Page 60 of Maximum Bet

“Leo?” Lucas answers on the second ring. “What’s up?”

“We need coverage at Vincent’s house now!” Leo barks. “The girls are in danger; Kozlova and Perez are planning an attack on the baby shower.”

“Holy fuck!” Rustling sounds in the background on Lucas’s side. “When? Where are they coming from? How many?”

“We don’t know,” Leo says. “But we need to prepare immediately.”

“I’m contacting our crew now.” Lucas pauses. “I just sent out a mass text for backup. I’ll call the front gate and get them to send out a warning.”

“Get more guys over there immediately,” Leo barks.

“Trust me,” Lucas snaps. “I’m fucking on it.”

The line goes dead, and I take a deep breath.

I have to stay level-headed. Our enemies want panic. They want chaos.

They want . . . the upper hand . . .

“I have an idea.” The room comes to a standstill. “All we can do from here is wait for word on our counter defense. But what if we go on offense? Create a distraction that pulls Perez and Kozlova away from efficiently running their attack?”

Nico looks over in intrigue. “Like what?”

“Well, I’m always a fan of arson,” I say with a smirk.

Dropping his head, Leo mutters an exasperated, “Oh, God.”

“Other than the condo, there is only one other location we know they’re using in San Juan.”

“The airport,” Nico says.

“The airport,” I echo.

“So, what?” Leo leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, while he considers my idea. “You want to burn the airport to the ground?”

“Not the whole thing.” I scoff. “Just their hangar. Destroying their jets might cause a bit of chaos, don’t you think?”

The four of us share devious glances before Marco steps up and says, “Let’s do this shit.”

We keep our three soldiers on watch for movement from Perez and Kozlova, while the rest of us load into the SUV Leo rented and head toward the airport. Our plan takes shape aswe drive. After one stop at a locally owned hardware store, where we pick up a few hundred dollars’ worth of suspicious items, we pull onto a side road and finalize our plans.

“Dominic and Marco will take cover in the back of the car,” Leo recaps. “The supplies, along with them, will remain hidden under what looks like a stack of cardboard boxes.”

“Marco, you better be able to squeeze your fat ass into that space, or I swear to God . . .” I snip, eyeing my brother’s bulky frame.

“Hey, none of this is fat,” he argues. “It’s pure muscle.” He follows his brag with a flex to punctuate his point. I roll my eyes in return.

“The airport staff and guards shouldn’t recognize Nico. As of now, Kozlova and Perez don’t know that the family is working closely together. Nico will enter the airport under the guise of being a businessman interested in using one of the smaller hangars for his single-engine aircraft. Nico, how’s the research going?”

My cousin grunts as he continues scrolling through an aviation website, trying to learn as much as he can about personal single-engine planes in under an hour.

Leo grimaces. “Just do your best. Play up the novice pilot role. The biggest factor is where you park the car. The best place I can pinpoint is a row of spots in between the air traffic control building and the hangar next to the one Kozlova and Perez are using.”

He flips his iPad to show us a map. Nico scours it before nodding and returning to his phone.

“Dominic and Marco, from what I can tell, there isn’t good security camera coverage behind the buildings, so you should be okay climbing out of the car and staying on a path between the hangars and the fence. You’ll have to work fast; light as manyspots against the wall as you can and then get the hell out of there without being seen.”

“Should I move the car closer to them?” Nico asks, finally giving up on his quest for aviation-based knowledge.