Nico squeezed me tight. “It’ll be okay.”
I chuckled humorlessly. “That’s what I keep telling myself. It’s all I can do to stay sane.”
“We won’t let them hurt your parents.”
“What if they're playing us, Nico? What if they’re lying, and they’re all already dead?”
“Don’t think like that. We have something they want. Viola is a businesswoman. The first rule of business is if you have leverage, you use it—you don’t get rid of it. They are alive. Never think differently.”
I fed off his confidence. He sounded like he truly did believe it. I hugged his arm, clinging to him and his hope, praying it would rub off on me. All I could do was hope that what he was saying was true. I also had to wish things would go the way we wanted. One thing I would never tell Nico was that if it came down to me or my parents and Abi, I’d sacrifice myself every time.
43
NICO
Maddy had another bad night. Her bad dreams had woken her up three times. She was taking a nap upstairs, completely exhausted from lack of sleep after so much disruption. It seemed like the nightmares were getting worse every day as we got closer to the full moon. I’m sure the kidnapping attempt hadn’t helped, either. I was worried about how things would be in the days before the full moon. Hopefully, she and her wolf could figure things out so she could shift before they both became too distraught and exhausted to do anything, much less fight, run, and whatever else we would need to do.
Dad and the guys were coming over for a meeting that morning, and Luis was going to give us an update on the reconnaissance of the locations we thought Maddy’s family was being held. They were in different locations, in completely different states. I didn’t have high hopes that things would be simple. We’d managed to score a win when we’d identified the locations. I had no doubt the royals wouldn’t be that lax on anything else.
“Do you want the bad news?” Luis asked as we all settled in.
“Not even going to pretend there’s some good news?” Dad asked.
Luis shrugged. “I’m a pragmatist.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s have it.”
Luis opened a tablet and swiped until he found what he was looking for. He turned it around and showed us a picture of an abandoned house. “We’re pretty sure this is where Maddy’s parents are being held.”
Sebastian squinted at the screen. “It doesn’t look bad. What’s the big deal here? Can’t we just do a smash and grab? Go in the dead of night and pull a Seal Team Six sort of thing?”
Luis shook his head. “We thought about that. I checked some street cameras around the area. Found some nasty stuff.” He started pointing at different areas of the picture as he spoke. “Multiple people inside the house. I paid a local investigator to take some pics. From the images he sent, it’s safe to assume they’re all armed. There are cameras all around the location, so they’d see us coming. We wouldn’t have the element of surprise. Good news is they look like a closed circuit, so only the guys inside can access the feed. My guy is also pretty sure the apartment building next door has two different guys on elevated floors. If those guys have scoped rifles, we’re dead before we even get to the door.”
“Well, shit,” Felipe muttered.
“Exactly.” Luis swiped the screen again and showed another building. “It’s pretty much the same thing. You want me to be honest?” he asked, looking me dead in the eye.
I nodded. “I wouldn’t have you here if I didn’t want you to be.”
“There’s no way we get them out without several of us getting injured or killed.”
Dad raised an eyebrow. “Pragmatist?”
Luis grinned back and nodded. “Yup. Look, I think that’s why they separated them. The royals were worried we’d go for a rescue operation. By separating them, we’d either need to choose one to go after or split our people into two teams. In the first option, they have a heads up and can move Abi or the parents. The second option is that our teams are too small or weak to actually get them, and it’s a bloodbath.”
I sank back into the couch and put my face in my hands. Both safe houses seemed to be in residential areas, which meant that not only were the royals there, but if something big happened, the neighbors who lived nearby would call the cops. Then we’d have to deal with that, along with not getting our brains blown out by a sniper or guard. It was a chess game, and they’d set up the board perfectly.
“Fuck,” I hissed. “Those sons of bitches are smart.”
I’d been hoping to come up with some sort of leg up on them, some way to outsmart them, but that was looking like childish wishful thinking. It shouldn’t have been surprising. They’d been planning, scheming, and murdering for centuries. They had more experience at this than anyone. I should have known better.
A decision needed to be made, and I was the one who had to make it. We’d need to wait. Maybe something else would happen to give us the advantage we needed. “All right, no one makes a move on any of these houses. Not without my express order. Understood?”
They all nodded, but Sebastian was slower to respond than the others. I could see him chewing at the inside of his cheek, his brow furrowed in concentration. He hadn’t been the same since Abi had been taken. It seemed like he almost blamed himself. Maddy had filled me in on their fling, and I wondered if he thought the kidnapping could have been prevented if he’d actually pursued Abi instead of having a weekend of debaucheryand then going about his life. Sebastian had never been the type to stew in guilt. Usually, he let things slide off his back. Abi being taken had really messed him up. It made me wonder if there wasn’t some part of him that actuallydidwant something more with her.
“Sebastian? Are we good here?” I asked. I didn’t need him going off half-cocked and trying to be a one-man rescue team. It would only get him killed.
He stared at me, then nodded again. “I got you.”
