Page 48 of Reign

Nikita pales a little before ushering us on from the picture and further into the house, finally opening a door that seems to be on the underside of the staircase in the foyer. It’s straight out of a movie. A stone staircase winds in a spiral to the darkness below. I throw Dom a look over my shoulder and I know he can read the worry in my eyes.

He lifts the hem of his shirt, showing me the butt of his gun although I’m pretty sure we have nothing to fear from Nikita. Suddenly, I transform my worry into a smirk and lift the hem of my skirt, showing him the pistol in my thigh holster and winking.

Twenty

Casper/Dominic/Casandro

I CHOKE BACK A LAUGH. The minx is fucking with me.

“Nikita?” I ask, not waiting for a response before pressing on, “Camila’s on a date with him right now. Is he a threat?”

While I wait for him to answer, I pull out my phone and see a group text from Camila. She used our code word to signal it’s her and not someone else from her phone, letting me and Libby know she’s okay.

“That depends,” Nikita says, causing me full-blown concern.

“On what?” I grit out.

At the bottom of the stairs, we turn right down a short hallway, past several closed doors, and into a room that looks like a guest bedroom. A plain, wooden bedroom suite is set up. Sparse decorations include a rod-iron lamp on each of the two nightstands. This must be where Nikita stays which is why Mateo couldn’t locate him. His name isn’t on anything. Not this house, not the Porsche, not his businesses. He’s untraceable.

I raise my eyebrow to Nikita who closes the door and taps something into the AC panel box on the wall before meeting my eyes. “On whether or not he thinks he has the upper hand. Does he think you’re on to him?”

“He can’t. We didn’t know who he was until a minute ago.”

“Then she’s safe for now, but we just lost time on our clock and need to end this fast.”

As if that’s new.

As if the fucking clock hasn’t been ticking loudly in my ear for the last two months. I feel myself getting reckless and impatient and that’s when things really get dangerous.

We follow Nikita toward the closet of this bare room. In the back, a door slides open to reveal a motherfucking safe room. A kickass. State-of-the-art saferoom.

I’ve really got to up my game in my next house.

After Diego and I helped Nikita grab Max – which was really an easy task considering he came voluntarily once he saw it was three against one and Diego was chomping at the bit to fuck Max’s face up – Nikita took him somewhere and left Diego and I upstairs to text Libby and tell her to come over before Diego tries to get in touch with Mateo again.

Now, coming in to the safe room, I glance around at the monitors and can see Max sitting in a plush recliner, flipping through a magazine.

“Where is that?” I ask, wondering just how many surprises this house holds.

“Through that door.” Nikita points to a metal door in the far corner of the room.

“He looks awfully comfortable,” Diego says, coming in behind us with a confused and mildly disgusted look on his face. “This definitely is not how we treated prisoners back home.”

“He’ll be with us until we can get to Mateo. Even though he’s a lying thief, he’s still valuable to me so I’d like to keep him alive, if possible. If we need a way to draw Mateo out, I figured offering the person who hasactuallybeen stealing from him would be a good place to start.”

“You know Mateo’s not going to settle for anything less than the two of us. This was never about the money,” I remind Nikita.

“That’s why Max is theback-upplan. We needed to make progress of some kind. Anyway, now we need to focus on getting Camila away from Alexei. I’m tired of that bastard taking things away from me.”

Camila will be elated. It appears Nikita has caught feelings…even if they arepossessivefeelings. Those are usually her favorite kind.

“Would now be a good time to mention that I gave the GPS bracelet from Aruba to Camila before she left?” Libby turns to ask me. I grab her shoulders and kiss her hard.

“Yes. And you’re brilliant.” If Alexei decides to make a move, the first thing he’ll do is take her cell phone, but an innocuous charm bracelet with only one, small, quaint charm? That’ll most likely get overlooked.

I try to pull the app up on my phone but this room blocks out all cellular signal and wifi other than the ultra-secure network that he runs the cameras off of.

“Nikita, was there anything else in here you needed to show us? I need to get a signal to this app and find Camila. We’ve got to go get her before she ends up in the crosshairs. She’s already been abducted once because of me and she barely survived that. I can’t let it happen again.”

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