Page 105 of Chris

Someone slammed a Kevlar vest into Chris’s chest, and he barely caught the item before it fell to the ground. His mouth opened to thank the man who had given him the protective item, but Alessio Sorrento had already turned to move onto the next waterproof storage crate they had brought along for this assault.

The tension in Alessio’s back—his twin’s lover, one of two people that Corrado spent his life with—said the man wasn’t in the mood to talk. On a good day, Alessio’s moods regularly swung one way or another. Today, however, he was swinging toward the bad side of things, and it all had to do with Chris.

Or rather, the plan Chris and Corrado came up with over the phone during a late night call after the morning Abril told him what she would do to help. Chris had to figure out the rest, how to get in the ranch without coming in through the front—the cliffs would be the only way, he knew. Then, he needed people. He couldn’t do this alone, and so he called his twin, who made more phone calls. Amid all that, Corrado thought switching out the two of them—because his twin was far better in an assault-type situation one-on-one than he was—would be a good idea.

Alessio did not agree.

“Les,” Chris said.

“Just get fucking dressed. We don’t have time.”

The man’s sharp order wasn’t just for Chris, and it slithered through the small crowd that had gathered on the edge of the cliffs. It was a handful of men—the three that The League spared for this mission, a couple from his father’s organization that had skills in retrievals or assaults, and the handful Andino Marcello gave to them to use.

It wasn’t much.

Still a team though.

Dressed in tactical gear, with assault weapons that would mow down a crowd, if needed, this job should be easy. Get in once the girls were out, clear the ranch, and hightail it back to the cliffs where they would all leave like this had never even happened.

Simple, right?

Yeah, Chris hoped so.

This all came down to a prayer.

Down below, three boats waited. Speed boats that one of their guys had got a hold of when he called through to a contact he had in Mexico. Alessio scaled the wall, his years of rock climbing coming in handy when they needed to secure a rope ladder with metal steps down the cliffs.

There should be only one way into the ranch.

Just one.

They were wrong.

Someone just needed the means and the mode.

His means were Valeria and Maria.

His mode was The League.

Two days.

That was all he had to put this plan together, get these eight men into the country and here, and make this fucking shit work. It had been a toss-up whether they pulled it off. No one would say it might work, and but for the grace of God, they were here.

Now, it was Abril’s turn.

Half of this plan had been Chris’s. The other side of things belonged to her. None of it would work if she didn’t get her part of the plan in order, and so now he waited beside cliffs and water that made his heart race. He’d just come up from there, and one way or the other, he was going back down those cliffs to get in a boat before the night was over. That fear of water would never leave him.

Of that, he was most sure.

Chris had never been more grateful for his father forcing him to get in water after the almost drowning incident, and making him learn to swim because you have to learn, Chris, you have to. Never had he thought he hated his father more than he did when Gian dunked his head under water at only aged seven, apologizing because he knew it scared his son, but still determined to make him work through the terror.

He had.

It still made him fucking edgy.

Chris turned to the readying men, wanting to go over the plan just one more time—everyone needed to be on the same page, and while The League members likely already were, it was the men who came from outside of their organization that concerned Chris. No one needed to be a fucking hero here. It wouldn’t help.

His speech stopped at the galloping in the distance. The unmistakable clip-clop of hooves hitting soil hard. With the sky a blank canvas of black, it was hard to see into the dense stretch of forest that separated a small portion of the desolate land before one came out to the cliffs.