Chapter 17
When Marcus and I return to the living room, we find everyone in roughly the same places we left them.
Victoria is still on the floor, although she’s scooted back to lean against the wall on the opposite side of the front door from where Adrian’s body lies. And Dominic is sitting on the torn up couch instead of just leaning against it.
Theo and Ryland both still have weapons drawn, and when we enter the room, their eyes find mine immediately, shifting between me and Marcus.
I give a slight nod to let them know everything’s okay, then turn my attention to Victoria.
“If we agree not to kill you, I need your word that you’re in this until the end. That you’ll help us bring down Luca.”
“What happens then?” she asks, her green eyes glittering as she eyes me coolly. “If we succeed?”
I blink, almost shocked by the question.
Jesus. It didn’t even occur to me until she asked, but I can barely picture that possibility. A version of events where we win. My men and I have been forging ahead on pure determination and a lack of any other options, but it still feels a little like a suicide mission.
I’m sure that’s not what Victoria needs to hear right now though. And, hell, she’s smart enough that she’s probably already figured that out for herself.
So instead of bringing the conversation down by discussing our odds of failure, I shrug one shoulder. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I can personally guarantee you that Jaden will be left alone. So will your family.”
Her gaze slides from me to Marcus, her expression hardening. But she nods. “Deal.”
I glance over at Dominic, who’s slumped on the couch. He looks exhausted, and a fresh line of blood is trickling down the side of his face. “I can make the same guarantee for your family if you want.”
“I don’t.” His words are blunt and hard. “They’re not my family. And they don’t deserve my protection. They bought me and signed me up to die just to try to win more power for themselves. Fuck them.”
Theo makes a low noise that almost sounds like approval.
Keeping my expression carefully neutral, I walk over to the sofa and perch on the edge of the cushion to unwind the tape from around Dom’s wrists. He looks a little surprised but doesn’t say anything, letting me work in silence.
As I remove the last piece and wad it up into a sticky ball, I see Victoria push to her feet out of the corner of my eye. Theo and Ryland both shove their guns in the waistbands of their pants, although their posture is still tense and wary.
Ignoring it, Victoria rests her hands on her hips. “So what’s the plan? I’m assuming you have one?”
“Yeah.” Marcus steps forward. “We’re looking for evidence that links Luca to the Viper’s activities. We pulled files from his computer, and we have a hacker who’s working on decrypting them, but he hasn’t been able to access all of the data. He’s still working on it.”
Victoria smirks. “Well, lucky for you, I know a guy. Better than good. And fast. Whatever your hacker hasn’t been able to unlock, I’m sure mine can crack it.”
I can practically feel Marcus bristling at her words, but we don’t have time to get into a pissing contest over whose hacker is better.
“Great,” I say quickly. “We can send files over soon. But we should get someplace more secure first.”
I don’t look at Adrian’s body as I speak, but I don’t need to. It feels like a cloud of death is hanging over this entire house, and I’m keenly aware of every corpse in the room.
“Yeah.” Theo nods, chewing on his lower lip. He tosses a glance at Dominic. “Your car’s pretty much fucked, sorry.”
Dom shrugs. “I’m not surprised.”
“We can take mine,” Victoria says. “Adrian’s car is close by too, but probably better not to drive it.”
Ryland scrubs a hand through his dark hair. “We should torch this place before we go too. Hell of a lot easier than wiping the whole place down to clear our fingerprints.”
“Okay, good.” I hesitate, realizing there’s a huge part of our plan still unaccounted for. “Where should we go?”
“I’ve got a place.” Dominic eyes are closed, his head tilted back on the couch. “A safe house like this one on the northeast side of town.” He cracks his eyelids open, looking over at me. “Not the same place we took Ayla. No one else knows about it but me.”
Ryland’s expression hardens at the mention of my kidnapping, and my skin prickles with nerves. It may be a horrible idea to team up with Dominic and Victoria. They’re pretty much the last two people I ever expected to have on our side. But each of them have their own reasons for wanting to take down Luca, and it’s that, more than anything, that makes me trust them enough to work with them.
We don’t really have much choice. We can’t let them go, so our only other options are to keep them prisoner or kill them.
“All right.” Marcus nods, his voice clipped. He glances over at Ryland and Theo. “There’s accelerant in the basement.”
It takes less than five minutes for us to get ready to leave. The screen of Marcus’s laptop is cracked, but it miraculously survived the shootout with no more damage than that. The guys drag the bodies into a rough pile in the living room, and then Ryland and Theo pour the accelerant over everything.
The house goes up with a whoosh, flames licking over the wood with hungry ferocity. The blazing flame almost matches the color of the sky as the first rays of the sun stream over the horizon.
It would be beautiful if it weren’t so bleak.
Victoria leads us down the driveway to where she left her car, and we all climb in.
It’s a tight fit now that our little party has grown to include six people, but we cram ourselves in anyway. Marcus sits up front, his gun held lightly in his hand as an overt reminder to Victoria not to fuck with us. The rest of us crawl into the back, with Dominic sitting behind the driver’s seat and me settled across Ryland’s and Theo’s laps.
Theo’s hand wraps around my waist, pulling me a little closer to him and his friend and a little farther away from Dominic. I lean back against his chest, inhaling his cherry wood scent and letting his warmth ground me.
I feel like there’s nothing left of me but frayed edges and jagged points. It’s almost impossible to believe that this all started less than twenty-four hours ago. So much has happened in that time, it feels as though weeks have passed.
No music plays as we drive. At one point, Victoria turns the car’s stereo on, but Marcus pointedly turns it back off. Dominic calls out the directions to her, and the rest of us watch the quiet streets of Halston roll by.
“It looks so peaceful,” I murmur, gazing at the mostly empty sidewalks painted orange and pink by the rising sun.
“For now.”
Theo’s voice is light, but I can tell he’s only partly teasing. He’s not wrong that the peace can’t last. That it’s an illusion to begin with.
We cut through the city and end up on the opposite side of town, at a house that’s less remote than the one we just left but still tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac.