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“It’s reserved,” he replies with a sniff.
“For who?”
“Doesn’t matter. My guest is waiting for the suite, and you need to vacate it by checkout today.”
“The special guest you didn’t invite to the family dinner?” I ask, remembering how he stared into his phone the entire time we were supposed to be eating.
Benito inhales a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck. He shuffles on his feet, refusing to meet my gaze. “Roman, please.”
“Fine.” I shake my head. “But you’re going to tell me all about her later.”
“So, you married her?” Benito raises his brows, looking like he’s trying to deflect. I get the message loud and clear. Don’t ask about his mystery woman and he won’t poke around my relationship with Emberly.
I shrug. “It’s a preemptive measure. If anything happens with the contracts, then I can tell the judge she was my lawfully wedded wife.”
“But you love her,” Benito says, leaving the rest of the sentence hanging.
I was supposed to romance her out of the stolen assets and put her six feet under. Now, I’ve made her my wife and we’re celebrating the union in our hotel’s honeymoon suite. The answer to that question should be obvious.
“Do you want me to vacate the room or what?” I brush past him, toward where Gil and Tony are waiting by the door.
If Benito is as defensive about this mystery woman as I am about Emberly, then she’ll probably be someone we’ll despise. I shake off that thought. No one can be a worse choice than Cesare’s little assassin.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, after kissing Emberly goodbye, I’m sitting within a convoy of armored trucks heading toward an underground parking lot outside Beaumont City.
By now, Emberly should have reached Alderney Hill, but when I check the surveillance app, she isn’t in my bedroom or the pool house. I fire up a second app that tracks the location of her phone to find it moving through the winding roads that lead up to the mansion.
I pull at the collar of my bullet-proof jacket. Maybe there was heavy traffic, or she stopped to make a detour.
She even could have stayed a few minutes extra to finish watching TV. By the time I found her in the bathroom, she was too absorbed in the weather report to get upset that I was cutting our romantic morning short.
I’ll make it up to her tonight.
“We’re close,” Cesare mutters, his voice tense.
My gaze snaps to the window, where our vehicle passes through the parking lot’s ground-floor entrance. The building is covered in graffiti, and its windows are boarded, yet the security machines are still in working order.
I lean into Cesare and whisper, “You sure this is their headquarters?”
He nods, his features tense.
I’m not a control freak, but this is the first time my little brother has taken the lead in organizing anything so vital.
“Helmets on,” he mutters.
Our vehicles stop twenty feet away from the entrance, and shutters roll down from the boarded-up windows.
After putting on my helmet and checking my armor for any weak spots, I check my brother’s, then he checks mine. When we’re sure we’re both ready, I nod.
“Let’s do this,” he says and opens the back door.
The last set of hostages sits in the back of the second truck. Rosalind and the four we captured at the party sit in our smaller vehicle, their heads covered with hoods. They’re each blindfolded, wearing earplugs, and cuffed at the wrists and ankles.
“Roman Montesano,” a voice says from the loudspeaker. “Release the hostages.”
I smirk.
