Chapter Fourteen
Zahra
Devil was quiet as he helped redo the stitch in my shoulder. His form was tense, his jaw clenched, and his brows were drawn down in a frown.
It was clear that he was upset with the state I had returned in. Yet another promise to him broken.
“I’m okay, you know,” I told him as he cut the thread, proceeding to get out new bandages. “Everything that happened tonight happened because I let it. You know that, right?”
He didn’t look at me or respond as he unwrapped the bandage.
I sighed, placing my palm on his thigh. “Hey.”
He paused.
“What is it? Talk to me,” I said quietly, trying to catch his gaze until he succumbed and looked at me.
“He could have killed you,” he said. “I can’t believe I trusted him with you—”
“I’m fine—”
“No, you’re not. You have bruises on your wrists. You tore open your wound. He lied. And I—” He stopped, letting out a shaky breath.
It was quiet for almost a minute until I broke it.
“You’re angry at yourself,” I pointed out.
“That you believed him when he said he wouldn’t hurt me.
” I wondered if I should add or keep the next part to myself.
But he looked like he needed to talk to someone, and what was the point in hiding the fact that I knew they were related?
“You’re angry that you believed him despite how it turned out the last time. How he abandoned you.”
Devil flinched, his eyes widening in shock as he watched me. “How did you—”
“I figured it out, and he confirmed it for me.”
He blinked at me. “He—he told you we were related?”
“More like I hinted it, and he didn’t deny, just … leaned into it.”
His shoulder relaxed a bit. “Now I know what you meant by leverage.” He eyed me. “You plan to hold me at gunpoint demanding all the money we stole from him?”
My smile was small. “If that’s what you want, we can go for it.”
He shook his head, looking away. “Like he would even care,” he muttered under his breath.
“Oh, trust me, he would. Everyone thinks Elio Marino is incapable of loving anyone just because they don’t know you exist, but I can assure you, if there’s anything that man loves more than power and being a fucking psychopath and killer, it’s you. You come first to him, above all else.”
“And you know that, how?”
“I saw it.”
“You saw wrong. When we spoke the other day, he washed his hands clean of me. He told me he would kill me. He said some fucked-up shit that keeps playing in my head nonstop, and I—I want to hate him. I want nothing more than to see him dead for everything he’s done, to me, to his family, to innocent people.
I want to see him suffer, but at the same time, I don’t.
” He swallowed. “And I don’t know if that makes me every bit as bad as he is. ”
“No.” I scooted closer to him, my fingers diving into his hair as I massaged gently. “You’re not a bad person. We can’t choose our family, Devil. We can’t choose who we love, and we shouldn’t hate ourselves for it.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he confessed. “Despite everything he’s done … I still—I still want a relationship with him. Believe it or not, that man leading this whole thing used to be the greatest person I knew. He was … he was good.”
“That’s very hard to believe.”
He chuckled. “I know. When I look at him now, I just—I see a stranger; I see someone else. The person I know is long since dead, and this is just a very wicked ghost of him. The day we talked, I thought I saw a flicker of what he used to be, but I’m not sure after tonight.”
“But you still want to try?” I asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Not for this version of him. For the one I remember as a kid. The one who would protect me and tell me how loved I was, the one who I shared dreams with. The one who hid me because his fucking dad wanted me dead. Elio, he’s—God, he’s been through so much.
I don’t even know if he remembers now that he’s in charge of … everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was all over the place. Being groomed to become like Ricardo, caring for me, his mother, and his siblings. Sometimes he’d come to me, beaten and bruised; he never told me how he got them, but I knew they were from his father.
He never liked to talk about it and the things he’d done.
” Devil looked far away as he spoke. “I remember how sunken his eyes always were, dark and tired like—like he never slept.
“One day I asked him why he always looked like a zombie, and he said he was a zombie because zombies didn’t sleep. I remember laughing because I didn’t really understand. He would smile at me, but it never really did reach his eyes, almost like—it took everything in him to move that muscle.
