Chapter Thirty-Two #2
These two and their endless relationship drama. I couldn’t care less. “Has the villa ever been attacked before?”
“Never.” She shakes her head in emphasis. “We didn’t even have a plan for this. It’s…a first.” She rests her head against the column and looks up, eyes distant. “I didn’t even know we were at war.”
To fail to prepare is to prepare to fail. At the very least, there should be panic rooms.
My phone rings. I dig it from the waistband of my sleep shorts and answer, “Jenkins.”
“You were right, Raya.” His voice has leveled out now, clear of strained anxiety. “We’ve got the situation under control. The attackers outside retreated, and the ones inside are being neutralized.”
“Thanks for the update.” I straighten up from the floor. “Any luck reaching the bosses?”
“Negative. Still trying.”
“Okay.” I hang up and turn to Tazi. “One of the girls upstairs caught shrapnel. Get her help. I’m going to take a peek outside.”
She nods, weakly but with understanding.
The deceptively peaceful quiet of dawn greets me as I step out the front doors, a lie told in soft light.
The sky is just starting to brighten, the sun yawning over the horizon.
From here, at the top steps of the Pink House, it appears as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
Just another whispering dawn at Mirabella Villa.
I jog down the steps and hop into a golf cart. And it’s only once I’m on the move do the signs start to show. Shattered glass, bullet holes, shell casings, golf carts whipping by, Uppermen running about.
Quiet chaos.
Near the garden park across from Diner Hall, a cluster of Uppers surrounds four men on their knees. A fifth lies slumped on the ground, lifeless.
I drive up and hop out.
Sanders, the head of the Uppermen, glances back and scowls when he sees me. “Go back inside, Ray Ray.”
Ignoring him, I walk right up into their midst and take in the captured men, all in black tactical gear, unmasked and stone-faced. Defeat and defiance in their tightened jaws.
Guns pointed at their heads with growls and threats, the Uppers are trying their damnedest to shake a name out of them. But these are obviously trained professionals, not your average street soldiers. And pros don’t fold for amateurs. Ego, pride, experience, allegiance…it all runs too deep.
I’m proven right when one of the men suddenly starts foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling back. Until he slumps to the side, dead.
“Fuck’s sake,” Sanders mutters.
“Cyanide,” I say under my breath.
Seriously, people still do this?
And why would these men rather die than give up whoever sent them? This is clearly a paid job.
Assessing the remaining three, I search for the weak link. The one most likely to crack, not because he’s afraid to die, but because he has something he’s afraid to lose.
And…there he is. The one on the right. He’s all hard-faced bravado, but there’s a shadow of rueful sorrow in the set of his jaw, in the slight downturn in his mouth, a squint of regret in his deep-set eyes. Signs of a man who’ll be leaving something behind and is struggling to make peace with it.
Tattoos peek out from the neckline of his shirt.
“Cut their shirts off,” I say.
“Cut their—What?” Sanders snaps at me. “Yo, go the fuck back inside!”
From the corner of my eye, I catch two Uppers whispering as they side-eye me.
Yeah, I’ve been getting the side-eye treatment ever since Lorenzo busted into Brioso Hubb last week.
Nope, I’m not one of the boys anymore. But I’m also too close to the bosses to disrespect.
So instead, they side-eye, whisper, and keep their distance.
And while their doing that, the man in the middle starts frothing at the mouth. In seconds, he’s slumped dead.
Oh, for Pete’s sake.
In one swift move, I swipe Sander’s knife from its holster on his belt, stride over to my target, and slash through his thermal shirt, then rip it clean down the front and off his arms, exposing inked skin and tense muscle.
“Yo, what the—”
“Leave her,” one of the Uppers mutters behind me. “Let Lorenzo deal with her. Not our problem.”
Damn right.
Blocking out the idiots, I focus on the man in front of me. His chest and left arm are covered in tattoos, but two things stand out.
One is an emblem I’ve seen before. For an Armenian mercenary agency.
“You’re Blue Crows,” I state, slipping into a soft, ambiguous accent. Just enough to knock him off-balance. “Which means this isn’t personal. You’re not here out of loyalty or a cause. This is just another job. A paycheck. Yes?”
I crouch in front of him, meeting him eye to eye.
