1. Chapter 1 #3
The women froze, their eyes darting between the bleeding monster on the floor and the armed shadow demanding they move.
Terror kept their feet glued to the floor.
Danni’s jaw tightened as her patience evaporated in a split second.
She snapped her wrist to the left and fired a heavy slug into the chest of the guard standing nearest to them.
"Fucking go before she repeats herself!" Kandi yelled as she shoved the closest woman toward the exit. "Are yall deaf? Go! We tryna save—help yall!"
Danni’s teeth gritted behind her mask. She didn't look back at Kandi, but the irritation flared hot in her chest. Kandi knew better.
Kandi knew she absolutely loathed the word save.
The holy, heroic weight of it, the messy feelings attached to it; it never sat right in Danni's gut. She wasn't anyone's savior.
The gunshot and Kandi's scream finally broke the paralysis.
The women shattered into motion, bursting through the shattered glass and sprinting blindly down the dark lawn toward the private docks.
Waiting in the choppy, midnight water, the twin engines of a getaway boat purred with a low, heavy rumble as Nyah kept her hand on the throttle, scanning the shoreline.
"Let's go, ladies!" Nyah shouted over the roar of the engine, waving them in. "You wanna be free or not?! Knees to chest! Knees to chest!"
Inside the mansion, the halls were deadly quiet. The surviving guards were lined up shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall while the devious mogul lay weeping on the floor, clutching his open wounds.
Danni tapped her earpiece. "Start it now."
She didn’t wait for a response. She leveled her Desert Eagle at the first guard's chest and squeezed the trigger.
The deafening roar of the hand cannon blew the silence apart.
Before the first body could even hit the floorboards, Kandi’s weapon was already singing, a rapid, rhythmic succession of deafening cracks that chewed through the plaster and bone.
The two of them worked the line together, moving with a cold, rhythmic cruelty that didn't leave room for a breath of hesitation.
The guards screamed, scrambled, and fell, but the heavy slugs caught them before they could even turn to run.
Danni stepped over the pile of brass casing, her eyes locked on the weeping mogul. He shrieked, scrambling backward in his own blood, his hands raised in a useless, desperate plea. Danni raised the barrel, lining it up right between his tear-filled eyes, and squeezed.
The final crack echoed off the high, vaulted ceilings, followed by the heavy thud of his skull hitting the floor. The ringing in the room slowly died down, leaving nothing but the steady drip of blood onto the floor and the hiss of spent gunpowder. Every single one of them had stopped moving.
Through the line, Jade clicked her mouse. "Timer is ticking, Boss. Move y’all ass."
Danni and Kandi dashed out of the house, sprinting across the tarmac. The rescued women were already loaded into the boat with Nyah or secure inside the private plane.
Danni ripped open the cabin door, pulling off her hot mask. She took a dee breath of the fresh air just as the entire living room of the mansion exploded behind them.
The ground shook when a fireball erupted into the night sky, blowing the roof off the estate.
"Let's go, Kandi!" Danni yelled.
Kandi nodded, slamming the throttles forward.
The private chopper surged down the tarmac, lifting into the dark sky just as Nyah’s boat jetted away into the open ocean.
The hull slammed low by the extra weight of the bodies packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the stern.
To clear the dock, they had practically hauled the last three women over the gunwale by the fabric of their clothes, packing them tight against the center console.
Behind them, the burning island shrank into a jagged line of orange fire against the black horizon.
In the seats across from Danni, the rescued young women began to cry tears of pure relief, clutching each other's trembling hands and thanking Danni over and over again.
Danni eyed at them, the cold adrenaline still hummed in her veins.
Her expression stayed flat under the cabin lights, and her gaze drifted over their tear-streaked faces without an ounce of the warmth they were looking for.
She looked at the girls she’d just pulled out of the dark the exact same way she looked at the bodies she’d left rotting on the floor.
"Don't mention it," Danni said as she checked the magazine of her Eagle. "Just hold on."
Danni turned back to the window, watching the multi-million dollar mansion rapidly engulf into a towering mountain of bright, roaring flames. A satisfied smirk hit her face.
Danni tapped her comms onto the home line. "The mission is complete."
The line hummed with dead static. The confirmation didn't come through, but it wasn’t because of a bad signal. Miles away, in the fortified sanctuary of their tribal estate, the transmission was held.
Chief Idris, the leader of Danni’s unit, stood at attention in her dimly lit office. The comms receiver sat silent on the desk before her. She wasn't listening to the field report because the man sitting across from her commanded the room.
It was Danni’s Uncle, and the undisputed Chairman of the Okoye tribe.
"She’s not ready," Idris said, her voice tight, trying to inject a note of caution into the air.
The Chairman didn't answer right away. Instead, a hacking cough racked his body. He bent forward as a horrid sound tore from the depths of his chest as he covered his mouth with a white cloth. When he pulled it away, his eyes locked onto the dark, thick blood staining the fabric.
He slammed his fist onto the desk and his voice echoed. "I don't care if she's ready! This is for the sake of our tribe!"
Idris stood frozen, her heart hammering as she looked at the blood on the napkin. She knew her brother was getting worse as each day passed, and it was a matter of time before he would leave them to do all this on their own.
"You are responsible for her," the Chairman growled, his breathing ragged.
His time was clearly running out. "I don’t have much time left on this earth, and I need my people to be okay when I'm gone. I promised our sister to look our for her daughter, and this is teh best way to protect her.”
“Our sister wouldn’t agree with this.”
“That woman didn’t agree with anybody! Get her ready.”
“How am I suppose dto do that? Adanna won’t like this, and I’ll have to deal with the emotions behind your decision.”
He scoffed. “What emotions?”
Idris glared; he knew what she meant. “She’s marrying him whether she likes it or not."
Idris clenched her jaw so hard the muscles popped. Every instinct in her body screamed to fight back, to protect Danni from being used as a political pawn, but she refused to disrespect the Chairman. Regardless of her own beliefs, his word was the law, literally.
"I hear you," Idris replied quietly. She paused, swallowing the lump in her throat. "Who... who is she supposed to be marrying?"
The Chairman didn't say the name out loud. He simply raised his head and gave Idris a telling look.
The moment the realization hit her, Idris’s eyes got wide, practically bugging out of her head. The blood in her veins turned to liquid fire.
"Not him," Idris breathed. “You couldn’t find anyone else?”
The Chairman folded the bloody napkin, stowing it away. He looked back up at Idris.
"Sister, you and I both know how much our tribe needs a Queen. She’s going on thirty-three. We’ve given her time, and it has run out. You tell her to come see me the second her mission is complete," the Chairman commanded. "It’s time. The agreement has already been made."
Idris’s very first thought wasn't about the alliance or the tribe’s future.
Her first thought was a terrifying certainty: the second Danni found out about this, she was going to put a bullet directly through that man’s skull before they made it to the altar.
It was going to be a bloodbath bound to happen.
She hoped the arrogant prince had gotten better over the years.