“One night, he rushed in, gave me food, and apologized because he had to leave. He said his mother had been sick. It was the first time he’d been honest about literally anything that had to do with his family. He always talked about them, but only the good parts.
“The next day when he came by, I asked him if his mother had a cold or the flu, and he said he wished that were the case.
He looked sad and defeated. I hugged him because he looked like he needed it.
And then he cried. He cried so hard and held me like I was the only thing keeping him together.
Then he fell asleep for hours. I thought he was dead. He looked so … different, peaceful.
“That was the first time I ever saw him cry, and it was also the last. At that moment, I badly wanted to protect him from what made him cry. I hated it. The tears. It hurt me. I wished he never went back to his father. I hoped he would stay with me because—each time he went out and came back … something was always missing. With each visit, something died. At first, it was his smile, then his affection, and then—basically everything.”
Devil let out a breath, looking at me again. “I know it might not be worth it, but I want to try. For that boy who cried as I held him, the one who needed nothing but company and good sleep.” He breathed out a small laugh.
“Well fuck,” I said.
“What?”
“I can’t kill him now.”
He flicked my forehead, and I scrunched up my nose.
“Like you could hurt a fly,” he said, proceeding to finish bandaging my shoulder.
A comfortable silence fell between us until I broke it. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s still there. The brother you once knew.”
“How are you sure?”
“As I said, I saw it.”
It was slow, but a smile broke out on his lips as he resumed his task, looking a lot more relieved than he had minutes before.
It had been two weeks since the casino incident, and our security had doubled since then. I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop, for actions to be taken about the casino stunt we pulled, but they had surprisingly left us alone.
I joined the rest of them in the living room. Upper had a whiteboard already littered with information. A thin drumstick was in his left hand, and I didn’t even want to ask how he got it.
“Lovely of you to finally grace us with your presence,” Upper said, looking away as he stood beside the board.
At the same time, I found a space next to Devil, opposite Milk, whose eyes scanned the board as if trying to take it all into memory, and Dog, who divided his attention between Upper and the laptop in front of him.
Our comms were splayed out beside the laptop while he worked on them.
“All right, so we move tomorrow, and the plan is quite simple as we have devised over the past couple of days,” Upper said, pointing at a space in the whiteboard, a miniature van drawing. “This is Dog.”
“The guy in the chair this time,” he muttered, not looking up.
“Yes, he’ll be our eyes and ears, the mission’s omniscient body. The van contains three computers showing live feeds from all corners of Eden.”
I nodded in agreement.
Upper continued. “Devil and I installed cameras in all wings of the building the other day, tracking devices on anything that could be lifted and carried away, and also chips that can enable us to listen in on conversations that might aid us, or deliver important information we might need.”
“Are Angelo’s people tracking our activities? Is there a chance to snag up some info for ourselves?” Milk asked.
“They’re tracking everything; Dog might be our guy in the chair, but a good number of guys in chairs are backing him up. This is important to them,” Upper said.
“Way forward,” I said.
Upper pointed to the club entrance, at two stick drawings with spaghetti hair. “This is Milk and Zahra. Your entry is through the front. We already obtained VIP tickets so the bouncer will swipe you in without questions or the unnecessary ID checking.”
“How did we get VIP tickets?” I asked.
“Milk has a brother who’s a new bartender in the bar. He’s popular, handsome, and can sneak in to collect VIP tickets. Illegally.”
“And this brother of mine is?” Milk asked.
Upper pointed his drumstick at the drawing of what looked like a table, with a stick person behind it holding a glass.
“Devil is your brother; although he won’t be there when you and Zahra walk in, he’ll be opening the kitchen vent for me, and you’ll have another bartender tending to you.
He’s normal people. I think Patrick was his name, if I’m correct.
A man-whore for boobs, easily distracted.
