“I’m honored,” he says flatly. “But where’s your wife? You run her off already?”
“Ha. If I were capable of that, she would have been long gone by now.”
“She is a resilient one, isn’t she?”
“Hmm.”
The hum of amusement sounds dangerously affectionate, even to me, and Miko casts me a curious look.
“She’s important to you, isn’t she?” he observes.
“She is my wife,” I point out.
“Yeah, but this is something else. I’ve seen you around a lot of girls. I know when you have something physical going on. But with Sora, you’re different. You’re protective of her.”
I huff, but the skepticism fades quickly when I think about my behavior over the past few weeks.
My irrational jealousy when I heard Gio making her laugh, jumping into the water when I saw she’d gone overboard, even this morning, giving up my inheritance and walking away after my father suggested I should get rid of her—every rash decision I’ve made has been to keep her close.
Miko stops to face me as the silence stretches between us, and I turn to look at my adopted brother.
“What’s going on, Leo?” he presses.
Sighing, I rub the back of my neck, knowing I’m about to drop a bomb on my brother. “I?—”
A massive boom ripples across the grounds, shaking the foundations of the house, and I turn my head to look for the source of the unexpected noise.
“That sounded like it came from the front gate,” Miko observes, and I nod.
What would cause that kind of racket? And why?
Another resounding crash echoes around us, the vibrations raising the hair on the back of my neck, and the following screech of metal on metal sets my teeth on edge.
Then sharp footsteps rush across the marble floor below us. Miko and I share a glance and bolt for the stairs, racing to find the cause of the disturbance.
Staff members race back and forth across the entry, their expressions frightened, their movements harried.
Several of the guards stationed around our property come barreling through the front door, nearly knocking Alfonzo off his feet as they burst inside.
“What’s going on?” I demand, striding purposefully toward them.
“We’re under attack,” one man gasps, his face pale, his brow sweaty. “They’ve battered through the front gates, sir—they’re already inside the property lines.”
“Who is?” I ask, as I reach the front door.
“From what I can tell? The Irish, the Russians… the Japanese.”
“What?” I growl, tossing the man a furious scowl.
Glass shatters to my left, and someone screams as a Molotov cocktail flies through the window, exploding in a liquid burst of flame against the wall. Miko pushes past me, storming fearlessly outside to assess the situation as the staff flinch around me, ducking for cover.
There’s no gunfire—not yet, at least—which tells me that, as much as I don’t want to believe it, the Yakuza are leading the charge.
Their skill with close combat and blades means they’ve probably killed the rest of the men stationed at the front gate. That’s why they managed to batter it down without starting a firefight.
And as I step out onto the front porch, I can see the hell storm coming down on us.
Pyotr Novikov and his men are responsible for the homemade bombs bursting through our windows at an alarming rate, setting fires to every flammable surface on the front of the house.
