Page 85 of Deceitful Oath

We troop into the dark building and up the stairs to Lux’s unit. The door is thrown wide open, but I don’t take any chances. I pull my gun out and slink into the place, checking it thoroughly.

When I’m satisfied it’s empty, we arrange ourselves on random surfaces and wait. Time crawls by painfully slowly, but the guys finally start drifting in, one by one.

I stand in the center of the room, trying to pull myself together—to be the leader these men expect me to be.

Honestly, I rarely work well with others. That’s The Wolf side of me, the part that believes I can do it all myself, and better than them at that. But today, I need them. There’s power in numbers.

“Here are the basics,” I say, launching into the abbreviated version of the whole story. As I speak, I watch and listen for any signs of deceit. I mostly trust my men, but after the stunt Vince pulled, that trust is delicately balanced on a tipping point. One small sign of betrayal, and they’re done.

“Hey, boss?” Marco, one of my youngest associates, calls to me once I finish. “You should probably come see this.”

I walk over to the kitchen counter where he’s been sitting. My uncles follow, crowding the small space. A bullet lays on the dirty counter, the tip missing. I pick it up, turning it over in my fingers.

On the bottom, in block letters, are the initials C.M.—the Mancini family’s calling card. It sends a clear message, a warning.

They didn’t use this bullet on her, but they’ll use the next one.

Fury and rage shoot through my veins, but another emotion joins them—one I haven’t felt before in this kind of situation.Fear. I’m terrified of losing her. Lux, my sunshine, my everything.

I slip the bullet into my pocket and clench my fists. “Let’s get to work.”

Enzo sends over the property blueprints of the Mancini compound, and we pore over satellite images. We’re moving fast, thinking on our feet, but time is essential right now. I convince myself that Mancini won’t kill her.

I know he wants me, that’s his end goal, but Vince is a wild card. I have no idea what to expect from him anymore.

Once we have a strategy in place, we file out of Lux’s apartment and hit the road. Mancini’s compound is less than half an hour outside the city but the drive feels twice as long. I’m antsy, my fingers itching to shoot, to kill, my body primed to destroy.

Nothing is going to stop me from getting my girl back.

We bypass the road to the main gate and swing around back to the service entrance. Situated just out of view of the cameras, we leave our cars in the tree line and wait for Enzo’s signal. He’s working on hacking into Mancini’s sophisticated power supply in order to throw the compound into chaos and deactivate the security features.

I tuck my phone between my ear and my shoulder and wait, silent for once, as Enzo works his magic.

I can hear keyboard keys clicking and soft curses on his end, but I give him the space to work. If he can pull this off, I’ll never complain about his methods ever again. My guys double-check their weapons and slide on bulletproof vests as we wait.

For them, this is Christmas Eve and their birthdays rolled into one. The anticipation and the sense of excitement grows. This iswhat they were born for, trained for all their lives, but for me—I just want to grab Lux and get out of there.

I see the lights turn off as soon as Enzo tells me it’s go time.

We file in through the back gate, sticking to the shadows, as Marco sprints to the main house and throws a small firebomb through a window. Glass smashes, the bomb explodes, and chaos ensues. Gunfire joins the cacophony as my guys file in, shooting on sight.

The house is dimly lit by the setting sun trickling in through the large windows and the fire raging downstairs.

I send three of my guys to the basement to search for Lux while Rocco and I take the upstairs. The others are doing crowd control on the first floor or searching the smaller buildings on the property.

We race up the wide, curved staircase, covering each other’s backs. No sign of Vince or Carlo anywhere, but I’m confident we’ll find them.

We split up on the landing, Rocco taking the east wing while I head to the west. I run like a maniac, kicking open doors and screaming Lux’s name. I don’t even know if she’ll be able to hear me over the racket around us.

The sound of gunfire grows as windows explode from the heat of the fire. I send up a silent prayer that we all get out of here alive tonight. If my first-glance calculations are correct, we’ve managed to outnumber the Mancinis, but they have much better knowledge of the property, of course.

I get to the hallway and burst out onto the balcony, surveying the scene below. A bullet whizzes uncomfortably close to my head, and I duck back inside, covering myself. Spinning around, I see Rocco heading back to the landing.Fuck, she’s not here.

I’m about to sprint back to him when something catches my eye. Tucked into a tiny alcove near the balcony is another door. I jiggle the handle but it’s locked. I press my ear againstit, straining to hear anything, wondering if it’s worth checking. They might be keeping her in the pool house or any of the smaller structures on the property.

I motion for Rocco to head downstairs as I check out the door. The second floor seems to be deserted and they need him down there more urgently than I need cover.

“Rafael,” a faint voice calls behind the door. For a second, I wonder if I’m imagining it. The hallway is quickly filling up with smoke and I almost convince myself that I’m hallucinating.