for?
“Did you hear that?” a deep voice asked as I crept closer.
Something cracked in the woods ahead as they shifted. I moved between the trees, spotting two soldiers. They were looking in separate directions, trying to track the movement in the dark while also keeping their cover.
Too bad their cover was blown before we’d even arrived.
This ambush had turned into ours.
Of the two soldiers in front of me, one had shed his outer armor. He was stronger, but he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, scoffing at the other.
“What, are you afraid of a few foxes out in that forest?”
When he turned the other way, I struck.
The terrified gurgling of the first soldier drew the attention of his partner. He turned around, but I already struck again, slamming the hilt of my knife into his temple and watched as he crumbled to the ground.
Pulling out the restraints, I quickly secured his wrists and slapped a strip of tape over his mouth, ensuring he stayed silent when he woke up. I pulled both bodies out of the main path and into the brush so we weren’t in full view of others.
Then I waited.
He came to while I was crouched over him, my blade resting against his throat.
His eyes widened, then narrowed, fury burning in his dull, blue irises.
“Don’t worry. We’ll ask plenty of questions later,” I whispered, giving him a smirk of my own.
I pressed the blade in just a little until he swallowed hard, forcing it deeper. Blood trickled from the cut, but not enough to kill him. Just enough to sting and remind him that I was in charge now.
It didn’t take long for Nikolai and Ronan to find me.
“Good work,” Ronan praised. “The house is clear but let’s do one last sweep. Then we can take our guest inside for a little chat.”
He muttered something against the tape that I took as protest.
I leaned down again, my face inches from his.
“Don’t worry. We always make them sing in the end. By the way, the Crows send their regards.”