We helped him pull himself up onto the window sill and waited until he crawled out completely before we turned to Howard.
“Not a chance in hell I’m lettin’ you boys touch me,” the gruff man grumbled as he heaved himself up and out of the window.
“Get set up,” Elio told them once they ducked in to look at us. “Don’t get caught and I’ll let you pick the first beer I drink.”
Travis reached in and gave him a firm handshake. “Don’t die, kiddos, or your little lady is going to be pissed.”
Then they were gone, splitting off in opposite directions to complete their tasks.
Soon we were all standing in the crisp air.
“Once you finish with the generators, meet us down by the ballroom,” Elio told Dante and the alpha nodded once before he melted into the darkness.
Elio turned to me, his assault rifle gripped in his gloved hands. “You ready for this, cousin?”
I sighed. “As I’ll ever be.”
The sound of laughter filled my ears as we crept along the empty hallway toward the massive atrium that served as the Amante estate’s ballroom.
It had been tricky avoiding the patrolling guards, but thankfully with just the two of us we’d managed to traverse the mansion with relative ease.
Now we just needed to wait for our distraction.
I checked my watch. Thirty seconds until it all began.
My heart raced in my chest and I closed my eyes and thought about the day on the sailboat with Cini. I remembered the way the sun shone on her pale blonde hair, making it look ethereal and almost as if it was glowing, and the way she had curled up asleep on the catamaran net, completely trusting me to take care of her.
My heartbeat slowed and calmed and I opened my eyes, ready to go.
“We’re ready over here,” Travis’s voice crackled through my ear piece. “Gird your loins boys, because this is about to be damned loud.”
“Copy that,” Elio whispered. “Keane?”
“Ready when you are, try to save some of those Amante bastards for me.”
It wasn’t lost on me that less than six months ago we had been sworn enemies and now here we were working together. I suppose stranger things had happened, but if all of this worked then the relationship between the Irish and the Italians would be different than ever before.
In the distance a deep boom could be heard followed by one, two, three, four more.
The music inside of the ballroom cut off abruptly and so did the laughter.
We knew that the noise would draw most of the perimeter guards away from the mansion, giving Keane and his men the opportunity to dispatch them like they were fish in a barrel.
Our part was a little bit different. We were the show.
Rushing forward to the double doors, I could hear Amante’s voice trying to soothe his guests. “I’m sure it’s nothing, the estate is old and we’ve had our fair share of electrical boxes exploding.”
I smirked at that. Of course Amante wasn’t considering a full scale attack on our end. The man had an ego the size of Texas without the skills to back it up.
He’d left most of his real work to Alesso early on and after his son had died he relied too heavily on his retainers. That had made him weak.
Gripping the ornate handles of both doors, I threw them open and we stepped inside.
“What a wonderful party you’re throwing, sir,” Elio said, putting on his best impression of Ranieri’s bravado as he could muster as he clapped his gloved hands slowly.
The crowd parted as the expensively clad people gawked at the two of us.
“It’s a shame that, as your sons-in-law, we didn’t get the invite.”
