I take my position beside Ian and behind Trigger, who’s taken the lead—and nobody was willing to argue with him about that—as we walk very quietly to the side door. Grady, Wyatt, Bear, and Jim follow behind us. They’re all good with a gun, but Jim likes to have his sharpest shooters in front.
All of the windows are covered or boarded up, and the thick concrete walls make it difficult to know what’s going on inside, if anything. I stalk around the corner and find a man in a black suit with slicked back black hair holding a gold gun. He turns from side to side, but not enough that he’s able to see me watching him. I pull up the AR-15 with the suppressor and super sonic ammo, click off the safety, and center it on his skull. Just as he turns and catches sight of my gun gleaming in the darkness, I pull the trigger. The bullet hits him at the corner of his temple, and he crumples to the ground. I give him a quick look then turn back to my brothers and give them a nod.
Trigger lifts his hand and gives two swift knocks on the door just as I get back in formation. The door opens but a foot or two when Trigger pops two shots into the guy’s skull, using his suppressor. Ian stands by and catches him as he falls to the ground to avoid making a sound, then drags him out of the way. We walk through the door as silently as possible. The warehouse is dark as fuck, and I can’t see much of anything with the exception of some agricultural equipment in the center of the room we’re in, which is far smaller than the building is. The warehouse must be broken up into several rooms. Trigger leads us through the room, careful to keep us in shadows. A skylight on the roof provides enough light to cast a slight blueish glow over the space the farther we move into it. All I can hear is heavy breaths and the occasional scuffle of a boot. Up ahead on the right are two more guys who stand shoulder to shoulder with their backs toward us. I breathe a slight sigh of relief that Mancuso didn’t send his top team, but if he did send his top team then this is fucking sad. These guys are fucking jokesters if they don’t know better than to turn their back on the only entrance to the warehouse aside from the boarded up dock in the back.
I look over to Ian and nod at the guys. He squints and nods in confirmation that it’s not Michael, who we have orders not to kill unless we have to. We train our guns on the backs of their skulls and, with near perfect aim, shoot. Both of their skulls break apart at the point of contact, and blood shoots out as they tumble toward the ground in unison.
“You would turn your back on your family for them?” a voice with a thick east coast accent says. His words are clipped even in his fury. We move past the two dead bodies we just put down and into the second room. It’s empty, but in the expanse beyond the room we’ve just entered is another room, which appears to be much smaller. Where the two larger rooms are without any lighting, the small room in the back has a single light bulb hanging overhead, which gives us a decent line of sight to see what’s going on.
“No, I’m protecting my family,” Princess screams angrily. In front of me, Trigger picks up his pace at the sound of her voice. Less than thirty feet away now, and I can see her. She’s tied to a chair, which is on its side. The kid standing over her can’t be any older than her, even though his size begs to differ. The longer I look at him, the more similarities I can see between he and Alex. There’s absolutely no doubting that he’s her twin. Fuck.
He tightens his fists at his side and delivers several swift kicks to her stomach. Trigger jumps to rush at the guy, but he’s got a gun in his hand, so I reach out and grab him before he can get too far and make any noise. He turns his head, glaring at me, but I don’t care. I’m not going to let his temper get Princess or Junior killed. I don’t think Ruby would survive either loss—Junior because she never got a chance to meet him, and Princess because she just barely got a hold of her.
The kid delivers blow after blow to her stomach before he stops. She’s on the floor, her face is bruised as fuck, and she’s got drool coming out of the side of her mouth. Dried blood dots the other corner of her mouth, and her clothes are dirty as all fucking hell. My throat tightens at the sight. Keeping a close eye on Trigger and moving forward as quietly as I can, I train my gun on Junior’s skull. I hate this part of the job—when shit gets personal—but if Junior kills her, he’s going to die regardless of who his mother is. If I let Ryan at him, he’s going to die a slow and miserable death. It’s better that I do it. I’d rather he die mercifully so I can tell his mother he didn’t suffer.
“Please pick me up,” she says, and her voice sounds so fucking pathetic. Junior pulls at his hair and curses a few times in what I assume is Italian, then he leans down and picks up the chair with one hand. In the other, he’s got that gold gun that all of Mancuso’s men seem to have.