Page 12 of Soulmate of the Mafia King
“I did some research. There used to be a mosque on this site that was destroyed well before Zahur bought the property, but one tower was left standing. The minaret that they do the prayer call from. Zahur built it into his house.”
I adjusted the binoculars to bring the most detailed tower into perfect focus. The brickwork was much older there, visiblyuneven in some places, which meant handholds. And at the top sat a fully open structure, like a gazebo.
“So, we scale that, then get in through the minaret.” It was on the back half of the palace.
“If you can get your massive ass up there,” Killian replied.
“Adults shouldn’t climb trees,” I shot back. “We descend from monkeys, not ascend to them.”
He smirked. “Next layer?”
“Once the women are out, we start shooting.” I handed him back the binoculars. “At that point, Teddy’s going to blow the wall we came over so the women don’t have to scale it because we don’t expect them to be in scaling shape.”
“Then we need some kind of lift to get them down the tower.” Killian nodded. “I have an ex-engineer. He can handle that.”
“Great.” I grinned. “We should stay in the women’s quarters as long as possible,” I said. “They lead just about all over the house, so guards can get to any woman at any time, but they’re much less heavily patrolled. The women have some free rein back there.”
Killian nodded. “Then we’ll watch for guard concentration and strike where it’s thickest. That’s got to be where he is.”
“Agreed. Then, I think it’s about time you go let the guard know he doesn’t have to keep shitting himself in fear,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “This is going to be tough.”
“No shit,” I replied. “But we’ve got it covered.”
CHAPTER 9
PAIGE
As the sun started to dip toward the horizon, and I still hadn’t heard from Tom, I wandered into the third bedroom off the common area, the one where he’d sent all the items we’d hidden in a secret compartment in a cargo-hold before all the mercenaries arrived. The supplies to take care of the women we rescued. After talking to Sam, I realized I’d been spending too much time thinking about myself. This final bastard had kept me, tortured me, left me with permanent scars, but I wasn’t his only victim.
I opened the bulging suitcase and looked over the spare sets of clothes, a couple dozen in every size. We had no idea how many women the bastard would have. Despite our free rein, McKenna and I had always suspected the little pod we lived in might be one of several throughout the palace, each holding another five or six women.
McKenna. God, I hadn’t thought about her in a while. That visit had been just short of disastrous, but maybe I could reach out to her again. Tom gave her parents a few suggestions for getting her into therapy, and this far down the line, maybe she’d mellowed out some. I missed almost nothing about that time,but I missed her. At least enough to have a texting relationship, during the brief spans we were both awake.
I pulled a few toiletries out to have them ready, but my mind drifted away. McKenna had talked about the other women we’d shared the palace with, but I’d barely listened. Katie, Grace, and JJ. I hadn’t thought about them in so much longer. Would they be alive? If they were, could they be anything like the women I’d known? I sat down heavily on the bed.
Whatever women we rescued wouldn’t be staying here. Dr. Marino had recommended a few colleagues overseas, and quietly, all of them had been traveling to Cairo over the past few days. Tom would be texting them the address of the house he’d rented so they could be there to patch up the women soon. And I barely had any plans for what to do after that. I’d been too wrapped up in my own worries.
Distantly, I wondered if I could set a shelter up here. Katie, Grace, and McKenna had all been from somewhere in Europe. I’d bet money that a lot of the women wouldn’t be locals and that they’d be from all different places. We needed a place to keep them safe while we worked everything out.
I remembered my flight through the market, being grabbed. Making a shelter would be an uphill battle. Finding a safe place to keep an unknown number of women might be even harder. I clutched the toiletries to my chest. We’d discussed taking them back to Philly and then home from there. That might be the best plan.
And all of that assumed the raid succeeded. I’d lived in the bastard’s palace. I knew the domino effect of one cocked rifle, the way the sound echoed off the walls as dozens, hundreds of other men did the same. He was paranoid, and he was rich enough to make that everyone else’s problem.
An image of Tom, bloody on the floor of the bastard’s palace, surrounded by the corpses of his men, appeared in my mind’seye. I flinched back. I’d asked Tom to be safe. That wouldn’t happen. Right?
Someone rapped on the door to the bedroom. It was the same knock Tom used to use when I slept in a different bed than him.
“Come in.” I hoped he couldn’t hear how thick my voice was, the way it threatened to crack.
He swept in, shut the door behind him, and folded me in an embrace. I sucked in a lungful of his cologne, like I could keep him here if I could just inhale enough of him.
“What’s going on?” he asked quietly.
“I was getting everything ready,” I said. “Because…I’m not going on the raid.”
He kissed me, soft and hard and thankful. I kissed him back, even as that image still danced in the back of my mind. I couldn’t ask him not to go on the raid, could I?