He’s eyed four women who have been later called to join Dion, so the odds are in our favor there. ”
“And what’s that?” Devil pointed to the two stick figures in a corner, entering another room.
“That’s you and me; I’m leaving the kitchen after drinking too much and stealing food.
I’m on the verge of throwing up and causing a small scene, but you’re dragging me out through the back, where people think you’re going to throw me into a dumpster or something, and if my timing is right, it would be about the same time Dion is getting too distracted by Milk’s beauty and charm to notice the unusual chaos. ”
“So, there’s a back door around the back door?” Dog asked.
“Yes.” Upper’s drumstick trailed from his and Devil’s stick figures to a line trailing up what looked like stairs.
“Inside the back room, there are two doors, one leading outside the club and the other leading upstairs to the VIP rooms. It’s used as a quick escape route for these men in case there’s an attack and they can’t leave through the elevators. ”
“Got it,” Dog said.
“So, Devil and I will go up these stairs quietly. Dion bought the whole rooms, and most of his boys are stationed there.”
“How do you get past them,” I asked.
“Our guy in the chair.” His stick went back to the van.
“There will be six guards stationed in front of each door; we would need to get rid of them to enter their tech room. So, our guy in the chair is to hack their comm devices and tell them that a stranger is coming up the elevator unauthorized; it’s enough to raise their guard and divert their attention to the threat they can see; meanwhile, the coast is clear.
“Devil waits for me while I find the janitor’s closet, get into a vent, and head straight to the tech room with a mask to cover my nose from the fogless sleeping gas, which lasts about thirty minutes, so we’re going to have to be quick if we don’t want to be seen.
When the guards are out like a light, I enter the room and unlock the door for Devil, who closes it behind him, and it’s like nothing ever changed. ”
“And in a situation where we exceed thirty minutes?” Devil asked.
“You knock them out before they can open their eyes and realize what’s happening.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Dog said.
“So,” I said, “back to the stranger in the elevator, that’s me, right?”
“Adequate,” Upper said, pointing the drumstick to what looked like an elevator with six stick figures pointing guns at it.
“They’re going to see a cute, freckled face, confused woman who looks terrified to see six guns pointed at her.
Your name will be Fernanda Valez; she was a guest there before Dion.
Your excuse, you wanted to retrieve a small locket you thought you lost weeks ago, and you used the opportunity since you were back in town to visit where you stayed last, or some shit lie, and then you’re probably going to stall by making them uncomfortable. You’re very good with that.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Great,” Upper said, “back to Milk and Dion. Milk, you’re an essential part of this whole thing.
Dion always carries his phone with him, and his phone holds all his passwords and time counts for access to the Pablos’ server wall for classified documents, business passes, illegal dealings, and everything the Marinos need.
We can’t exactly ask him to give us time access, so you’ll be given a device; the moment you get close to him, the device automatically gives me access to their servers.
You might need to keep talking to him until we get all we need. ”
“Doable,” she said.
“Once all that is set, and Devil and I get what we need, we communicate through our comms. Zahra leaves Dion’s floor, Milk keeps talking to Dion for maybe thirty minutes tops, Devil goes back to bartending, I go to Dog at the van, and Zahra goes back to clubbing. We circle back here at ten.”
“Okay,” I said, dissecting everything in my head, looking for flaws and mistakes. “Milk and I walk in together, right? How is a sophisticated guest walking in with a bartender’s sister?”
“You walk in as friends, all giggling and girly stuff. Devil will resume work with a duffel bag holding a change of clothes for himself, except there’s one for you too.
The duffel bag will be dropped in the third stall of the bathroom; the moment Milk is gone, you head there, change, and get into character. ”
“Change from … my usual self or…”
Milk sat up. “Not your usual self; we’re going as Valentina and Isabella.”
“Who the fuck are they?” I asked.
Milk smirked. “My personally created disguises.”
I sighed. “I do not like the sound of that.”