Page 81 of Corrupted Deception

Raven’s brows furrowed. Cait’s didn’t. She was used to me.

I shrugged. “I have research to do.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Cielo Luciano

“According to Pablo,” Aurelio said as he placed a piece of paper down on my father’s desk, “these are the locations we’ll find most of Mendoza’s men.” He nodded to the paper with a list of addresses and a few notes jotted down beneath each one.

“Most?” my father asked, a furrow between his brows, as Deo and Vito leaned in for a closer look.

“Si.” Aurelio nodded. “This one is going to be a problem,” he said, flipping over the sheet of paper.

There was a single address written on the back, not a restaurant or club but a private residence. I didn’t spend a lot of time in New York, but I’d grown up here. I recognized the location.

“It’s outside the city,” Aurelio continued, “and Pablo said there are guards on the property around the clock.”

“Who lives there?” Vito asked, but I had a guess.

“Luis Mendoza himself,” Aurelio answered. “The man holed himself up there after his son, Carlos, disappeared.”

“Holed up or not, he’s certainly not a man who can be overlooked tonight,” my father said as his gaze flickered up to mine.

Message received,I replied silently.

“Of course,Signor,” Aurelio said. “Pablo says he can get us in, but I’m on the fence whether to believe him. It would explain why he’d taken on the suicide mission rather than bolting.”

My father leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his stomach, tapping the tips together. “Pablo thinks if we need him, then we’re not going to kill him. I assume it’s a deal he wants?” he asked Aurelio.

“Don’t bother,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll get the job done,” I offered, just as my father was expecting.

After all, this was what I did—getting to those who thought they were untouchable, taking them out. Sometimes violently, sometimes quietly.

While Deo was in his element here—the heir apparent—and he’d do a fine job leading the charge tonight, my expertise lay in the shadows.

My father eyed me for a moment, then nodded. “Leave the guards alive. I’d like to remindLos Cazadores Sangrientosthat we can slip right past any defense.”

“Of course,Papà.”

“I’m not sure leaving men alive is Cielo’s specialty,” a woman’s voice spoke from the office’s open doorway. A tall, blonde woman with hazel eyes, who, though she bore a suspicious resemblance to Deo, was Vito’s niece, Greta Agossi.

She walked into the room on stiletto heels that looked a lot like Charlotte’s and planted a kiss on the top of Vito’s bald head.

“Count me in, Cielo,” she said as she sat down in one of the empty chairs across from my father.

Deo and I rolled our eyes in tandem.

“You don’t even know who the mark is or why,” I pointed out.

She shrugged. “I somehow doubt it’s for kicks and giggles, but if it is, just don’t tell me. Then we’re all good.”

Vito chuckled while my father scrubbed a hand over his mouth like he was hiding a smile.

Greta tended to think of herself as crazy, but she wasn’t. She was passionate. Whatever she did, she did it with everything she had, and sometimes,thatcame across as crazy.

“Next time, Greta,” I said.

I was accustomed to working alone, usually hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from home. After Charlotte’s meltdown or high and mighty brush-off—I hadn’t quite figured out which one—I was in need of some normalcy. The woman hadn’t just rearranged the puzzle pieces; she’d cut them up into a million pieces, leaving one fucked up mess in her wake.

---