Page 94 of The Pretty Psycho

VEGA

Three Months Later

"Five minutes, Alpha Team,"Ethan's voice came over the comms, alerting our team to get ready.

Gabriela, Arseniy, Dimitri, and I stood hidden behind an abandoned house, just a couple of meters away from the gates of the factory. Each of us sat on a motorcycle, our hands hovering over the key ignition, preparing to move.

I wish I could say the last three months were beautiful and blissful, and we were able to take down Gerard and Heinrich in one move, but I'd be lying.

The Schatten went into hiding, killing almost every single operative that was out in the field, only keeping those that were not on active service and pulling them deeper into the shadows. I had no idea if it was Yolanda who briefed them that we knew everything or if someone else had managed to tell them about our movements up until the battle at the Academy, but whoever it was had spooked them so well that we weren't able to track them anywhere.

We all tried not to think about Yolanda and her betrayal, but every time I would look at Jax, I would remember what she did. I wasn't even angry over what she did to me. I was angry because she destroyed that man.

Whatever it was that they shared had turned into a bright hatred burning through Jax, and somehow it was the same thing pushing him to get through his physical therapy. I thought I knew what anger looked like, but seeing him and the acidic hatred burning in his eyes every time someone would mention her name had shown me that I actually had no idea what true anger looked like. What true hatred felt like, and I wouldn't want to be Yolanda once he gets his hands on her.

And while she must have alerted The Schatten pretty well, helping them to go into hiding, Gerard Zylla was an entirely different story. We knew we couldn't take out both of them at the same time, but we could focus on one of them at a time, and the first one on the list was Adrian's father.

I had no idea if it was his ego that had made him such an easy target, or if he was so sure no one would ever be able to destroy him and his empire, but I thanked the universe every single day for his recklessness, because without it, we wouldn't have been able to figure out his movements.

"We're ready," Gabriela announced into her mic, confirming our position.

My eyes ran over the three of them and the focus they kept on the road, waiting for the convoy to drive toward the factory. Some would say our plan was a suicide mission, while others might applaud us for doing it this way. Whatever their opinions were didn't really matter at this point.

The teams scouting for information came back with the knowledge that Gerard Zylla and the rest of his minions were hiding in this factory, working behind the scenes of a supposed paper factory, buying themselves time to recuperate from thelosses. I almost expected them to hit us when we were at our lowest, but for whatever reason, the Zylla Empire started to crumble down, and rumor had it that Gerard wasn't as stable as he once used to be.

He was a paranoid old man, too full of ego, and needed to be the best, so he didn’t know when to surrender. I had no doubt that he almost expected Adrian to surrender to him and go back home to work for good old Daddy, but Adrian was no one's pawn, least of all his.

"Twenty seconds," Ethan alerted, and right on cue, the sound of the convoy driving down the road filled the air, allowing us to turn the ignition on, on our motorcycles. "And…" he trailed off. "Go!"

The trucks flew past us on the road, and the moment Ethan gave the sign, we pulled right behind them, with Gabriela leading and me at the back. I liked to call this plan "Fuck around and find out" because in all honesty, we had no idea how this would go.

Our man inside gave us the plans of the factory and the schedule of the guards, but we would've been fools to fully trust him. The only people we truly trusted were in our inner circle—Jax, Ethan, Dante, Gabriela, Vin, Dimitri, Arseniy, Adrian, and me—and nobody else. But if we wanted to win this, if we wanted to take down Gerard Zylla so that Adrian could extinguish his evil once and for all, we needed more people.

The Brotherhood was ours. It might not have been my plan to stay a few months ago, but the more I got to know them and their plan, the more I wanted to be with them. I wanted to stop running and for the first time in my life, I actually wanted to belong.

I once thought I belonged with The Schatten, but that part of my life was just an illusion created to stop me from stepping out of line. It didn't take us long to find out Heinrich always knewwho my father was, and he planned on using me as leverage against Oleksandr, not because the latter loved me or wanted me for some sentimental reason, no. It was because Oleksandr's obsession with legacy and having several heirs to his empire ran deeper than his need to expand the said empire.

Unfortunately for Heinrich and fortunately for me in a way, Oleksandr died before Master could cash in on me.

But with The Brotherhood, I knew. I knew deep inside my heart that these were my people. I knew these were the men and women I would die for and they would do the same for me. I knew the man I loved would be there for me to pick me up when I was down and to pull me back when I felt like running away, because I still couldn't believe that someone like me could have this much happiness in their life.

It felt wrong, feeling this happy when people I loved, people like Jax, still suffered, but I knew I couldn't fight his battles. He had to conquer those demons on his own, and I was needed here, on the field, with the ones I owed my life to.

"Keep yourselves behind the truck, right in the middle," Ethan's voice came through again, guiding us. No one liked staying back, but Ethan was the best man to coordinate this mission, and as much as he hated sitting back and monitoring everything from the house we were actually hiding behind, he was the only one who had enough strategic training for this kind of thing. His life and his own training prepared him for this.

I wasn't a leader. I was a soldier and I could never lead an entire group of people, instructing them what and when to do things. I admired Adrian and his strength to coordinate all of the generals and all of the fractions of The Brotherhood we had across the globe. He was a natural, but he was someone that was better in the field rather than behind a computer somewhere.

"Gabriela, no funny business." She started laughing over the comms the moment Ethan said it.

"I can't promise anything," her melodic voice came through, reminding me why she got saddled with us instead of working alone.

Let's just say Gabriela didn't take things too well, and while none of us know if something else had happened between the moment Jax woke up and the-event-we-won't-talk-about, we did know that she started spiraling once Dante left for Italy. So here she was, with us, like a baby in need of babysitting, because even after the whole shit show she created, she was still unstable.

And Dante was still in Italy and Gabriela refused to speak of him.

The trucks started slowing down and from our intel, we knew the gates were getting opened, thanks to the sensors on the trucks, but the problem were the guards at the front. That's why Dimitri was in formation with us.

Someone needed to take them out, and with him sitting behind Arseniy, he would be able to take out the two guards at the main gate.

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