Page 39 of Savage Little War

“I’m going to hold you to that,” I whisper to her, my lips brushing hers.

Cara smiles and nods before easing herself off my lap. She walks toward the doors before pausing and looking over her shoulder at me. “Coming?”

I bite back a laugh and follow her, hoping we get the chance to celebrate the news properly.

12

Cara

That conversation went better than I expected.

Even as our group goes back and forth over our next big plan, happiness hums through me as I watch Dmitri take charge. He’s going to be an incredible father.

But we need to bring our child into a world that’s somewhat safe. Taking out Ferro and his men will make things at least a little bit safer, and that has to be our main focus right now.

“If we can’t find them, we have to draw them out,” my father says as we all stand around a table with an aerial view map of the town. “They’re already looking for us. That’s our advantage.”

Andrei scoffs a little. “How? They’re probably combing the streets for us ready to pick us off.”

“They’re like dogs sniffing around for something to chase and attack,” Luca explains with a thoughtful expression on his face. “We can use their own drive against them and direct them where we want them to be.”

Andrei lifts his eyebrows in realization. “So, what now? We leak a location and hope they go there?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Dmitri speaks up as he crosses his arms, his eyes sweeping over the map. “Luca is the bait. They want him most, more than me, more than anyone.”

Luca sighs. “Yeah, I figured something like this would happen. So, I’m the hook. You just need the right water.”

“They might not know how many of us are here,” Dmitri says. “Let’s keep that a secret and put all of their focus on Luca and where he is. I think that’ll even draw Ferro out.”

“Where should I be? And I assume that I actually won’t be there, right?” Luca asks as he eyes Dmitri.

Dmitri smirks a little. “You won’t be there, but we need to leak the intel that that’s where they’ll find you. Somewhere away from most of the public. It’ll get messy.”

Luca thinks for a moment before snapping his fingers. He points to a small area farther up the cliffside. “There are luxury villas up here. Huge and fancy with the best views. You can reserve them online. We’ll pick one that’s empty, one with clean sightlines.”

“On it,” Andrei says as he pulls out his phone to check.

“How are we going to leak the intel to them?” Sean asks Dmitri. “We’ll have to be crafty about it. If it’s too obvious, they’ll know that it’s a trap.”

Dmitri nods in agreement. “It needs to seem like one of his guards came across the information somehow.”

“They use radios to communicate with each other,” I say, remembering watching one of the guards from earlier speak into one. “What if we stole one of them and acted like one of the guards? We could feed the rest of them any information that we wanted to lead them toward the villa.”

Sean grins proudly at me. “That could work, yeah? We would just have to find one of the guards and get his radio.”

“Luca, can you pull it off?” Dmitri asks him. “We’ll need someone who speaks Italian to communicate with them, and you can’t sound familiar.”

Luca nods. “Yeah, I can give it a shot. What should I say?”

Sean, Dmitri, and Luca look over at me and wait.

I blink in surprise, but I think quickly. “You should say that you captured one of our guards. You tortured him for information before killing him, and you found out that Dmitri is moving Luca to a villa to keep him safe.”

“You got all that?” Dmitri asks Luca.

Luca grins and nods. “Every single word.”

“This villa is available to rent,” Andrei says as he approaches the table again, showing everyone a three-story, white villa with multiple balconies nestled on the cliffside facing the water.