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How do I call the school?
“I need Carson,” I whimper, just as more glass shatters, and then big arms are reaching inside, and I’m yanked through the window, getting scratched up on the way out. I scream and kick, but I’m no match for the strong arms holding me.
“Let go of me, you asshole.”
“She’s conscious,” comes a bored voice. “Open the trunk.”
What in the actual fuck?
“Help! Help! Fire!”
I’m screaming and fighting back, but someone else grabs my ankles, and together, the two men toss me into the trunk of a car, pain explodes in my head, and then everything goes dark.
Forty-Six
CARSON
The only good thing about today is that I know without a doubt that my family is safe at home. Because if my men can’t reach me, they’ll know to keep Rina and Charlie on lockdown at the compound.
Or they’d better.
Because everything else is going fucking wrong.
Julian, Mateo, Rome, and I are in Rome’s office at Rapture, all looking fucking shell-shocked.
“So, let’s run it down,” Julian says grimly. “Carson’s shopping mall is gone, including Violet’s new studio.”
“Motherfuckingshit,” Mateo growls as he paces the office.
Thank fuck everyone, including Violet and Rose, are fine.
“Mateo’s club was shot up,” Julian continues. “I had eighty million in gems stolen and six of my men killed—”
“And someone tried to blow up my goddamn club,” Rome finishes for him, his jaw clenching with agitation.
We’re all beyond pissed off.
“How’s Spider?” Mateo asks, and I shake my head.
“It’s touch and go. He lost a lot of fucking blood. No one else was specifically targeted like that. Just Spider. Otherwise, it was our properties and goods, and the people killed were random. It wasn’t specific to our families, just property that’s going to cost a fuck ton to fix or replace. So why my goddamn second?”
“They were damn smart to cut our comms,” Julian says and pushes his hands through his hair for the hundredth time since we arrived.
I’ve never seen my brother look this disheveled. We’re all dirty and exhausted, and I don’t see us going home anytime soon.
“How the hell did they do it?” Rome wants to know. “All of it? Right under our motherfucking noses. Do we all have moles?”
“I won’t be able to see how they breached our tech until I get everything up and running again,” Julian replies. “As of now, it’s a fucking tangled mess. Every time I untangle a strand, something else is fucked again.”
“If they wanted to divide and conquer, it worked,” I say. “Only one man would have the fucking audacity to do this.”
“We need to kill Damien once and for all. And I know he’s in this city,” Mateo says. “There’s no way he did this from Monte Carlo or fucking Antarctica or whatever. He’d want a front-row seat.”
“Agreed,” Rome says. “He’s here. But he made sure that we’d be using all of our manpower to put out his literal fires so we couldn’t send them out to hunt him down.”
“Yeah, well, the fires are out,” I reply. “And now, we hunt.”
My phone rings, and I yank it out of my pocket, frowning at Bacon’s name.
