Page 95 of Deception & Desire

Amos Rubio’s men are pouring out like ants from a hill, armed to the teeth. The Guild’s tech specialists hacked into the compound’s surveillance system, leaving the enemy blind to anything but what’s in front of them.

Which serves my purposes perfectly.

I slip through a side entrance, a rusted maintenance door I remember from the blueprints. It’s unguarded—likely overlooked in the chaos—and creaks like a dying animal when I push it open. The sound makes me grit my teeth.

The hallway beyond is dimly lit, the faint hum of fluorescent lights overhead barely cutting through the darkness. The muffled sounds of battle grow distant as I venture deeper.

I stick close to the wall, my steps careful, my breathing controlled. My reactions are slower, my movements less precise. But my ears prickle at every sound, and my eyes are sharp and alert.

I’m still a weapon of war.

The first man I encounter rounds a corner without checking his angles. Sloppy.

I’m on him before he can react, my hand clamping over his mouth while my blade finds the soft flesh between his ribs. His muffled scream is short-lived, his body sagging into my arms as I lower him to the ground silently.

I wipe the blood on his uniform and keep moving, my chest burning with every step.

I check the next corner to find two guards stationed at the end of the corridor, blocking my path. I press myself into the shadows, fingers curling around the hilt of my knife.

My chest burns in protest as I breathe deeply. Every movement needs to count.

When one of them turns away to adjust his earpiece, I strike. A single, brutal slash to the first man’s throat before he can blink.

The second guard raises his weapon, but I’m already inside his range, driving the knife into his gut and twisting until he falls silent.

The hallway is clear again, but my breath comes heavier now, the pain in my chest a roaring fire. I collapse to my knees, darkness threatening to encompass my vision.

“Fuck,” I breathe, and I breathe, half-heartedly backing up against the wall in case someone charges through the doors.

If anyone finds me here, vulnerable and exposed like this…

I don’t think about it. I think about Mia. Mia is here. Liza and Luca are waiting with Isabella for her. They need their mother.

I need my wife.

The roaring flames in my chest begin to subside, and I shakily break open the painkillers I brought in case of emergency. They’ll make me more sluggish, but I can’t collapse like this again.

Not when Max is somewhere in this hellhole.

I slowly get to my feet and return to my mission.

The air grows heavier as I move deeper into the compound, the smell of gunpowder mixing with the acrid stench of blood.

The fight seems both inches away and too far out of reach. Every time I think it’s getting closer, I turn another corner, and it’s faded back again.

The blueprints indicated that the cell block was near a wide storage room on the ground floor. It was perhaps presumptuous of me to think that such a non-vital space would be left unguarded and that the bigger threat would be stationed outside the prison.

This much becomes clear as I slip into the storage room, only to be greeted by a slow clap, halting me in my tracks.

Max.

He stands in a wide storage room, leaning casually against a stack of crates as if this is all some kind of joke. A pistol dangles loosely from his hand, his gaze sharp and his smile threatening as he surveys the state I’m in.

“I gotta say, Leon. You’re one hard man to kill,” he says, straightening slightly.

This is the man I trusted for months. The mastermind behind my every downfall.

“What can I say? You’re a sloppy shot.” I twirl the knife in my fingers as I stalk toward him.

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