Page 66 of Corrupted Deception

I took off across the warehouse to the narrow hall at the back and down the stairs at the end of it. Ray followed on my heels as I used the fingerprint scanner to open the armory in the basement and walked through it to the surveillance room beyond it. I was fairly sure Fort Knox really did have nothing on this place.

Inside the surveillance room, my fingers flew across the main keyboard, accessing the defensive measures my dad had installed over the years and pulling up camera angles on the dozen monitors on the wall.

As the scene outside came together on the monitors, Aurelio walked into the room.

“That’s quite the gun collection,” Aurelio mused, nodding toward the armory filled with everything from Barrett M82s and Heckler & Koch MP5s to fragmentation grenades and tactical gear, and enough ammunition to take out a small country.

I shrugged. “My dad likes to be prepared,” I said as the first car door opened and a man stepped out. An attractive man, impeccably dressed in a pale gray suit and midnight blue tie.

A lead weight dropped in my stomach as I increased the magnification for a better look. Medium brown hair and eyes and dark scruff across his jaw. And really fucking tall.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” I muttered under my breath as car doors opened around the warehouse and a lot of men stepped out.

“A problem,Signorina?” Aurelio asked, his voice tight.

“Isn’t there always?” I said with an impressive outward calm while it felt like my insides were running in a hundred different directions.

I dug the fingers of my left hand into my palm as I flipped on the intercom, which would broadcast throughout the warehouse and all around it.

I licked my lips. Swallowed.

Here we go.

I pressed and held down the intercom. “You’re trespassing on private property,. It’s time for you to leave,” I said in Spanish to Gustavo Mendoza, and I could hear the echo of my own voice a split second later coming back to me on the sound feed from outside.

“I do not think so,SeñoritaSantoro. You have something that belongs to me,” the man said, his voice heavily accented.

Okay, so he clearly knew who I was too.Lucky me.

“What is it he thinks you have,Signorina?” Aurelio asked.

“A dead body, I suppose,” I mused aloud, shaking my head. Though, if the guy thought I’d mounted his brother’s body on the wall like some sort of morbid hunting trophy, he had some serious screws loose. It did make me wonder what the hell was mounted onhiswall.

Aurelio’s eyebrows raised.

“The man Cielo and I had a conversation with last night,” I explained.

“You can either hand it over,” Gustavocontinued, his words morphing back and forth between English and Spanish, “or we can come in there and take it.”

“’I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down’,” I sang quietly.

Aurelio chuckled.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

“All right, there’s a whole lot wrong at the moment, but what he’s saying… he keeps using the word ‘it’, even in Spanish—‘handitover’. If I’d killed your brother, you’d be out there demanding I ‘handhimover’, right?”

Aurelio nodded.

I pressed the intercom button. “Nothing in here belongs to you,SeñorMendoza. I’m giving you the chance to walk away,” I said, ignoring the blood pounding in my ears. “Take it.”Please.

“What is it you intend to do,Signorina?—if you don’t mind me asking,” Aurelio said with a wry smile and just a slight furrow between his brows as he looked from one monitor to the next.

I followed his gaze, taking a tally of the men surrounding the warehouse. Thirteen—including Mendoza. They all still stood close to their black SUVs, but I could feel their restless energy from here. It was making my heart pound harder and sweat trickle down the back of my neck, because there was only one way forward.

“If they don’t get back into their pretty, little cars, I intend to fry them,” I said like I was talking about fish and chips, not human beings.

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