Page 70 of Cardinal House

“I might not have killed her properly the first time, but I can tell you one thing,” Nolan snarls as cold metal meets my temple, “I won’t miss a second.”

Chapter 32

Wolf

Tyres screeching, I careen around the street corner like a rally car driver, drifting the vehicle right up onto the front lawn, stopping directly in front of the steps.

Vito gets out at the same time as I do, barking orders at his men who pull up in hordes at our backs. Hunter and Thorne are running across the front lawn, meeting me at the front door.

“Let my men clear you a path,” Vito says on a sharp exhale, “don’t waste your time on the foot soldiers, when there’s a grander prize for you just past them.”

It makes sense.

Hunter scowls, but he doesn’t object, and Thorne nods as Vito’s men rush past us, breaking through both the front and back doors at the same time and storming in.

Despite their guns having silencers, the bellows, barks and cries of men is not going to go unnoticed in a lazy, little street like this.

We won’t have much time.

I give the men an entire sixty-seconds to clean house, counting it down too fast in my head, and then I’m barrelling inside, grabbing the first guy I see.

My fingers close around his neck, slamming him back into the wall as his hands claw at my wrists. I knock him into it again and again, until blood is splattering over the cream wallpaper and the crunch of bone fills my ears.

“LUNA!” I roar, wondering if she’ll hear me, be able to respond, give me an indication of where she is, but there’s nothing in response, too much noise surrounding me, making it impossible to hear.

I’m heading for the stairs, because despite not knowing where Luna is, it’s as though I can feel her, sense her. Somewhere, deep inside this house my heart beats and I just need to find it.

My knuckles crunch and pound and pummel, I fire off shots and stab my way through bodies.

Until I reach the upstairs corridor.

It’s long and dark and dingy, wall sconces lit few and far between. It’s like an underground tunnel, only it’s upstairs, heavy velvet drapes are pulled across every window, shutting out the world to create a new one.

A hell.

He’s big, I’ll give him that much, the guard that steps out in front of me and blocks the door at the very end of the hall.

The one I’m heading straight for.

To his credit, he looks like a mean motherfucker. Shorn dark hair, hard eyes, broad shoulders and thick arms. He’s only a little shorter than me, a couple inches at most, but we’re evenly matched weight wise, his frame holding hard packed planes of muscle just as solid as mine.

“You’re not getting in that room,” he informs me, like I’ve come here to make small talk, but all he’s done is confirm that’s where my girl is.

“You touched her?” I ask him instead, because I’m almost certain, from the shit Luna’s told me, every one of these fucker’s have held her down to be tortured.

He lifts a dark brow, shrugs, and then the fucker smirks.

He’s aiming a gun at me, but we know now, bullets don’t fucking kill me, they bring me back to life.

I run, smashing into him, and throwing the bar of my arm up and into his outstretched one, knocking the gun from his fist as an errant shot goes off, hitting the ceiling and sending a flurry of dust down onto us. He grunts as my shoulder connects with his sternum, bending him in half and knocking him stumbling back a couple paces.

But he doesn’t go down.

The guy brings up his knee, smashing it into my groin and making me see stars as pain explodes in my pelvis.

We go down together.

Rolling across the hardwood, my spine smashes into the wall, my heart thundering in my chest as I try to catch my breath, but there’s no time, the guy’s fist finding my face and crashing into my cheekbone as my own fist comes up, connecting with his kidney, once, twice, three times, before he’s tumbling away, trying to put space between us. But I can’t allow that. There’s not enough time for space.

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