Page 110 of Liberated By Sin

Santino studied the sketches as he picked up his pace. “So we split up.”

“Yeah, Kai and I take the upstairs, and you and Derek down.”

“One problem,” Kai said, pulling out a black jammer. “Once we’re inside, it’s a dead zone. No signal in or out. If you get into trouble, make your way to Eva at the end of that road.”

“Start that thing up, Kai. As far as we know, he’s unaware she placed the call,” I said, catching up to Santino. “We don’t want to get caught on their cameras.”

He agreed with a nod.

“Amalia, point of entry?”

“Eastern side door. It was an employee entrance and right off the kitchen and pantry. Less likely to be occupied…unless they get hungry.”

“Noted.”

Santino stopped abruptly, the home just beyond thick shrubbery. We followed and waited for him to speak his mind or make a move, but instead, he hung his head, letting the gun fall from his grip andinto the dirt.

“I’ve seen and done a lot of shit,” he gritted out. “None of it fazed me, but I can’t…What if she’s…”

Amalia touched Santino’s shoulder. “I can’t promise that she’s alive. Hell, I can’t even pretend we’ll all walk out of there. But I refuse to believe that all this was for nothing. That everything we’ve been through, all the shit that’s brought us together, would just die here. Look around. We’re all connected somehow, like a perfectly spun web.”

“Mi reina, there’s only one way I’m walking out, with you by my side or not at all.”

Amalia split the bushes and started for the home. “You still owe me a honeymoon, Cain. You’re not getting rid of me just yet.”

My brother chuckled and followed behind his wife.

“Ready?” I said, picking up the firearm and handing it back. “No matter what happens in there, Ronan is mine.”

Santino chambered a bullet. “Only if I get a piece of him first.”

By the time we caught up, Amalia was tearing her knife out of a man’s throat. His body was sprawled across the threshold of the side door she’d mentioned. Kai looked on with a grin that told me everything I needed to know about where his mind had drifted to at that moment.

“Is he the only one?”

“For now.” She shrugged, wiping the blood against the dead man’s pants. “He chose one hell of a time to walk out for a smoke break. But this tells us that Ronan isn’t alone.”

We agree with a chorus of nods.

“Watch your six, brother,” Kai said, clapping my shoulder.

“You too.”

I watched them ascend a shadowed stairway, disappearing beyond the corner before the second landing.

Santino and I followed Amalia’s floor plan to the cellar door, but just as we were about to enter, we spotted three men in an adjacent living room. They were asleep, sprawled on the sofas and chairs, and empty bottles littered the floor. Drunk. Easy kill.

“We might as well get them out of our hair so they won’t be a problem later,” I said, holstering my gun and replacing it with my favorite blade.

Santino gritted his teeth and passed me, clutching the first man by the hair and slicing through his neck damn near to the spinal cord. Without hesitation, he finished off the second while I handled the third.

We swept through a second room and empty closets, continued toward the basement, and descended a spiraling staircase. However, we quickly realized that Amalia’s blueprint was outdated. The entire basement had been converted into what looked like catacombs, making a quick exit impossible.

“We’re just going to have to go for it.”

“Agreed,” I said.

Before we could knock down doors, a shrill scream sent us sprinting forward.

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