Page 22 of Corrupted Seduction

“There are people outside, Heidi. Do you know anything about that?”

Her brow furrowed, but nothing else about her countenance changed. No relief. Just bewilderment.

There wasn’t time for this. The assholes outside would be on us any minute now.

I unfastened her cuff, pulled her off the bed, and dragged her out of the room, back down the hallway to the surveillance room where Vito and Carmine were waiting for us inside.

She yanked against my hold on her the whole way there, but the moment we stepped into the surveillance room, she froze.

Her eyes widened again as her gaze flickered first to Vito, then to Carmine, who was nearly as big as Vito, in his mid-twenties, with a thick, dark head of hair and a beard to match.

“They’re not here to hurt you; we’ve got bigger problems,” I told her.

But still, she tried to jerk her arm backward until her eyes swiveled to the monitors and a quiet gasp escaped her lips.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

Her wide eyes met mine, innocent and puzzled.

A wave of doubt surged through me, but time was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

“You’ll stay here,” I told her, “and watch what happens to people who try to fuck with me. You don’t leave this room. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

I turned to Carmine. “Stay in here and watch the monitors. Tell us what’s coming at us and when we’re clear.”

“Si,Signor,” Carmine said in his raspy, deep voice, hiding his disappointment. No one liked missing out on the action.

I turned to leave, then paused. While it seemed fairly certain she was working with whoever was coming at us, there was no guarantee. She could be in as much danger as the rest of us.

“You keep her here, Carmine,” I said, nodding at Heidi. “If they breach our line, you know where to take her.”

I glanced at the monitors—seventy yards and closing—then once more at Heidi. Victim or enemy? Time would tell.

Outside, as I left the cabin, the air was thick with tension and eager anticipation as my men took up strategic positions around the cabin, prepared for the inevitable clash.

With each passing moment, the tension grew, and the silence became suffocating.

“They’re within firing range,Signor,” Carmine’s voice crackled on my earpiece.

But the silence stretched on. The kind of quiet that only came on the precipice of pandemonium.

And then the silence shattered as the first shots rang out, cutting through the forest like thunder and sending birds scattering into the sky.

Bullets whizzed past us, biting into the cabin’s wooden walls. Splinters filled the air like confetti.

I returned fire, my shots aimed with lethal precision. Each pull of the trigger propelled me further into the heart of the firefight, where survival hung in the balance.

It was a symphony of chaos, punctuated by shouts and the roar of gunfire. The acrid smell of gunpowder mingled with the earthy scent of the surrounding forest. Adrenaline surged through my veins, sharpening my senses and narrowing my focus, blocking out the chaos around me.

There was a faint shadow of movement in the cluster of trees ten yards in front of me. I aimed, waiting.

The shadow emerged—a man dressed in black, armed with a semi-automatic, aimed right at me.

I fired first.

The man fell.

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