Page 25 of Vicious Souls

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“Do we have a deal?”Moneybags asks me, as I walk back into the cell. She is definitely anxious to get out of here.

“What’s your offer?” I ask her.

“Twenty million. I’ll give you twenty million to let me walk out of here. We can both pretend this never happened. No hard feelings.” She shrugs as though she can’t care less that I’ve kept her prisoner in this cell for the past five days.

I feel my eyebrows shoot up in surprise until they are almost skirting my hairline, and give a low whistle.

“Wow, that much? Twenty million?”

She opens her arms wide, inviting me to take the offer, definitely convinced that it is a generous one.

“That’s a very generous offer,” I mumble, “especially considering your net worth is closer to a billion dollars.”

“Semantics.”

“Pocket change. You’re offering me pocket change.”

“How much do you want?” she asks, seething. She will do anything to get out of here.

“I don’t want your money, Kingsley Murray. I have plenty of my own.”

“Then what do you want? What will it take to…”

A thunderous crash booms above us and reverberates through the air, shaking the very foundations of the house. We both look to the ceiling as the cell shakes, vibrating with an invisible enemy. My phone rings, the buzzing an incessant hum amidst the chaos of the noise travelling between levels.

“Pietro…”

“We’ve been breached!” he calls down the phone line. “We’ve been breached! Activate contingency R3. Repeat – contingency R3!”

The line goes dead as the echo of explosions and gunshots continues to rattle the house. I grab Kingsley’s hand and drag her behind me, walking rapidly out of the cell and down the hall, in the opposite direction of the exit. Moneybags tugs at my hand, trying to free herself of my hold as she struggles to turn the other way, no doubt seeing this as her opportunity to make her escape. I pull her back, almost tearing her arm out of the socket, and hold her wrist tighter, forging forward through the tunnel. She’s foolish for thinking she can possibly make her escape amidst the mayhem going on upstairs; she wouldn’t even make it past the front door before a bullet lodged in her head or she lost a few limbs.

23

DANTE

Moneybags continues to struggle against my hold as I drag her through the dank tunnel. She fails to understand the severity of the situation and physically pulls back at every turn. I keep going, pulling her along with me, even when she goes tumbling to the ground. I lift her up by the underarms, press her into my side, and hurry down the tunnel toward our security exit.

When we are out of the tunnel, I lift my hand to the electronic panel and punch in a set of numbers. There is a series of beeps, before the wall slides back and we emerge into the night. Looking left and right, I pull Kingsley behind me, leading her into the backyard, where I open a gate and we slide behind it and into the rear garden of the neighboring house. We cross the rear yard, cutting through two back yards until we reach a house a few doors down from where we’d been. We enter the house through a huge metal door at the back after I enter a code into another electronic panel. I punch in the code again after the door swings closed behind us, ensuring there is no way in or out without the code.

“What is this place?” Kingsley whispers, standing in the middle of the room, turning in a small slow circle to take in the wall to wall monitors that cover every inch of every wall.

“It’s a panic room,” I tell her, tapping at one of the keyboards until eight screens spanning the length of one wall merge into one screen and we have an external view of the house we had just left. The house is being pelted with bullets and grenades.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kingsley whispers, her hand flying to her mouth as she points to the motorcycles parked across the road from the house.

I ignore her and watch as men surround the house, engaging fire with my men. My body seethes with rage as I watch them throw grenades into the house, intending to immobilize my men long enough to gain entry. I hear the sudden squeal of tires as a black SUV comes hurtling down the street, and watch as Marco flies out of the car, his gun aimed and shooting off bullet after bullet as he ducks behind his open car door. The attackers, realizing more back up is arriving, scatter, heading toward their motorcycles and leaving the scene. One of the men limps toward his motorcycle, his blood coating the pavement as he drags his bloody leg behind him. The gunfight subsides, until there is only Marco, who shoots off two more bullets for good measure before he rises from behind his car door. He holds his gun at the ready and makes his way toward the house, talking on his comms as he pushes the door open.

“I just want to know what the fuck you’ve done to piss these guys off,” I rage, without turning to face Kingsley. One way or another, I’m going to find out what happened between them, and how they found us. Our safe houses are failsafe; finding our location would not have been an easy feat. And the Savages MC, of all people. We’d never had an issue with them.

Until Kingsley.

* * *

With the flick of a switch,I turn off the cameras and leave Kingsley in the panic room while I meet with Marco in an adjoining room.

“Men all safe?” I ask him, as he holsters his gun.

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