Page 80 of The Saint

I gave a slight shake of my head. “That’s for my replacement to decide. I just need to remove Ivan from power and bring order back to the city.”

He had no reaction to that, just studied my face with stoic calmness. “Alright.”

“Call your guys, and I’ll call mine.”

“He’ll expect us.”

“Good. I want that asshole to know I’m coming.”

We were in the back seat together, the driver taking us across town to where Ivan was located. We had a line of cars, and President Martin had evacuated the streets and cited a terrorist situation. It was already on the news, reporters saying a terrorist group had planned an attack on the city but was being neutralized. It was a decent cover-up and somewhat truthful.

That would be a dead giveaway to Ivan, but it didn’t matter now. He was dead, regardless of whether he had a heads-up or not.

Godric glanced at his phone when a text came in. “He’s injured.”

I watched the buildings go by, the city hustling and bustling even though it was now late morning. We’d never done a hit like this smack in the middle of the day. We always waited for the cover of nightfall, but we didn’t have a choice. Ivan probably assumed he was safe until he found a new plan.

But he was wrong. “Sounds like men are rolling on him now.”

“When they found out he took Fleur, their loyalty wavered.”

That iced my wrath—but only slightly.

Godric had this innate apathy to him as he stared out the window. He’d been that way since we were teenagers, like he was permanently numb to the world around him. But when he was a kid and we played with dinosaurs together and roughhoused in the snow, he wasn’t. It made me wonder if our father’s toll really had been worse for him than it was for me.

“She killed at least a dozen men on her own.”

I turned back to him.

“Must have gotten one of their riles. Their bodies were on the other side of the warehouse, so she made it pretty far.”

Pride swelled within me. “Attagirl.”

“She suits you.” He said all of it without looking at me, eyes still on the window.

“She does.” That was the closest thing to approval I would ever receive from my brother.

The rest of the drive was spent in silence, but for a change, it wasn’t packed with layered hostility and resentment. For the first time, I felt like I was sitting beside Luca, beside one of my guys, beside a friend.

When we approached the cordoned-off street, we pulled over in the middle of the road, the other Hummers and SUVs already there. There were police cars and SWAT vehicles, all dispatched by President Martin.

The building was surrounded.

Godric got out and strapped on his vest before he grabbed his automatic rifle from the back.

I did the same and walked with my brother toward the building.

Then gunfire erupted, bullets spraying the roads as shooters fired from the windows.

I shoved Godric to the back of a car for cover. The windows shattered from the bullets, and glass splashed across the ground.

“Not going down without a fight, is he?” Godric said without raising his voice.

“He’s choosing to die like a rat. Not much of a fight to me.” I crept around the side of the car and saw the Foreign Legion deploy out the back of one of the vehicles. “If we don’t hurry, they’re going to kill him before I get a chance.”

“What does it matter? Let them kill him.”

“It fucking matters.” I watched the soldiers leave the van and break down the barricaded front door. More gunfire erupted. “I’m going for it?—”

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