“How do you know he hasn’t seen us?” I asked, swallowing a flash of panic.
“Because he hasn’t fired,” Gray replied with a half smirk. “So stay still, and stay hidden, my impatient little hedgehog. Besides drawing attention if he starts scanning for threats, you’re distracting me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Maybe I wouldn’t be squirming if I didn’t have your cum soaking my panties right now.” His gaze heated, then his eyes narrowed with a warning glare. Okay, maybe that information wasn’t helping the whole distraction thing. “Still don’t think I need to be wearing a fucking Kevlar vest, though.”
“Yes, you do,” he murmured, shifting his attention to the rifle scope and scanning the area for the hundredth time.
I sighed. “Because someone might shoot at us all the way up here?”
“Because you look fucking hot in it,” he corrected. “And it helpsallof us to know you’re protected somewhat. Now,hush, Prickles. Much as I’d love to, I can’t go shutting you up with my dick in your throat right now.”
That actually did shut me up. As much as I loved getting my mouth fucked by Gray’s huge cock… we were here to save Angelo. Nothing was more important than that, and I needed to stop splitting Grayson’s focus. So for the nexthourI sat there as still as a statue and tried to practice some of the meditation techniques that Dr. Candace was teaching me.
Finally, though, Grayson grunted and reached for his radio. “We have action,” he said into the microphone.
I scrambled over to the ledge where he was set up with his sniper and backup rifles. He silently handed me the binoculars again, and my heart sat right in my throat as I found theactionhe was talking about. Three blacked-out cars had just pulled up to the meeting point. The doors opened, and sharply suited Ricci men climbed out.
“Giovanni,” I whispered, recognizing Angelo’s sleazy father surrounded by goons.
“Wilson won’t be far behind,” Gray commented, his eye glued to the scope. We’d all made an unspoken agreement to continue calling my back-from-the-dead fatherWilson. As far as I was concerned, Bruce Bellerose had died in a fire nearly nine years ago. That man… the one who’d pointed a gun at me and kidnapped Angelo? That was not my father. He was a stranger. A monster.
Sooner or later, it was a topic I needed to tackle with Dr. Candace—not just that he’d faked his death andnever contacted me again… but that he was obviously the guilty party in the murder of my mother. And my unborn baby, whether that had been intentional or not. Some things were just too big to work through all at once, though, and this was something I’d tabled until Angelo was home safe.
Then… well, then I could fall to pieces over the whole thing. Right now, he needed me to be strong—all the guys did—so we couldfocusand save our fallen Angel.
“Boats incoming,” Giana’s voice sounded in my ear. Gray and I both wore earpieces connected to the radio, and I was appreciative not to be left in the dark. “Looks like it’s go time. We’ve taken out a few of their men around the edges but left enough so it’s not radio silent on the docks. We still good up there, Big Bird?”
I snorted at her chosen codename for Grayson and caught his glower in the corner of my eye.
“All good here,” he replied. “I’ll take down their birdie once all the pieces are on the board.”
“Mixed metaphor,” I whispered, and he ignored me. Fair call, his meaning was clear enough.
“Cars approaching from the south,” Rhett advised from his position as lookout on another elevated position. “Two sedans and one SUV.”
“Wilson,” I murmured, anxious nerves coursing through me like a live wire. “This is it. Isn’t it?”
I’d be devastated if this was a false lead. All the buildup and then no climax. Those were the kind of bullshit plotlines sadistic writers used to draw out a story and fuck with their audience, not real life.
“Looks like it,” Gray confirmed, his eye still locked on the scope.
I brought the binoculars back to my eyes, searching for the boats Giana had mentioned. Two zodiacs with outboard motors approached slowly through the inky water, each carrying a half dozen black-clad guys. Or I assumed they were all guys because these crime lords were all misogynistic as fuck.
My breathing hitched when they tied off against the dock and a bound, hooded man got manhandled off the zodiac. “There he is,” I said in a strangled whisper. “Angel. He’s…” I wanted to sayhe’s alive,but as the guys started down the dock toward Giovanni and Wilson, who’d just gotten out his car, I realized that Angelo wasn’t walking himself. Two broad-shouldered guards held him up by his biceps, his wrists cuffed together behind him, but his boots dragged as they escorted him along the dock.
“He’s hurt,” I squeaked out, my emotions choking me. I blinked rapidly to clear my cloudy vision, trying to keep Angelo in sight. What good was all of this if he was already dead?
“He won’t be dead, Prickles,” Grayson reassured me in a gruff voice. “Wilson wouldn’t waste his opportunity like that. He didn’t go through all that effort to transport Angelo back here only to have him killed in transit.”
Okay. Yes, that made sense. He was right. They’d probably just had a struggle with Angelo and knocked him out. That sounded plausible, right?
“Alright, all our guests have arrived,” Vee said in our comms. “Ready to set off some fireworks?”
Grayson drew a deep, steady breath, settling his shoulders and grip on the gun. I knew from the hundred times we’d gone over the plan that the first strike was taking out any ranged weapon guards, like our sniper across the way. Then he’d target anyone close to Angelo. To our utter frustration, we’d concluded we couldn’t kill Giovanni yet, but Wilson was fair game. If anyone could kill him, they would. But our primary objective was saving Angelo, so those guards would be the focus.
One shot and the tinkle of breaking glass in the distance, and our rival sniper was taken care of.
“Birdie down,” Gray confirmed after waiting a beat to see if there was return fire.
