Page 54 of Vengeance

“If you’re so concerned about Phae with them, why did you give her permission to see them while we were away?” I ask.

“Because she wanted to and that’s the only way she was ever going to.” Before I can say anything else, Dele says, “Not everyone is as vindictive as you are, Adrian. Phae and I have an understanding. It’s fine.”

“Then are you going to tell me why you’re watching the camera feed like you are worried.”

“Because I am worried. Just not about Phae.”

There’s no need to ask why Dele is worried. What isn’t there to be worried about? No matter how confident I am that we’ll be able to pull this off.

Dele closes out the feed and sets her phone down.

“I have something for you,” I say as I reach behind my chair to grab what’s obviously a gun case.

Dele takes it and carefully sets it on her lap before opening it.

“New guns,” she says, placing her hands over them while they’re still in the case before taking one out.

“Consider it a wedding gift. But it was about time anyway. You had your other ones for what? A decade? Long overdue for an upgrade.”

“I know,” she says. “But those guns were special to me.”

“Clearly since you moaned about losing one of your pair the entire month.”

“I didn’t moan.”

“You did. Hopefully, those are an adequate replacement.”

“As long as they were from you, they would have always been adequate.”

“Is that why you kept the other ones so long?”

Dele rolls her eyes and leans over to kiss me on the cheek.

“I love you regardless, but it can never be said that you are quick on the uptake when it comes picking up on things like sentiment.”

Eileen comes over and says, “We’re about to land.”

Dele reaches over to grab my hand.

“You ready?” I ask.

“I don’t think we can ever be ready enough, but we’ll have to make do.”

She’s right. If we don’t do this now, if we turn back because of fear now, we might not ever do it. It has to be done now. Pray played his hand. Now we have to play ours.

The plane lands right in Pray’s backyard. Not too far outside of his beloved city at a base running right out his backyard. It’s risky, but Pray’s not the only one who made allies with neutral parties. Or, in this case, with parties he think are his allies and would notify him of this kind of activity. We just didn’t have the man and weapon power. I’m still not confident about that if I’m honest. Even with the help of the Fantoni’s resources. But the hope is that we can move quick enough to get to Pray before he mobilizes all his people.

“So,” I ask without preamble when Dele, our entourage, and I walk into the base.

Revnor, our point man on this, says, “He took the bait.”

The bait being Addy Bianchi’s very public return alone to New York City for a private meeting. Of course, it wasn’t the real Addy Bianchi. Or who people think is the real Addy Bianchi. It was Dele’s sister. Delilah. Their uncanny resemblance despite not being twins has come in handy and makes me glad I didn’t kill her three months ago.

Both Dele and I had reservations about using Delilah as bait for two opposite reasons. Despite their tumultuous relationship and the fact that they don’t even talk outside of business and not even that if they can get someone else to pass it along, Dele still cares for her sister and doesn’t want her hurt. My reasons had nothing to do with sentiment and everything to do with wondering if Pray would be fooled.

I assured Dele that Pray knows the last thing he’d want to do is kill who he thinks is Addy Bianchi if he wants to bait me to him. He could risk it, but he also won’t risk inciting my ire not knowing who to trust and what resources I have on my side.

Dele assured me that if she could look Pray directly in the fucking face and he couldn’t recognize her as Dele Martin, the woman he apparently wanted dead because of my apparent “fascination” with her, then there’s no way he’ll recognize that Delilahisn’tDele dressed up as Addy.

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