Page 26 of Revenge & Ruin

I don’t bother replying.

The problemwith Alessandro is that he’s almost too good at his job.

Which, in situations like attempting to infiltrate the Prince’s Hand undetected, are hugely beneficial.

Unfortunately, that means he’s also made himself indispensable, so when he says things like, “I don’t see why you didn’t put me on surveillance of the Natali broad. I’d have got you answers faster than she could have groaned my name,” I can’t kill him on the spot.

“Shut the hell up,” Dante snaps at him for me.

The three of us are parked outside the Prince’s Hand Casino. This particular branch is one of the only casinos that actually closes its doors in the early hours of the morning.

A steady trickle of staff and cleaning crew have been leaving the building for an hour now as we slowly wait for our opening.

“I’m just saying,” Alessandro grumbles to himself.

He had, unfortunately, already proved his value to the task at hand, unearthing the blueprints of the building seemingly out of nowhere and putting together at least a dozen escape routes in the span of an hour.

But that doesn’t mean I want him here at all.

“All right.” I nod toward the main entrance, where it seems a manager is locking the door and securing the metal grate in place. “You’re up, Alessandro.”

I don’t even hear him leave the car.

“We should get him a bell,” Dante comments, seemingly as unnerved as I am by his sudden disappearance.

“Don’t think that will help us tonight.”

I can just about make out a lone, dark figure darting into the building next to the casino before we go back to waiting with bated breath.

It can’t be more than five minutes when a single, flickering light appears in one of the windows on the upper floor of the casino.

Alessandro has dismantled the security.

Dante and I exit the car at the same time, striding with purpose around the side of the building where Alessandro has lowered the firescape for us to climb up.

Within seconds, we’re all crouched inside what seems to be some kind of admin office on the second floor.

Alessandro makes a couple of small gestures with his hands.

Guards are patrolling. Less than five, but heavily armed.

I nod. We’d anticipated as much.

It was tempting to just shove the cloning device into the first computer we could find, but it was clear the admin office was in near-constant use. Someone would surely find it here, making our mission obsolete.

No, with Alessandro’s schematics, we locate a computer within the office of what appears to be an in-house mechanic. I didn’t ask what Alessandro did to Mr. Jones to ensure he wouldn’t be coming into work for the next few days.

Getting to that office is the hard part.

I take the lead, crouching as I enter the hallway outside. Dante is at my back, and Alessandro is bringing up the rear. I have the route down to the basement partially memorized, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relying on Alessandro as a backup.

Slowly, we creep through the building, avoiding the main floor at all costs. It helps that we aren’t targeting the casino or the vaults themselves. security in those areas is nearly impenetrable.

The only reason we’d managed to get this far was because the admin and janitorial areas weren’t as well-secured.

We move through the building silently until we reach the staff staircase that will lead us directly down to the mechanic’s office.

But as soon as Alessandro closes the door to the stairwell, we hear the sound of footsteps.

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