“The guards will be here long before my father. They’ll warn him and give him time to flee,” he explains. “If this is going to work, we need him here. We’re going to have to take out all of them by the time he makes it up the stairs, and we have to do it without alerting him to our presence.”
Well, shit.
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” I hiss.
“Not by getting to use my fucking grenade, that’s for sure,” Levi mutters to himself, clearly disappointed that this bloodbath isn’t going to be quite as destructive, loud, and dramatic as he’d hoped.
Marcus steps out from behind the pillar and meets my eyes with a dark, twisted smirk across his lips, looking like the psychotic heathen I know him to be. He raises his hand and the sharp blade of his knife catches in the light before he draws it across the base of his throat. His eyes widen, feigning terror before he puts on a crowd-pleasing performance of pretending to die.
I gave him a hard stare. “Was that necessary?” I hiss again.
He shrugs his shoulders. “You asked, babe,” he says before slicing his gaze toward the door, hearing the guards at the electronic keypad. He winks back at me and holds up his finger to his mouth, reminding me to keep quiet.
My hands shake and I find myself fretting behind the pillar, but my chance for panicking is gone. The door pushes open and the guards pile in, their murmured conversation instantly filling the massive foyer.
They walk through the space without a care in the world and I hear soft laughs as they discuss what fucking heroes they are for tasering the boys and getting them to their knees. All I can do is shake my head. Their laughs will only ensure their deaths are just a little more painful.
Fuck, the boys are going to enjoy this.
A moment passes, and just when the front door falls closed behind the final guard, the games begin.
Roman moves first, silently slipping out from behind his pillar and stalking behind them. He grabs the closest guard, his hand immediately wrapping around his mouth and snapping his neck before he even gets a chance to scream. He silently lowers the body to the ground and moves on to his next victim. Marcus steps out, grabs hold of a guard, and pulls him behind the pillar. I see scuffling and blood splatter, but again, the other guards don’t notice a damn thing.
Levi is too far across the room to risk stepping out just yet, but not Marcus, he moves out to join Roman in the fun. I can’t help but notice the blood splattered across his face as the rest of it blends into his soaked shirt.
Roman and Marcus move through the foyer like ninjas, silently taking out guards like they were being paid to do it and the moment Levi can, he joins in. He takes out a guard with a sharp knife straight across the neck and the soft gurgle from his throat alerts the other guards just as the blood splatter hits the wall with a loud splash.
A gag is caught in my throat as the remaining six guards spin around and take in the chaos at their backs. The three brothers look at them like the angels of death, moving like lightning toward them and not giving them a chance to call in back up before they’re on them. They go for their guns but the boys are too quick, leaping in and taking out two in a matter of seconds.
Their bodies whimper and fret on the ground as blood pours from their arteries and flows across the room. Marcus grabs one of the guards’ tasers and shoots him with it, getting a sick enjoyment out of the hell they put us through this morning, and as he drops to his knees and groans in pain, Marcus finishes him off with a knife right through the chest.
A guard gets away and starts bolting for the front door, leaping over fallen bodies. My eyes bug out of my head. He can’t get away. Another second and he could warn Giovanni. That car ride was far too long to risk having to come back and do it all over again.
Knowing I’m way out of my league, I dart out from behind the pillar and race after him, but before I can even get close, a knife whips past my face and plunges deep into the back of his neck, piercing right through his throat as the sound of his gurgled choking fills the foyer The guard drops to his knees and his eyes widen, realizing this is the end of the line for him.
His hands pull at his throat, his airway completely cut off, and not a moment later, he drops heavily to the pool of blood beneath him.