Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 154882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154882 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
He opened the door to check, and Bane dropped him with a single bullet.
Bane blew in, springing into action as three men streamed past the reception desk. Watching my brother fight—as in a true fight to the death, and not sparring or target practice. Getting to witness the real thing was a treat I did not wish on anyone, because that meant they had done something very stupid and gotten in our way.
Bane dropped and swept the first one’s legs. He hit the floor, Bane ended him with the stab to the chest, vaulted over his body, and shot the second as he landed on his feet. Spinning on his heels, he buried a blade longer and bigger than the ones I carried in the final man’s thighs and punched his jaw as he screamed. He collapsed and Bane ripped his knife free, letting the severed femoral artery do the rest.
Possibly it was a son’s drive to best his father. Whatever drove Bane to train so hard over the years, it honed him into a fighter deadly with or without a weapon in his hands. Bane fought with a knife, gun, grenade, club, and his fists—once, all at the same time.
I closed over my hilt, pain throbbing the right side of my back. Not now! Not when Kenzie and Laurel need me.
Listening, Bane peered down a dark hallway that branched off to two others. He gestured for us to move. We crept down the corridor, my knife up and at the—
“Agh!” A figure materialized out of the gloom, muzzle aimed at my skull. Silver glinted above his head.
He choked, gun clattering at his feet as his hands flew to the metal biting his neck. Liam was a silent, ruthless shadow crisscrossing the garrote and pulling harder, harder, harder. He fell to his knees and Liam let him go the rest of the way—flopping over dead.
“There’s nothing that way,” Liam said. “They must be in the room down that hall.”
“It’s unlikely there’s a bomb,” Bane added. We didn’t let our voices carry. “All these men wouldn’t be hanging around here if shit was about to blow up.”
“Which means there’s something else waiting in that room.”
“Very good,” a deep voice replied. Something hard dug into my back. “How about the four of us go and find out? Don’t even think about it, Alexander. I’ll put a hole in his lung faster than you can—”
A sharp, vicious snap sounded in my ear. The gun was gone, and so was my lingering question of if River was willing to kill. For Mackenzie, he was.
The guard and his broken neck littered the path. River stepped over him without blinking.
“That was the last one,” River said. “They were likely planning to pick a few of us off before we walked through that door. I looked around. There’s a small, blacked-out window but no other way inside. We have to walk in and spring whatever trap is waiting.”
“Then I’m going first.” I pushed through them, striding toward the door and, on the other side, my girls. “If I die, avenge me.”
I kicked the wood off the hinges and blew in. A dozen men formed a semicircle, the guns in their hands getting bigger as I scanned the row and landed on the final man.
“Vito.”
MACKENZIE
The trunk opened up, allowing air in the fetid, moldy space. I coughed and agony racked my jaw. Don didn’t care an ounce about Luca’s order not to hit my face,
They pulled me out of the trunk. I squinted at my surroundings.
Luca told them to get me ready to leave, but we weren’t at an airstrip or dock. It looked like an old bed-and-breakfast. By the skyline and driving time, I knew we hadn’t left Cinco far behind. We were thirty minutes out.
Thirty minutes. That’s how long my daughter’s been in the hands of a sociopath’s drug-addled mistress. I have to get out of here. I have to get to Laurel!
They practically carried me up the steps. Inside, the lights flicked on and I got a proper look at them. Both dark-haired, tattooed, and sporting guns shoved through their waistbands, but Don boasted a scar above his right eye and when Louie sneered at me, two rows of cracked, brown rotting teeth turned my stomach.
“You deal with her,” Louie said. “I’ll start on the rest.”
My feet skimmed the floral carpet. I was certain then that the place used to be a charming inn—complete with cream wallpaper, pastoral paintings, and doilies over the lanterns. I knew this because it was still there, albeit cracked, peeling, and covered in dust.
Don tossed me inside a small sitting room. “Take off your clothes,” he ordered, closing us in. “Or I’ll do it for you and...” He buried his nose in my hair, inhaling me. “Take my time.”
His hands pawed my wrists, then the cuffs sprang open. I spun, elbow slicing up and smashing across his jaw. Grunting, he rocked to the side and that was the distraction I needed. I snatched the gun from his belt loop.