Page 142 of Ivory Oath

Then again, I know my wife. She has a way of getting what she wants.

“It’s going to kill her not to be here.”

“It might kill her to be here.”

Sure, Viviana being an onlooker to a raid like this is dangerous, but it’s more than that. If things inside don’t go the way we’re hoping, I don’t want her anywhere near this place.

“There are some things you can’t ever get out of your head,” I add softly. “I don’t want her to ever know what it feels like to see her own child dead.”

I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone.

Suddenly, Raoul claps a hand on my back. “No one is going to experience that today. Because we’re going to go in there and save your son.”

Raoul isn’t usually the cheerleader type before a raid, but I don’t mind the energy today. We could all use a little pep in our steps.

I’m not the only one who’s exhausted; the men are tired, too. It’s late and we’ve trekked all over the city in a matter of hours. But when I make the call to storm the building, no one hesitates.

They just go.

We hit every entrance, clearing the rundown building room by room. Distantly, I hear gunshots echoing through the dusty air and harried footsteps across the tiles. This mission isn’t about stealth. It’s not about the element of surprise. There’s no way Christos kidnapped my son and thought, for even a second, that I wasn’t going to tear this world apart until I got him back. He knows I’m coming at him with everything I have.

So this mission is about being fast and being thorough.

I search an old retail space, kicking over a box of moth-eaten clothes in the back room to make sure it’s empty.

“Clear!” I call as soon as I’m back in the main walkway.

Raoul pops out of the space just ahead of me. He shakes his head, but still yells, “Clear!”

The voices are getting louder. My men are converging from every direction. Soon, we’ll meet at the heart of the building.

What if no one finds Dante?

What if he isn’t here?

What if this is a trap?

We don’t have any other leads and I already killed the manager from the club. He didn’t know enough to be useful, anyway. But he knew a six-year-old was going to be kidnapped and he did nothing to stop it. He’s lucky all I did was shoot him in the head.

Raoul is in front of me, walking past the wide-open mouth of what was once a lingerie store, when gunshots ring out.

He hits the floor and I dive sideways, crouching behind a tiled planter. The tree inside withered up and died a decade ago, if not more, so it offers zero cover.

Raoul is sprawled on the floor six feet away from me. He isn’t moving.

“Raoul?” I hiss.

No answer.

My heart is pounding, but my hand is steady. I ready my gun, prepared to charge into the store alone to find whoever fired those shots.

But I don’t have to.

Raoul crawls over to me, pulling himself behind the planter just as a bullet cracks the tile where he was lying a second ago.

“Shit,” I breathe. “I thought you were hit.”

“I kind of was.” He lifts his arm, revealing a burn mark across his bicep where a bullet grazed him. He shakes it off and gets his weapon ready, too. “Do we have a plan?”

---