Page 92 of Stolen Mafia Vows
We converge on the bratva fortress like ants swarming a jelly sandwich. Everyone in formation. Everyone with a job to do. Every gun with a silencer so that we don’t spoil the bratva’s party which usually starts around the time the sun is halfway behind the horizon.
Barely a leaf twitches as we move through the grounds, and the guards posted outside the building go down with their weapons still by their sides. I’ve studied the layout of the property, thanks to Liam. We wait for a team of enforcers to infiltrate the control room and give the all-clear before we target each entrance simultaneously.
I glance at Uncle Donal as we enter via the sliding glass doors that lead onto the pool area. My hackles are up. This has beentoo easy, and no one is that careless, no one with a hostage on board anyway.
Inside the house is silent. The bodyguards posted at either end of the hallway connecting the ground floor rooms spot Donal and I as more men take them down from behind. Uneasiness starts to settle upon my shoulders as I make my way upstairs via a grand staircase.
I hear music. The party is already underway, but for some reason, they’re keeping it inside tonight. Stopping outside a doorway, I press my ear to the door and give the nod to two men who’ve worked for my father since I was a little boy.
One opens the door with a swift kick while the other storms the room, his finger on the trigger of his gun. He comes back out shaking his head to the strains of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’, and I’m reminded of the scene inHome Alonewhen Kevin McCallister rigs a party to fool the burglars trying to break into his home.
We move more quickly through the house. If they’ve moved Emily, I have less than twenty-four hours to find her in a city with a population of over eight million people before the charity event begins.
The next room is empty. I’ve already moved onto the third door when I hear a voice from across the landing that makes my stomach twist.
Emily. And she isn’t alone.
I gesture for Donal and the rest of my team to stand by while I open the door a fraction, giving me enough space to peer inside. I don’t want to frighten her and alert her captors into doing something that I’ll regret for the rest of my life.
I can still hear Emily’s voice, but I can’t see her.
Pushing the door open further, I spot another open doorway on the opposite side of the room. A walk-in closet going by the bright lights and the rails of clothes and shoes that I can see from my viewpoint.
Then, Emily appears wearing a shimmering red dress that looks as if it has been poured over her from above. My pulse races, not only because I’ve found her, but because she looks even more stunning than I remember. I watch as she turns left and right, inspecting the back of her dress in a full-sized mirror, her mouth pinched into a critical expression.
Is this the life that Emily really wanted? Designer dresses, high-profile events, paparazzi snapping her image everywhere she goes? Were the jeans and hoodies purely for my benefit because she thought I would find her more attractive?
Or… My next thought causes bile to rise in my throat. Was she in on this all along?
“What do you think?” she addresses someone else in the room.
“It is perfect.”
The response sucks the oxygen from my lungs. A man’s voice. A strong accent.
Without thinking, I barge into the room and aim my weapon at the head of the man who is sitting on the side of the bed watching my wife.
“Eoghan?”
I hear Emily, but I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the man from the video footage. “Hands above your head. Slowly.” My heart is thudding a beat that can’t make up its mind what it wants to be.
My team is right behind me, and his gaze takes them in slowly, as if he has all the time in the world to figure out that he has been caught while he raises his hands in the air.
“I’m unarmed.” His voice contains all the laziness that I’ve come to expect from following his movements over the past forty-eight hours.
One of my soldiers, Nial, a thick-necked brute of a man who can kill with a single punch, steps forward and frisks Emily’s captor. He pockets a pistol and a dagger, and forces the enemy onto his knees, his own weapon pressed against the back of the man’s skull.
“Where is your partner?”
Something is already niggling away at me about the woman involved in keeping Emily prisoner here. Is it purely coincidental that I haven’t seen her face in the video footage, or has she made a conscious effort to conceal her identity?
He shrugs. “Around.”
His eyes register the click of the weapon on the back of his skull.
I sense Donal and the rest of the team shielding us from the doorway. There’s a reason he isn’t fighting back, he doesn’t believe it’s necessary.
I turn my attention to Emily, who is still standing just outside the dressing room in the stunning red dress. She looks different. She’s still my Emily, but something has changed, only I can’t pinpoint what it is.
