Page 80 of His Eternal Claim

I shove the phone back into my pocket.

Today, I’ll have my pretty little wife in my arms again.

I check the guns hidden under the car seat. And check the location of my men that I stationed around the hotel a few hours ago. They reported that Hannah is there with Selene. And Vane is there too.

I speak through the microphone. “Do you see them, Molotov?”

“More like see your Mother-in-law kissing Vane fucking Davenport.”

I clench my teeth. This whore of a woman. “And Selene?”

“She was here a moment ago, maybe in another room,” he says and takes a deep breath. “Tell me again, what this has to do with me?”

“It’s your master, Molotov. You owe him.”

An irritated sigh crackles through the comms, followed by the distinct clack of a high-caliber bolt action being chambered. “Judas is an extremist, and you are a lunatic,” Kyle mutters. “There is a vast difference. He pays for my service; you just expect me to risk an international incident because you can’t keep your wife on a leash.”

“S’s my wife, not a dog,” I speak softly, my eyes fixed on the illuminated façade of the Hotel de L’Ombre across the rain-slicked Parisian street.

On the dashboard, the monitor glows cold and blue, a single red dot pulsing lazily inside a third-floor suite.

“She’s a bird who thinks the sky belongs to her,” I murmur. “I’m simply reminding her who owns the horizon.”

I reach into the briefcase on the passenger seat and pull out the sleek, matte-black detonator.

Judas pulls strings to get the plastic explosives through the French borders.

But the placement is mine.

My men slipped through the hotel’s maintenance grid four hours ago.

“You’re going to collapse the entire west wing,” Kyle says from the other building across the street. His tone holds no outrage, but critique.

“The structural integrity of the old masonry won’t hold if you detonate the support pillars. It’s sloppy.”

“It’s a distraction,” I correct.

My thumb rests lightly against the safety switch.

“Hannah Visconti expects a negotiation, more like a frantic husband offering concessions and signing over territory. She wants revenge for killing her husband or for not letting her have a fuck-night with my Father.” A slow smile touches my mouth. “What she won’t expect is a fucking demolition.”

I glance at my watch. 11:42 PM.

“Thirty seconds, Kyle.”

He adjusts the rifle against his shoulder.

“Keep your eyes on the service exit. If anyone wearing a Visconti crest drags her toward a vehicle before I reach her, take off their kneecaps.”

Kyle gives a short nod.

“If they try to put her in a car?”

“Put a bullet through the engine block.”

His mouth twitches.

“And if the target—your wife—runs the wrong way?”