Page 149 of Where the Wicked Reign

He was right on the money there.

Milo and I exchanged a look.

Before anything more could be said, three Harleys came tearing through the tree line and headed straight for the patio. Angelo had sent a portion of Leone security over to that area. The dumbasses should have had it covered.

At least with these three hostiles breaching it, it meant those Leone fuckers were dead. More thinning the herd had gone down.

Milo handed Cassio a gun from the other fallen biker he’d taken out, and then all three of us were firing at the incomers.

Cassio was an ace shot, and he fell into it with us easily, only taking us two shots each to hit our wildly moving targets and make them dead men riding. Two were killed instantly with headshots, toppling from their bikes like rag dolls as the machines slammed into a tree each, totaling the rides. The third took a bullet through the chest from Milo and wiped out in the next second, his bike skidding across the grass into a retaining wall, taking a chunk out of it in the process.

His body twitched. He was still breathing.

I stalked over to him, just as he was tapping an earpiece and communicating muffled words that I couldn’t hear.

Before I could do another thing, a bullet whizzed past me, nearly fucking winging me and tore through his skull, killing him instantly.

I jerked back and spun to see Leo standing there, gun still in firing position.

“What the fuck was that?”

“Couldn’t risk you showing mercy or pulling your diplomatic bullshit. All these invading shits are marked for death.”

“I heard the order just fine,” I bit back.

His phone buzzed, and he was pulling it from his pants in the next second and taking a call. “Angelo? Yeah. What? You’re sure? All right, got it. Move to clean up then.” He hung up, then told me, “The Gunners have just started to retreat.”

That was what the guy he’d just almost shot me to kill had been communicating then—that the battle was lost. At least for now.

He eyed Milo and Cassio as they came over, telling us all, “Time to assess the damage of this shitshow.”

Cassio and Milo, especially, were glaring at him fiercely for nearly fucking shooting me just to take out a hostile who was already down.

His need to deliver punishment and his own personal reckoning upon any of our enemies often had him doing reckless fucking shit, just like this.

He acknowledged their reaction, but instead of speaking to it, or giving a shit, he barked instead, “Inside now.”

I ground my jaw, but managed to focus on the bigger picture of it all, rather than the slight, as we made our way back into the main house.

That bigger picture being the carnage all around us.

The many bodies littering the patio and more inside the house itself.

The massive security issue it posed to both the Leone Family and the Marchetti-Leone alliance as a whole.

The distraction that going after what was left of the Lone Gunners MC would prove to be, something the four of us would take full advantage of.

Andthe mammoth hit to both morale and the confidence that everyone involved would be suffering right about now when it came to this new alliance.

Not to mention, the despicable plans Santino and Angelo had had in mind for my wedding night with Caterina were now off the table with the mansion in a state of near-ruin.

One manipulated attack had achieved so much.

And this was just the beginning.

30

~Julian~

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