Page 55 of Where the Wicked Reign

“You were laughing,” Emilio retorted in an accusing tone.

“It’s a long story.”

“We have all night.”

I frowned as the two of them glared at one another heatedly, while Julian was oblivious because he was too busy eye-fucking me.

I cut through all of it, telling them, “Let’s just get started.”

Julian blinked out of his lust-induced stupor and the other two stopped facing off and eyed me.

With their attention now focused on me, I gestured at the storage units. “This way,” I said, before turning on my heel and heading down the gangway of units either side, lining it all the way down.

I heard their footsteps following after me, along with some unintelligible mutterings from Emilio and Nico to each other.

I stopped at the unit on my right, the second last from the end of this row.

I’d already prepped it earlier before they’d arrived, so I didn’t need to unlock it. I merely leaned down and pulled up the rolling door.

“Jesus,” Julian uttered as the three of them assembled around me and took in the contents of the unit, all my devices, arms, gear, and equipment.

“This is impressive,” Nico said. “How could I not know about this?”

He also didn’t know that this wasn’t my only one.

“You knew what I allowed you to know.”

“Putting on a show for me, were you, Caterina?”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s stay on track.” I walked past him and saw him smirking, something that I didn’t actually find completely repulsive. It might have had me smiling in response. At least they didn’t see, because I had my back to them currently.

I reached my monitors and gestured to the left one that detailed the site plan of the target location. “We’ll have the advantage of the heavy foliage surrounding all four sides of the property. My father’s soldiers don’t patrol that far out. They stay close to the building, so we’ll be able to approach covertly right up to twenty feet from the house.”

I gestured at the middle monitor, which displayed the floor plan of the building, along with the marked positions of the guards, and the location of the hostages.

“They’re all in the basement,” Emilio commented.

“Yeah.”

“For all the security they have in place, that was a stupid decision.”

“One we’ll be able to use to our advantage.”

“We also need to use the transport trucks to our advantage,” Nico spoke, already focusing on the third monitor where I’d mapped out the route the trucks would take in and out, something I’d been able to garner from infiltrating Angelo’s phone.

“And use them to shift the narrative,” Julian piped up.

The two of them exchanged some sort of knowing look, then Nico nodded and said, “Yes, thanks to your in-depth research and planning, Caterina, we know where they’re planning to transport the hostagesandwho the buyers are.”

“We make the buyers our fall guys for this mission,” Julian explained. “So it doesn’t come back on us. Even with wiping everything down, there’s still a chance. But not if no investigation is launched by Santino, if one isn’t needed with the faux culprit already made known. I can take care of creating that falsity.”

It made sense that he’d have the know-how and skills to do that, given what I’d seen of his incredibly well-crafted social media image.

“The hostages will need medical attention and a whole lot of counselling in all likelihood, and they’ll need to be hidden so Santino doesn’t hunt them down,” Emilio pointed out.

“There’s somebody I can call in,” I told him.

“No.”

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