Page 8 of Damien’s Mate

Damien was about to go hunt down Lila when his earbud came to life with a Level 3 security alert. All hands to the entryway and the main staircase.

Someone was trying to get into the summit with no invitation.

Everyone who was cleared to enter the meeting room had received a special electronic badge. No badge, no entry—even if you were a famous crime boss and everyone in the damn room knew who you were.

Marco gestured to Damien. “Stay with me,” he ordered, and headed for the main entry.

Damien paid no attention. He knew exactly who was trying to get in without an invitation, and he knew why.

Rostov was creating a distraction, so that Lila could do whatever it was they’d planned for her to do with the damn keycard.

Damien didn’t actually care what that was, now that he wasn’t going to be blamed for it. But with the entire security team heading for the atrium and the main staircase, nobody was watching him.

This was his opportunity to get the fuck out of here.

He ducked through the crowd still in the ballroom, going out the back by the lavatories. Tony the Hammer had left his post in the doorway.

Thank you, Lila.

Damien swiped his keycard and pushed through the door.

Chapter 4

When she got to the big storage closet in the service area, Lila found the black canvas bag of burglar’s tools on a shelf inside a toilet paper carton.

Rostov had placed someone inside the catering company, and he’d planted the bag here yesterday during the run-up to the party.

Behind the carton, in a dark corner, was a timer box. She hit the button on top as she’d been instructed, and it started a green LED countdown timer.

The black bag held a duplicate timer that had started up remotely along with the first one, plus a paper with a numerical code and an electronic safecracker.

She now had fourteen minutes and forty-seven seconds to get into Salzano’s vault, bring the item Rostov wanted back and leave it in the carton, and get out.

What Rostov and his inside man didn’t know was that Lila had the unnatural speed of all predator shifters. She could do this in half the time. Even in heels.

The bare, uncarpeted service hallway led to a discreet door near Salzano’s private study. Stepping into the main hallway was like night and day—thick carpets and expensive paneling everywhere.

She looked around for surveillance, but it seemed their intel was on point—there were no security cameras in this part of the house. The study was unlocked, as she’d been promised.

She made her way quickly across the room, shaking her head at the décor. Dead animal heads all over the walls, and a male lion’s pelt on the floor in front of the fireplace, mouth open in a snarl.

That creeped her out. Not that any shifter lion would be dumb enough to get killed by a dipshit like Salzano—or if he was, he deserved to end up as a hearth rug.

But it still made her sick thinking of the wild creature that had died just so Salzano could jerk off to the idea of how badass he was.

She bypassed the rest of the animal carnage, and headed for the wall of mahogany bookcases, filled with matching books that looked like no one had ever read them.

Second bookcase from the left… third shelf from the bottom… last three books on the right. She pulled them out and slid her thumbnail into the indentation in the back of the paneling. A section slid upward, uncovering a keypad.

Now she’d find out how good their intel really was.

As it turned out, perfect. She punched in the code provided and the bookcase swung inward, revealing the collection room.

This was where Salzano kept all the art he couldn’t display publicly—the pieces that had gotten too much publicity when they were stolen; the illegal antiquities; the stuff that was believed to be in various museums but had been replaced by expert forgeries.

She ignored it all. There was only one thing she wanted out of Salzano’s collection, and a quick survey of the glass cases surrounding her told her it wasn’t there.

That left the vault. She attached the electronic safecracker to the lock, set it going, and checked her timer. She was ahead of schedule, as long as the safecracker did its thing as fast as it was supposed to.