Page 157 of The Beautiful Dead

A mirror of my own.

He turned to me. Blood streaked his cheekbone. His eyes burned.”Ready?”

My grip tightened on my gun. A slow smirk curled my lips. “Always.”

“Stand back,” one of the Gallo soldiers said as he wired up some C4 to the doors and began his countdown as we backtracked down the driveway.

“Cover,” someone else shouted, and I braced my arms over Remi’s head, pulling him down to the ground with me as the explosion rocked the ground beneath our feet.

One of the doors exploded inward, slamming against the far wall with a violent crack. The other collapsed, crashing down onto the white marble with a deafening boom.

Cracks spiderwebbed through the tile, jagged fractures marring the pristine floor. Smoke and blood followed us inside, the scent thick, clinging to my skin.

Salvatore and my brothers broke into two teams, peeling off into the darkened corridors of the first floor.

Their footsteps disappeared into the shadows, the air filled with muted gunfire, the wet sounds of knives sinking into flesh.

No screams.

Only silence.

A symphony of efficient, disciplined death.

A broken, bleeding thing that used to resemble a man was slumped against the bottom step of the stairs, his once-impeccable suit now nothing but torn fabric and deep, dark stains. His face was nothing more than caved in flesh and bone, blood still sluggishly trickling down his neck.

“No pulse,” Remi confirmed before dropping his eyes to the tablet in his hand.

His breath ghosted over my shoulder as I stepped up to him to take a look. A single red dot pulsed on the screen. Federico. He’d most likely locked himself away in a panic room. Fucking coward.

We followed it up the grand staircase, our boots whispering against the worn runner. The air was thick with the remnants of gunpowder and fear. Faint, ragged breathing filtered through the comms.

Enzo was ordering the dead be cleared away and burned in a pit that was being dug somewhere on the grounds.

Luca’s grunts were indistinct, but it sounded like he was in charge of clearing the city of the dead.

I didn’t know who their cleaners were or if they were equipped for something like this, but I didn’t give a flying fuck right now. I was focused on making one person suffer as much as possible for all he’d taken from me.

Federico knew we were coming. There was no way on this earth he didn’t.

Remi moved beside me, silent, a shadow stretching long under the dim chandelier light. His blade still dripped red, his fingers curled loosely around the hilt. There was no hesitation in his movements. He was calm. Controlled. Lethal.

I could feel the anticipation humming under his skin, the way his breathing remained steady, even as my blood roared in my ears.

We reached the top of the stairs. The hallway stretched long and empty before us, lined with doors that led to rooms already abandoned, their occupants either dead or fleeing.

But not Federico.

He had nowhere to run.

We followed the blinking dot on the screen, down the hall, past shattered picture frames and overturned furniture and bullet holes blown through the walls.

The sound of a door creaking open had my gun raised in an instant. But it was nothing. Just the house settling in the wake of the devastation we’d wrecked on it.

Or maybe it was the weight of death pressing in from all sides. Remi tilted his head, eyes flicking between the tablet and the doors ahead.

“Here,” he murmured, voice soft, intimate in its certainty.

The last door at the end of the hall. A master bedroom, most likely. A place meant to be safe. Untouchable. The irony almost made me laugh.

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