“Look, I get it. The agency has a reputation to uphold. Protect the client’s trust at all costs, never talk, death before disclosure, yada yada.
But be honest, do you think a mere paycheck is worth…
” I gesture with the knife toward the two corpses beside him.
“…that? A bit extreme, don’t you think? If it’s not for your country or your blood, then is it ever really cyanide serious? ”
I rest the tip of the blade on the second notable thing inked into his skin, cleverly hidden among the twines of barbed wire and tribal swirls tattooed across his chest. A small heart with the name Zareh etched inside.
Zareh could be anyone, dead or alive. But based on the freshness of the ink, I’m taking a gander that it’s his kid. No older than three, four tops.
“Speaking of family…” I press the knife into the heart, not enough to pierce, but enough to drive the point home. “Is little Zareh worth it?”
His body tenses, silent panic creeping into the tight crinkles around his eyes. And I know I’ve hit the mark.
“We know where Blue Crows is hidden,” I murmur. “That fake travel agency right off Boardwalk Plaza…the second office underground…” I lift a brow, letting the silence bite. “If we know where to find your team, how long do you think it’ll take us to find little Zareh?”
His composure snaps. “YOU FUCKING BITCH!” he explodes in my face, spittle flying, accent thick and trembling. “Leave my son out of this!”
Bingo.
“Of course, of course.” I raise both hands placatively. “Just tell us who hired you, and we will.”
Clenching his jaw, the man looks to his remaining colleague, who exhales, hangs his head, and mutters in resigned defeat, “This bitch is a vile cunt for threatening a kid, but…she’s right. Not worth it. Do it for Z.”
The first man grinds his teeth and pins me with a glare that promises a brutal murder if he weren’t restrained. Once he’s made his threat clear through sheer eye contact, he begrudgingly mutters through gritted teeth, “Hernandez. We were hired by Jose Hernandez.”
Wait, what? That can’t be right. “You sure about that?”
His upper lip curls in a furious snarl. “Literally on my son’s fucking life.”
Fair enough.
With a nod, I straighten and turn to the Uppers, all wearing matching expressions of confusion. Two quick strides and I’m back in front of Sanders, sliding his knife neatly into its sheath on his hip.
Then, I pat his shoulder and walk off. “I’ll go back inside now. You’re welcome.”
This will undoubtedly bite me in the ass later, but those untrained fools were never going to get a name out of those men.
“Hey, Ray Ray, wait!” Sanders calls after me as I jump into the cart. “What should we—?”
I peel off and head northwest, straight to Lions House.
The northwest side of the villa is the most fortified, so I’m not surprised to find it untouched by this morning’s chaos. Given that the attackers breached from the southeast, it would’ve taken them a great deal of effort to fight this far west.
Not that I was worried about Cora. This house has two panic rooms, and she’s smart enough to lock herself into one at the first crack of gunfire. When the doorbell goes unanswered after a few rings, I’m proven right. She’s safe.
Lowering down on the front steps, I slip my phone from the waistband of my shorts and dial Stefano, then Gio, then Lorenzo, then Oscar.
Every call goes unanswered.
I’m not a worrier. Panic isn’t my thing. Calm comes naturally to me no matter how chaotic the storm. It’s my superpower. My edge. It’s what makes me effective. Gets me results.
Mom says I’m a cyborg. Maybe. But I do feel things. Just not often, and never when I should. It’s random, selective. No warning, no rhythm or rhyme. My body decides, and I become a hostage to it.
That’s how I ended up here in the first place.
But now, for the first time in…maybe ever, a pang of something foreign creeps in.
Worry.
My three kings. All unreachable. All radio silent while their kingdom’s under attack. And I don’t like it. Not one damn bit.
I rub behind my ear. “Far from computer. Give me something. Where are they?”
A few short minutes later, a spam SMS pings through:
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A tap on the link takes me to Black Gold’s full security grid. Dozens of tiny camera feeds flicker to life. But only the box in the bottom left shows movement. I tap to expand it.
Ah, there they are. Stefano and Gio.
A warm rush hits my chest and surrounds my heart. Is this what relief from worry feels like?
Also in the frame are Oscar, Luca, and two of their private on-call doctors. There’s blood and bandages. Needles moving through skin. IVs and injections. But they’re upright and breathing. Alive. That’s all that matters.
They’re alive.
“Thanks, Wren.”