Thirty-One
Enzo
My heart is raging,crashing against my rib cage like a ball to a bat. Mino’s mouth is moving, but I don’t hear him. My eyes snap across the road, taking in everything from the number of people walking to the length of the grass. I’ve catalogued every make and model of every vehicle we’ve passed on the way here and memorized more than half of the license plates.
The Vicente Vineyards.
How the fuck did they end up there?
I’ve worked with the Vicentes. They’re long-time clients of mine.
I’ll kill them all, tape an oxygen tank to their faces with twenty-four hours of air, tie weights around the sons’ ankles, and drop them over the side of my boat into my very own lake. Make them panic and live through the nightmare as they slowly die.
I’ll shave the?—
“Enzo.” Mino slaps at my chest, snapping me out of it. “Get out of your fucking head.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Everyone there is dead. All of them. Every fucking person.”
Mino nods, but there’s tension in his shoulders. “Maybe I should go in first.”
I laugh, loudly, taking my guns from the holsters and inspecting them before stuffing them back, and checking the two strapped to my ankles. After that, I run my fingers over the knives in my suit insert and the switchblade in my front pocket. “How much longer?”
“Two minutes.”
I nod, glaring straight out the window.
“Bastian, his crew, and Rayo and his men are following.”
“Fuck Bastian. I let the Brays into my house because of him and look where we are. Never should have let her have my girl’s number.”
“Yeah.” Mino sighs. “If only we could kill him.”
“If he needs to die, he will.”
Mino says nothing to that.
He knows if she’s hurt, everyone will hurt, and being Bronx lost her signal seven minutes into the feed, we’re going in blind. Loaded down with weapons and manpower, but still blind.
If my brat of a wife thinks leading me to her is going to get her ass out of trouble, she’s mistaken.
This time when I mark her, it will be with my handprint across her ass.
“I see the car!” he snarls, foot slamming down on the gas.
I grip the “oh shit” handle, and the one on the door, pushing it open the slightest bit, and I’m throwing myself from my seat before the car’s in park, breaking off in a run so I don’t roll on my fucking ass.
I dart forward, flying toward the entrance of the winery. Fuck waiting for backup. My bride is in there, and I’m going in after her.Five more feet.I will cut their eyes from their?—
“Wha— Oh shit, wait!”
Everything in me ceases at the sound of her voice and I whip around, attention slicing toward the back door of a blacked-out, custom Hummer.
Time slows, the seconds passing like minutes as a gloved hand folds around the frame, one black flat-covered foot meeting the concrete, then another. My heart beats once, twice, and then there she is, throwing herself from the back seat, placing herself in my line of sight.