Page 129 of Knot Made to Break: Part One

I eyed the scrawled handwriting. The number would’ve had any sane man salivating over the amount of zeros.

“You’ve got a deal.” Tucking it into my back pocket before we sealed the arrangement with a firm handshake. “Pleasure doing business.”

Monahan clamped a hand down on my shoulder as we walked toward the exit. “I’ll arrange payment and have my guys pick it up tomorrow. And Gio,” he said, turning to leave, “tell your old man ‘hello’ for me.”

I didn’t bother responding. He was already walking away, unbuttoning his suit jacket before ducking lithely into his obnoxious car. I watched until the taillights disappeared from sight, then turned my attention to the rest of the warehouse. The men were still working, stacking the last of the crates.

This entire farce had taken an act of congress to set up, and yet Rocco and Vincent hadn’t shown their faces.

Worry crept in, that first frisson of doubt.

I started toward the loading docks, but something caught my eye. One of our guys, Alec, was standing near the far entrance. Initially, I thought he was just leaving the work for everyone else like the weasel he was, but then I noticed the phone pressed to his ear. He seemed to be talking in hurried, hushed tones, and those beady eyes of his shifted nervously as he spoke.

Alec, you shady piece of shit. What are you up to now?

Fuck, I hated that guy. Maybe it was because he came up through the ranks too quickly, skipping the years of grunt work everyone else had to endure. Or perhaps it was how vocal he’d been about the impending regime change, as if he could possibly sway my fathers from stepping down. Both were reason enough to dislike him, but I knew the nail in the coffin had been the way he’d treated Kit the night she’d been shot. The asshole deserved the beating he’d taken for talking shit about her.

Hell, even before our girl was in the picture, my instincts had told me he couldn’t be trusted. From the day he showed up, kissing ass and attempting to work his way into our fathers’ inner circle, something about him had rubbed me wrong. He was too slick, too eager, like a used car salesman trying to unload a lemon. We needed the manpower, so I’d kept my mouth shut and let him play his game, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

And now that he’d been a complete dick to my Omega, redemption was out of the question. His ass was out of here as soon as we were in control, as far as I was concerned.

Then again, if my intuition about his suspicious behavior was correct…

I headed in his direction, moving slowly so as not to draw attention. If he was selling us out, I needed proof, something concrete that I could take to Dimitri and Emilio. Halfway there, he ended his call and slipped the phone into his pocket. Istopped, pretending to inspect a crate, and watched as he walked toward an exit, his gait hurried and nervous.

My mind raced with possibilities. Had he tipped off the Valentinos about our fake deal? Was he feeding them information about our defenses, our plans? If he was, that made him more than just a disloyal prick—it made him a traitor, and in our world, that was a one-way ticket into a shallow grave in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere.

I followed him, ducking out the side entrance and peering into the night. The cold air bit at my skin, sharp as a switchblade, and the sounds of the docks washed over me in a dissonant symphony. I spotted Alec rounding a corner, his silhouette briefly illuminated by a distant floodlight.

Where’d you go, you little fucker?

I moved quickly but quietly, sticking to the shadows and keeping low. If Alec was meeting someone, I needed to see who it was. My hand drifted to the piece holstered at my side, fingers curling around the cold metal grip.

The alley opened into a small parking lot, and I caught sight of Alec just as he slipped behind a rusted-out van. He paused, glancing about with the nervousness of a frightened rabbit, then pulled out his phone again. The screen’s glow cast an eerie light on his face, making his features look more rodent-like than usual.

A deafening crack split the air, and a muzzle flash lit up the darkness. The bullet whizzed past my ear, so close I could feel the heat of it, before it exploded into the brick wall behind me. Shards of debris rained down as I hit the ground, rolling to my knees and drawing my gun in one fluid motion.

The shadows moved as if they’d come alive, men bleeding out from all directions to converge on the warehouse.

This was the moment we’d been waiting for. I pressed on the earpiece, hoping D and Marco had heard the shot over the noise of the machines working inside the damn building.

My heart rate spiked as more shots were fired, and I dove for safety, hissing out, “They’re here.”

“How many?” D sounded like he was on the move, coming to cover my ass.

Firing back to buy myself some time, I counted the dark figures of the advancing men. “At least a dozen.”

forty-six

GIOVANNI

The silhouettes slidthrough the shadows, their movements fluid and predatory. My heart pounded, adrenaline surging as I counted the seconds before all hell broke loose.

“Fuck,” I muttered, tightening my grip on my gun. Out here, I was a sitting duck, exposed and vulnerable.

Another crack of gunfire shattered the tense silence.

I dove for cover behind a stack of wooden pallets, splinters exploding everywhere as it was peppered with bullets. The acrid scent of gunpowder filled my nostrils. My finger tensed around the trigger as I popped up and returned fire, muscle memory taking over.

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