Page 52 of Midnight Salvation

“Not good, but Paul is following Jay’s instructions,” I replied. “Mum is with her. She was the one who mentioned that Dad used to paint his rounds with poison.”

Lucas nodded, his face tight. “First Sofia and now Lucrezia. I swear the last time I felt this helpless was when I watched their mama leave us.”

“Who are we hitting first?” Xavier asked.

“My cousin Josh is a slimy little bastard who is always trying to curry favour with Uncle Eli. If anyone is listening at doors and trying to ingratiate himself, that is who I would suspect.” I trailed my fingers through my hair.

“Let’s do this,” Jordan said. “I have a team standing ready if we need them, but sometimes less is more.”

“I agree.”

We changed into black combat trousers and long-sleeved T-shirts. Our pockets were filled with weapons and guns slotted into holsters. When we were ready, we each resembled a one-man army.

“It’s time to seek a little revenge,” Lucas muttered.

“Amen to that,” I replied.

We took two Range Rovers since they were each fitted with weapons as added extras as well as the ones hiding in all the panels. The full moon guided us and I thought back to all the nights I stood talking to Lucrezia while looking up at it.

She was the only woman I had even given a damn about and someone had made the mistake of harming her.

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Vengeance would be rained down on every person who had taken Dad’s side. It was open season in the Blackwood estate, and I was the chief executioner.

***

Chapter Sixteen

Ash

Complacency was a sin. He believed that no one would touch him because of who he was. My cousin Josh was a vain, arrogant excuse for a man who had stood aside and let his wife be assaulted by other men with the same pitiful standards as him.

We stood like the four horsemen of the apocalypse outside his door, each of us bringing vengeance to his home. We spread out around the property. I made swift work of disabling his CCTV while Jordan took his security system offline. Xavier and Lucas skirted around the perimeter, peeking in windows and using thermal imaging cameras to determine how many were in the house.

I doubted Josh kept his wife in his London home. The poor woman was probably left in his “family home” far from his life as a playboy.

“There seems to be a basement,” Xavier said. “Even though there is no basement on the plans for this house. Two energy signatures on the second floor, three in the basement.”

We were all wearing balaclavas, so the only visible feature were our eyes. Xavier’s reflected my emotions. The dirty bastard probably had his own assets hiding in that basement.

“Have an evacuation team ready,” I said. “No innocent souls are to be lost.”

“Roger that, they’re already standing by,” Jordan replied in my ear. “Lights out in ten.”

Trust him to have already thought of the worst-case scenario.

We congregated at the side door into the house and I mentally counted to ten. It wouldn’t just be the lights that extinguished in Josh’s house, he was about to find himself without phones or any means to alert the outside world to what was happening here tonight. We were all supposed to have security details at our home, but he was hiding his nasty, dirty secrets from the world. That meant he wanted minimum eyes on this location.

The door yielded to the small detonation blast at the lock and swung open in invitation. Xavier and Jordan swept through the ground floor of the property as Lucas and I took the staircase two steps at a time. Our night-sight glasses allowed us to see the way.

Xavier and Jordan would be behind us to ensure all the rooms were clear while we headed to the area that had heat signatures. Josh came wandering out of his room while tying the belt of a silk robe. I grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to the wall at the side of the doorframe. A glance inside the room showed a man tied to his bed. What the fuck was wrong with my family and their need to enslave people?

“Get your fucking hands off me!” Josh screamed. “Do you know who I am?”

Why did people say that? Did he think I just disconnected all the security and broke in here to question him about who he was?

“I know who you are, Josh. You are a filthy, perverted asshole who seems to enjoy hurting others.”

“Ash?” he asked in disbelief.

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