Amante’s face was red as he glared at Elio like he was a bug that needed to be squashed.
“Though,” Elio continued once we made it to the front of the room where the man was standing. “I’m sure that would be hard seeing as you sent people to murder us on our honeymoon.”
There was a ripple of shocked gasps from the less connected members of the family and their wives.
Amante’s beady blue eyes glanced around at the noise before he let out a harsh snort. “You come in here, alone, and try to speak to me like that? I’ll break every bone in your body and hang you by your toes from the gate as a warning to the rest of your flea-bitten pack.”
Elio’s grin grew with every word, and Amante seeing this, grew more and more red.
My uncle, who was standing off to Amante’s side, stepped forward. His face was twisted with rage as he stared at us. There was definitely no love lost there. Elio’s father hadn’t been much of a father to either of us anyway, so it didn’t hurt my feelings when he turned to some of the guards who were still in the room. “What the hell are you all doing? Grab them!”
The order was barked and punctuated by enough alpha pheromone that several people winced, but no one moved. As an alpha nearing his sixties, my uncle was far past his prime, so an order like that held no weight to it.
Just like the rest of the older generation of this damned family. They would do anything to stay in power, even if it meant stepping on their own children to do so.
“You know, Dad,” Elio said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “That looked fun. Maybe I’ll give it a try.”
Elio’s shoulders pulled taut as he sucked in a deep breath. “Grab them.”
His pheromones rolled off of him in powerful waves, causing the people closest to us to tilt their heads until their necks were visible. It was a knee-jerk reaction as old as human evolution… and our cue to begin.
Several members in the crowd began to scream as their neighbors began to pull weapons on them.
Our allies, who had gone into hiding, were more easily convinced of joining our cause once Dante’s dads got involved.
It turned out that the three men knew more secrets about the members of the Amante family than I thought possible. Travis had explained that, as a rule, they generally didn’t use secrets like currency, but had decided to make an exception just this once.
Now we had nearly double the amount we’d worked so hard to gather over the past six years.
Outside in the distance, the sound of rapid gunfire could be heard, likely Keane’s team making their sweep through the ground and eliminating the guards. They would be here soon.
The people who had come for a party and were now in the middle of a would-be war, started to demand to be allowed to leave.
Overhead, the opulent chandeliers went out and we were all thrown into darkness. It seemed that Dante had succeeded in his task.
People began to scream as guns began to go off.
But Amante and his men were now shooting blind, our people were not.
Men in tuxes began to pull their own night vision glasses from their pockets, putting them on before they began to fire back at the men firing off rounds at random.
“Find Amante!” Elio shouted over the panicked din.
A stray bullet whizzed by my head and I ducked away from it and shot in the general direction it came from, praying that I was shooting at an enemy rather than one of our own.
When this was all over I was definitely going to have a talk with Dante about the idea of turning off the power.
I got that it was supposed to keep the electric gates from opening and thereby giving Amante an escape route, but this shit was so chaotic that I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe trying to shoot out the motors would have been a better idea.
Another explosion rocked the mansion, this time causing the glass windows of the atrium to shatter into a million pieces.
“Do you have eyes on Amante?” Elio asked over the comms device.
I scanned the room, looking for Amante and the men that had been surrounding him. They were gone.
“Negative.”
“Shit,” Elio cursed. “Keane, Dante, Travis, what about you, do you have eyes on the target?”
