Page 103 of The Masked King

As if she understands my thought process, she adds, “It was a trap, Enzo. You, me, Gio. Even Demi,” she says as an afterthought.

“Why did you come back for me?”

“I want you to kill the asshole.”

For once, we’re both on the same page.

When we finally emerge from the tunnel like moles leaving the burrow, I’m surprised to find the world in darkness. The moon is hidden by dense cloud cover, and fine drizzly rain has turned the property in the distance into a gloomy watercolor painting in monochrome shades.

When I turn back to thank Bianca, she’s gone.

That’s when I start running.

Back to the house, back to the gunfire like I’m following a lighthouse beacon in a storm, adrenaline pumping through my veins. My heart skitters when I realize that Bianca was right: there’s no one guarding the outside of the property.

Malevsky’s first mistake. He contained the enemy and used all his resources to close in on them like sheepdogs herding sheep into an enclosure.

But in his quest for checkmate, he forgot about the black sheep, the unconventional one whose only rule is that rules are made to be broken.

I enter the house through the den at the rear of the building. No bodies. No disruption. No blood. The gunfire is erratic now as the numbers dwindle and the body count rises, but it sounds as if it’s still centered around the foyer and the rooms surrounding Malevsky and Demi.

I wait by the interior door to the hallway and listen before opening it enough to peer outside. A body on the floor is partially blocking my exit, but there’s no sounds of movement, no weapons being fired. I step outside, and check out the vacant eyes, the tiny hammer and scythe tattoo on the corpse’s neck, the ink etched around his fingers.

Bratva.

I unfurl his fingers from around his revolver and pat him down. He has a lightweight dagger inside his right sock, grenades in his pockets, and a pistol tucked into his waistband.

“You won’t be needing these, buddy.”

Armed, I follow the gunfire deeper into the house, every step taking me closer to Demi. I find more bodies in the hallway, some Bratva, some are Gio’s men.

I don’t think about finding Gio’s body. If I allow the image into my head, it will take root and there will be no stopping it, so while I believe he’s alive, he is, and that’s good enough for me.

The battle halts, the echo of gunshots bouncing around the scorched walls.

The living room is empty apart from the corpses littering the floor. The piano room is as I left it when I shot the lock and escaped with Demi and Bianca, the bodies of my men still outside clutching their weapons. I’m approaching the foyer in the middle of the house when a door opens, and Gio drags me into a room.

He’s with one of his foot soldiers. I’m hopeful the rest of his army are holding the fort elsewhere in the house.

“They have Demi.” He doesn’t ask how I escaped. “I tried to stop them, but the asshole was using her as fucking armor.”

Rage spits and hisses inside my chest as I replay the last gunshot I heard from the basement. “I need you to get me to the utility room.”

Gio nods, pensive. “They’ve all gathered around that area like a fucking circus waiting to start.”

“So, we need to announce the first act.”

It won’t be enough to launch a full-on attack when there are so few of us. We need to toss a gigantic fucking fly into the web and lure enough of them away that we can handle the ones left behind.

Then it’s down to me to kill the spider.

The grenades I stole from the dead thug in the hallway are heavy in my pockets. Tossing them directly into the mix risks Demi’s life as well as the asshole keeping her hostage, and three of us against the remains of a Russian mob are not the kind of odds I like. But it’s our only hope of getting them away from the utility room where Malevsky is currently in residence.

Unless we can get upstairs without drawing attention to ourselves.

I glance up and thank God for being on our side when I spot the hole in the ceiling, the edges scorched and seared black from the flames that licked through the house a year ago.

Gio’s foot soldier, Miguel, is a couple inches taller than me and my brother with the arm strength of a weightlifter. If we give him a leg-up, he’ll reach the hole with his arms extended, then all that remains to be seen is if his shoulders will fit through the hole.