Page 6 of Dangerous King
We lurch to a halt at the base of the Giordano mansion. The opulence hits me like a punch: white marble columns, fifty stone steps, and a façade that screams overcompensation. I've beenhere before, for fake smiles and champagne toasts. Those were diplomatic visits; this visit is retribution.
I'm out the door before I put the Hummer into park. My boots hit the ground, rounds still thudding against the Hummer as I storm forward. I'm the boss, I pay others to keep me alive and my back safe. Silvano curses behind me, but he's two steps behind, weapon up, covering all angles.
Guards start firing from the second-floor balconies; bullets scream past me, except the one that slams into my chest plate, knocking the wind from my lungs. I grunt, absorb it, and keep climbing the ridiculous number of stairs. The pain is just a footnote, while adrenaline and the urge to fulfill a mission drive me forward.
A Giordano soldier steps out from behind one of the columns, spraying with an M5. Idiot. I put a bullet between his eyes, catch the weapon as he drops, and sweep the area with a glance. I already know the M5 carries a 130-round drum, but I check how many bullets the idiot wasted. It shows the magazine is still three-quarters full. Set to full auto. What a sloppy move. I switch it to semi. I want precision, not noise. I holster my sidearm and move.
We make it to the front of the mansion with bodies already on the floor behind us. The double doors loom, hand-carved walnut with bronze inlay and wrought-iron imported from Florence's historic blacksmith guilds. Silvano presses his back to the stone wall beside me, glances at the heavy lock system, then at me.
"You know," he says, voice casual, "we could knock."
I grunt. "You're the one with the key."
He smirks and pulls a breaching grenade from his vest. "This is why I don't get invited to house parties."
I nod once. "Warn me this time."
"Fine," he says, pulling the pin with a sharp snap. "Big boom in three—two?—"
He doesn't wait for one. The grenade arcs forward, hits the base of the doors, and detonates with a low, concussivewhumpthat rattles the front columns—the lock shatters. Splinters fly.
"What happened tothree?" I bark, already moving.
"I lied," Silvano says, stepping over the threshold with a smoke canister in his left hand. He twists the cap and chucks it through the opening. Thick white plumes billow through the entryway, swallowing chandeliers and staircases in fog. Shouts erupt inside, confused and panicked.
Silvano breathes in deeply. "Ah. Smells like opportunity."
I shake my head. "You've been spending too much time with Dante."
"Someone has to keep the party interesting."
He slides in behind me, both of us with weapons drawn, shadows in smoke.
"Let's find Giovanni," I mutter.
Silvano racks a round with quiet satisfaction. "I'll race you."
"Thermals show movement, left hall," Silvano mutters into his comm.
"Clear it," I reply.
Giovanni's voice echoes faintly from somewhere deeper in the house.
"Giovanni!" I yell as I enter the large foyer, taking care of two guards as they round the corner. Silvano shoots two more on top of the mezzanine before he breaks off to the left, while I head right. "You can't hide, come out and act like a man!"
I know where the entrance to his basement is. I despise the man just for bringing his business home like this. I get that we can't always keep it at the office, but that torture chamber down there? Even before he took Izzy, I wanted to kill the man. No, he isn't a man. He's an insult to our species.
More of my soldiers have entered the house, clearing it room to room, floor to floor. Giovanni is a careful man, but he didn't expect me to come after him with an army. He didn't expect me to come after him at all. It was a lucky break that Gigi, one of Izzy's friends, had been hiding in the bushes, waiting for my sister to leave our house, when the dark SUV pulled up. A man got out, and before Izzy even had a chance to scream, he grabbed all one hundred and thirty pounds of her and dragged her into the vehicle. Gigi was smart enough not to try to intervene. She stayed hidden but took a picture of the license plate. She then came straight into the house, confessed their asinine concert plan, and gave me the information I needed to find out who was behind her abduction.
Gigi clearly needs a safety lesson, too, but that's not my problem. Her brother, Antonio, my best friend, will deal with her.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Giovanni, followed by his Enforcer, Ringo, comes up the basement stairs.
Without a moment's hesitation, I grab him by the collar, drag him the last few steps up, and ram him into the wall. "Where is she?"
"Let go of him." Ringo pulls out his gun, but he is smacked to the ground immediately by Silvano. Several guns from my guards aim his way. Several of Giovanni's men aim theirs at me and my guards. It's a standoff. I nod at Silvano, and he speeds by me, down the stairs, calling Izzy's name.
"She better be alive," I tell Giovanni, not worried about the barrels aimed at me. If Giovanni's guys are stupid enough to pull the trigger, he will be dead. Me? Yeah, I guess it would be lights out for me, too, but who cares about the death of a monster like me?
