Page 73 of Demon's Angel

“Open it!” This time I snarl.

“Non c'è modo.” I don’t speak Italian, but his negative response suggests that he can’t.

There’s no time to waste. “Get the explosives from Pyro. We’ll blow the room up. Don’t care if we kill him.”

“The Semtex should do the job. Spotted a weakness on the blueprints.”

The soldier goes rigid again. His eyes flick to Hell, then back to me. As my father starts to walk past, he steps forward. “No.” He stares at Hell, looking to see if he’s bluffing or not.

I know he wouldn’t have seen that level of detail on the plans Cad had shown us back at the clubhouse, but I also learned, early on, few people could come out the winner against my dad in a game of poker.

“Your boss comes out and answers our questions,” I say, gravelly, “or we blow him to smithereens. Your choice.”

He’s gone pale. Loyalty to thefamigliawill be as great as, if not greater than, that shown by the members of my club to me. If he makes the wrong choice, he’ll be dead. And, for him, the wrong one is believing us.

“It can only be opened from the inside,” he tells us, stiffly.

“Can he see, hear us?”

He answers through gritted teeth, “Lost the camera feeds before your attack. Thought there was a malfunction with the system.”

The way he speaks again suggests they were in no way prepared for any confrontation. Minimal, in my view, guards for a man so important as the boss, and when they lost sight and sound around the building, they had simply put it down to circumstance, seeing nothing suspicious in it.

What the fuck is going on?

Hell catches my eye, his brow creases. He too, has picked up on the things which aren’t adding up. Kidnapping Violet; potentially killing Devils in the process, not caring whether they did or not; holding her prisoner…Even if they thought we’d never come here to look for her, there was always going to be an outside chance.

So why weren’t they ready and waiting?

Or are we the ones being set up? Lulled into a false sense of security before the actual attack. I don’t need to warn anyone. My men know what to do. They won’t be letting their guard down.

For now the questions must go unanswered; I need to concentrate on getting Lucio out of that safe room. “How do you contact him?”

A moment’s silence. Then, after Hell throws up his hands and starts to walk past mumbling, “I’ll find Pyro and get that explosive,” the soldier comes back to life.

“Intercom.”

He seems less tall than he had before, the rigid posture now missing. He’s resigned to his fate, should he fail to protect his boss. He walks over to the bookcase. “Behind the third book on the second to top shelf.”

I move the book. Finding a button, I press it. The bookcase slides back. There’s a solid door which looks like it should be guarding a bank vault behind it. Hell and I exchange glances. Even if Pyro had brought extra C4, the amount needed to blow a small hole in a brick wall would barely dent that steel. Lucky we have a man used to following orders, but not one used to thinking or issuing them.

To the side is indeed an intercom, with an old-fashioned phone attached to it. A clue that the guard had allowed some thought processes to work—the safe room must have been installed back in the sixties when the house had been built, and not updated. The date had been on the plans. He could have thought there was at least a possibility a modern bomb would destroy it.

“When I tell you, you explain to him it’s safe to come out.”

“Say it now. In Italian.” Hell has his phone out, flicking to an app which translates.

“Puoi uscire. È sicuro.”

Hell glances at the screen, looks at me, and raises his chin.

“Not one word more. No explanation. You got me? No secret code. One wrong step and your boss will be blown to smithereens. You’ll be picking up the pieces for the next week. We have enough explosives.” My voice is cold, my delivery calm, leaving no room for doubt.

A sharp nod.

I take the handset down.

“Dial 0.”

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