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“We have maybe thirty seconds,” Raze warned.

We heard the sound of boots as men moved along both exterior walls, splitting toward the compromised openings.

“They’re trying to divide us,” Marcello shouted, just as the rear door burst inward.

The first attacker entered behind a reinforced shield. I fired twice. Both rounds struck the metal and flattened. The man behind him pushed forward, using the shield to open the room for those waiting outside.

Raze moved left and fired through the narrow gap beside the frame. Someone fell in the garden, but the shield kept advancing.

I waited until the man crossed the threshold. Then I stepped inside the reach of his weapon. The muzzle of his rifle struck my shoulder as I seized the top of the shield and drove it sideways into the wall.

The attacker lost his balance. I slammed my forearm across his throat and forced him backward. His rifle discharged into the ceiling. The muzzle flash lit his face. He was young and clean-shaven. And terrified when he understood how close I was.

He reached for the knife at his belt. I caught his wrist, twisted until the joint broke and drove the blade he had drawn into his stomach. His body convulsed against me. Hot blood ran over my hand.

For one suspended moment, the kitchen disappeared. I stood in another room, in another life, while men whispered the name they had given me because death followed wherever my father sent me.

The Saint.

The priest recoiled somewhere inside me. The Saint tightened his grip and pushed the knife deeper until the attacker stopped moving. I let the body fall.

Another man rushed through the doorway. He saw his companion on the floor and hesitated. It was all the time I needed. I caught the front of his tactical vest and dragged him inside before he could fire. His weapon struck the island and slid away.

He swung at me. I took the blow across the mouth, tasted blood and drove my fist into his throat. He staggered. I caught the back of his head and slammed his face into the stone counter. Once. Bone cracked. Twice. Blood spread across the marble. He dropped to his knees, choking through what remained of his nose. I took his pistol from the floor and shot him through the back of the skull.

Silence held for half a second. Marcello looked at the bodies. Then at me. Recognition moved through his face. Memory.

Gunfire erupted near the front staircase. Archie’s voice tore through the house.

“Three inside. West hall.”

Raze turned toward the corridor.

“Demi, go.”

I left Marcello behind the island and ran.

36

DEMITRI

The red emergency lights flashed beneath my feet as I crossed the hall. A body lay near the bottom of the staircase, the man’s neck bent at an angle no living body could survive.

Another attacker was pinned against the wall by Archie’s forearm. Archie drove the muzzle of his pistol beneath the man’s chin.

“How many more of you are there?”

The attacker spat blood into his face. Archie pulled the trigger. The back of the man’s head struck the wall before his body slid to the ground.

A third attacker appeared from the west passage. I raised my weapon. Archie reached him first. He struck the rifle aside and drove the man into the banister hard enough to crack the wood. The attacker reached for a blade.

Archie trapped his arm, broke the elbow across the railing and tore the knife from his fingers. The scream barely escaped before Archie drove the blade into his stomach. He didn't stop after the first strike. He stabbed the man again, then forced the blade upward beneath his ribs until the attacker collapsed against him.

Archie held him there. “You messed with the wrong family today.” He ripped the knife free and let the body fall. Blood covered his hands, his shirt and one side of his face.

His eyes lifted toward the staircase. Tone and the children were above us. Whatever man had once stood outside the Cavalho bloodline was gone. Archie had married into the family, fought beside it and built his life inside it. Now someone had brought guns beneath the rooms where his wife and children slept. He looked more Cavalho than any man born with the name.

Archie turned back to us.