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“I said at least,” Ryder snaps back, then sighs. “What’s the call, boss? Cut bait and bail, or storm in like Vikings?”
“When we’re outmanned, outgunned, and out of our fucking minds, there’s only one answer,” I reply.
“Viking shit!” they all roar in unison, their voices echoing through my earpiece. The high-pitched noise is so intense, I’m pretty sure my eardrum has exploded. Leaving me high on adrenaline and completely deaf in my left ear.
I adjust my bluetooth, and Bruno’s voice cuts through the chaos, clear and urgent. “Incoming. A heavy. Eighteen-wheeler. Two of them.”
He didn’t even need to say a word. The cries of women reach us, sharp and desperate. The sound is a cattle prod to my rage.
“Calm, boy. Ye must stay calm.”
Oh, good. The Scotsman is back with his customary pep talk.
The sad truth is, I don’t even want him gone. But how about a little less zen and a lot more blinding, psychotic fury, okay?
“Ready to storm in, boss?” Ryder’s voice crackles through the earpiece, his impatience evident even in the static.
Then it hits me—the warning from the Scotsman. The trucks. The reason we can hear the women.
I rush a command. “Stand Down.” From the corner of my eye, I catch Dante throwing his hands up, his expression screaming that I’ve lost my mind.
Calmly, I explain. “Those trucks are surrounded by a thin sheet of metal. If we charge in, guns blazing like a bunch of trigger-happy cowboys, stray bullets will rip through those trucks like pins through a voodoo doll.”
Tension racks through Blaze’s words, urgent and raw. “We can’t wait for them to fall asleep because, one, they never do, and two, we’d be standing by, watching women get raped and tortured for hours. No one wants that. Least of all you, boss.”
It only takes a heartbeat for me to decide when I see Jimmy Luciano directing the trucks toward a second warehouse. My gaze drops to my feet, where two bags brim with enough plastique to tunnel to the center of the Earth.
“Two of you, take the trucks. Now. You’ve got a minute to kill the drivers and get those trucks out of here. Dante and I will stay back with the rest, draw their fire, and turn Andre’s little hideaway into a three-mile dumpster fire.”
“But sir?—”
“I said go!”
We move with the deadly grace of seasoned operatives—a necessity when you’re carrying bags of volatile explosives, where one wrong move could end us all.
Sixty seconds. That’s all it takes for us to lace their perimeter with plastique like it’s lethal Christmas garland. Then, all hell breaks loose. A series of explosions go off, lighting up the night with deafening roars and blinding flashes.
My men have managed to do as I commanded, with the trucks down the road and far enough to be safe—at least, that’s the hope.
An amateur might think these explosives could finish the job.
But experience has taught us that all the C-4 and Molotov cocktails in the world never kill all the roaches. There’s always a few that scuttle away, hiding in the shadows, waiting to crawl back out and wreak havoc at the worst possible time.
Any second now, those idiots will start shooting blindly into the darkness, riddling the air with semi-automatic fire. Just as we planned, each of us carves out our territory, picking off Andre’s men one by one as we revel in the bloodbath as if we’re vampires.
In the midst of the chaos, I spot him—Jimmy Luciano. Panic-stricken, stumbling over his own feet, running for his miserable life.
My vision narrows, every ounce of my focus locking onto him. In that moment, nothing else matters.
In three giant leaps, I’ve got him by the collar. “If you’re alive, Jimmy, then Kennedy has no debt,” I spit, dragging him through the blaze, ready to present him like a pig on a spit to Bella.
His voice is garbled, probably because I’ve got him by the neck. “You’re making a mistake,” he chokes out. They all say that. But it’s the next words that make me pause. “I don’t know Jimmy.”
I turn, and Luciano’s face is gone, replaced by an equally vile shell of a human, but not him. Panic sets in, twisting my gut. “Please,” he begs, desperation dripping from his voice. “Let me go, and I’ll give you anything you want. You like girls? I’ve got a stash of them.”
My blood runs cold as I look up at the building, flames licking at its walls. “Where?” I demand, my voice shaking with urgency.
“There’s a locker inside,” he stammers, eyes wide with fear.
