Page 164 of Hidden

A beat of silence followed.

“Vienna…”

“I know this place better than any fucker on that compound,” I cut in quietly, keeping my voice level, steady, believable. “If Istart pulling men in now, all I’m doing is lighting a flare over the whole thing. I can get her out cleaner on my own.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” I said, sharper this time, then forced myself to ease it back before he started hearing too much in my tone. “Listen to me, brother. They’ve already had a fight with us tonight. Their attention’s split. Half of them will be pissed, half of them will be drunk, and the rest will be too busy licking their wounds to expect me to still be hanging around. This is the best chance I’ve got.”

Dante didn’t answer straight away.

He was thinking.

Weighing risk.

Trying to decide whether his role as president overrode his role as my brother.

I knew that silence well enough to know he wasn’t fully convinced.

So I kept going.

“She’s not in any state to run,” I said, letting some of the truth creep in because the best lies always had some truth in them. “And if I have to carry her, I’d rather do it without bullets flying and ten of our lads charging through the gates behind me.”

Another pause.

Then, “You swear to me she’s with you?”

I closed my eyes for a second. He was asking me, man to man, whether I was telling the truth.

And I lied to him anyway.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “She’s here.”

“Fine,” he said eventually, and I could hear movement in the background now, doors opening and closing, voices carrying, the Devils already gearing up into whatever came next. “Then you bring her straight back here.”

“I will.”

“No stopping off anywhere. No trying to be clever. You get her back to the compound and let us handle the rest.”

My grip tightened around the phone. “What’s happening your end?”

“Exactly what you’d expect. We’ve got men checking the perimeter, locking everything down, and the first of the other charters will start rolling in by morning. I’ve already had calls from Scotland and Manchester. The rest are moving now.”

That should have reassured me.

And in a way, it did.

Because if I got her out, if I got her back, if by some fucking miracle I found her alive and breathing and still mine to save, then the Devils would keep her safe. They would lock her down tighter than Fort Knox and put enough armed bikers between her and Nico to start a small war.

And if war was what it came to, then so be it.

Let him fucking come.

“She’ll be safe here,” Dante continued, his tone harder now, more certain. “Whatever state she’s in, whatever she’s got to tell us, whatever mess this turns into after tonight, we deal with it from our side of the fence. You understand me?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it, Vienna. Once she’s here, she doesn’t go anywhere without a fucking army around her.”