60. Chapter 60
Nico
Cruz and I took turns rotating between pacing like caged lions and sitting with our heads in our hands on the couch, pissed but helpless to do anything at all. Oliver scoured through hundreds of deleted and otherwise useless files until finally motioning us over.
“I think I have something,” Oliver said, turning his screen toward me and hitting play.
I couldn’t look away, but my vision blurred with fury.
It was all there. My father sending the guards away, and then the brutal interrogation and torture of my mother.
My stomach clenched as I was crushed under the weight of the truth.
It went on for hours. I didn’t need to see the rest. I knew the outcome.
My father murdered my mother. He was a jealous fool, but he’d gone too far this time.
My fist slammed through the plaster wall, and Cruz grabbed me around the chest, pinning my arms to my sides.
“Get off me,” I snarled. Every shred of my being was charging into a rampage. There was nothing that would stand in my way.
Oliver’s face materialized in front of me. “Nico, we will get revenge, but wasting energy on a wall isn’t going to help. There are guards everywhere. You gotta chill for just a second.”
I dragged breath through my nose, filling my aching lungs and concentrated on the rise and fall of my chest. He was right. I had to get a hold of myself. There was too much at stake to make myself a target for my father’s soldiers.
The thundering of footsteps and slamming doors came from the back entrance to our suite, and Dom, Roman, and Luca clattered into the room, head to toe dressed in riot gear and machine guns. “You called?”
I shrugged off Cruz, adjusted my tie, and smoothed down my blazer. “Yeah, I hope you brought enough for all of us.”
“Of course we did.” Luca stepped out from behind my slightly taller brothers, carrying extra body armor and a heavy backpack.
I looked at him, really looked. His skin and hair were lighter than the others, and he had blue eyes. Completely unlike the green of our father’s or the soft brown that our mother had. They looked like Rosa’s eyes.
That didn’t matter right now. He would always be my brother, regardless of who his sperm donor was. I grabbed the Kevlar from him and handed one to each of my packmates.
“Oliver, show them,” I said, shucking my jacket and pulling on the bulletproof vest.
Oliver glanced around, hesitant. “Are you sure? I mean… It’s uh… a lot.”
I pulled the straps tight across my chest. “Would you have believed it unless you saw it?”
“I don’t fucking know. But you asked for it.” Oliver set the laptop on the coffee table and queued up the relevant clips. “Don’t shoot the messenger. AND don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Cruz and Oliver suited up while my brothers watched the screen. Luca went white, then green. Dom and Rome got quiet. It was never good for anyone when the twins went quiet.
Dom looked up from the laptop feeds. “I’ve seen enough. When do we kill him?”
There was no love lost between us and our father. He’d been more like a boss than a parent. Our mother, on the other hand, was everything.
“Soon,” I said as I reached for one of the AKs leaning up against the wall. A muffled pop interrupted the somber quiet. “Oliver.”
He pulled out his phone, letting my brothers finish scrolling through the files on the laptop. Cruz moved to the door with his gun out and ready.
Oliver opened the camera app, and his mouth dropped open in an O. “Uh, we have company.” He turned his screen toward me as my right shoulder began to ache.
Rosa was in my father’s office, a dead guard on the floor, and a decapitated head on his desk. My father had her in a chokehold with her arm twisted behind her back.
Fury beat against sheer force of iron will. We had to be smart about this. With a minimum of twenty guards on the grounds, as much as I wanted to, rushing through the halls would only get us killed.
“I need you watching our backs. He has our omega,” I said to my brothers, the words slipping out in a barely restrained, animalistic growl, unlike anything I’d made before.
Wrath seeped from my pores as I locked down the feral rush of rage that was flooding my senses. How dare he touch Rosa?
Cruz and Oliver exchanged worried looks, but I took a deep breath, centering myself, and then turned toward my brothers.
“You know the grounds better than anyone. We’re outnumbered and outgunned.
I need you to deal with the perimeter guards and any in the barracks that are loyal to our father.
If we cut off backup before they figure out what’s happening, we have a shot. Keep it quiet.”
Dom glared at me. “Do you always have to take the fun out of it?”
“No grenades.” I shook my head. He was going to get us killed someday.
“Whatever you say, boss.” Dom tipped his chin toward the back, and my three brothers headed out.
Before the door closed behind them, Luca’s voice carried through the hall. “Is no one gonna mention the head? No? Okay, then.”
How long they’d stay quiet was anyone’s guess. They didn’t have the best track record at stealth. Dom liked explosives too much for his own good.
Without warning, Oliver walked to the front entrance of the suite and popped his head out. “Hey, meathead. Do you know anything about the plumbing? The toilet’s overflowing. I think something’s stuck. I could use a hand.”
A mumbled curse came from the guard outside, who followed Oliver in. As soon as the door shut, Cruz stepped out from behind it, cracking the alpha in the temple with the butt of his rifle. The oblivious man dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Oliver held his finger up. “One.”
Bloodthirsty little shit.
Cruz dragged the unconscious guard into the bathroom and handcuffed him to the toilet.
“How many more are outside?” I asked, too angry to laugh despite the humor.
“Three in this hall,” Oliver replied.
The math wasn’t on our side, considering there were at least three more patrolling the house, if we account for the dead guy on the office floor. Eight of my father’s elite alphas against the three of us? I’d put my money on my pack any day, but it wouldn’t be easy.
“Can you get one more in here alone?”
He shrugged his shoulders and popped his head outside again. “Hey, you. Meathead asked if you could come help him. I’m not strong enough, I guess.”
I snorted. Who needed alpha strength when you had the audacity?
Sure enough, another guard waltzed right through the door, clueless as a lamb, taking a gun to the face as Cruz swung his rifle like a baseball bat. He collapsed in a heap, just like the last.
I ripped open the backpack and tossed Cruz an extra set of handcuffs.
“Lock them up in the bathroom together.” I said, sorting through the rest of the contents of the bag my brothers had brought.
Cruz grunted his agreement and dragged the second soldier into the back of the suite.
Oliver knelt beside me. “It’s okay to be upset, Nico. We’ll get Rosa back, and we’ll get vengeance for your mom.”
“I can’t right now, Oliver.” It came out more harshly than I’d intended, but if I let myself feel even a fraction of the rage burning inside me, I wouldn’t be able to save Rosa. That was my focus.
There wasn’t time to feel. All that mattered was her.