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Huxley
1 Week Later
Two unmistakable alarms blare in rapid succession. Fuck. I spring out of bed clad only in my boxer briefs. The noise continues to pierce the estate, indicating that both perimeter barriers have been penetrated. There’s no time to think how or how many; I must get to Goddess. My hope is that she follows the instructions on what to do if the alarms ever go off. I quickly arm myself with the handgun from the drawer of my bedside table. I’m out my door in seconds, careful to skim along the wall as I make my way to her suite. I’m minutes too late. Two figures dressed in all black have already made it to the top of the stairs. The house's darkness doesn’t give me much advantage due to the artificial light from outside filtering through. I’m spotted immediately, and the first shot is fired in my direction, barely missing me as I hit the ground.
Goddess screams from within her suite, giving away her location. The two men exchange hand signals before the taller one heads toward the sound. I fire off a few shots of my own, but they both manage to dodge my bullets. Weight-wise, I’m more evenly matched with the man who remains. He aims his handgun in my direction once more, but with a running start, I dive and roll — expecting to take a few bullets. The goal was not to leave anything vital exposed. But between the darkness working in my favor and my speed and agility, I don’t take a single hit. I have about twelve rounds left, and he has much less.
The tall guy appears in the doorway with Goddess as she kicks and screams. The split-second distraction is all I need to put a bullet in the guy who has now crumpled in front of me. I use his body as a shield to retrieve his gun. Various guns reverberate outside the house, indicating an all-out war outside. So far, my men have been able to limit the men to make it inside to two— or so I think. Time is not on my side. I need to get Goddess to the panic room before I’m outnumbered.
The giant fucking guy runs down the stairs, carrying Goddess slung over his shoulder. He shoots a few shots back toward me on the way down, but his aim is compromised, so I easily dodge the bullets. I wait until he hits that last step before firing rounds into each of his calves and then hamstrings. As expected, he goes down, taking Goddess down with him. She screams out even louder in pain as she hits the ground, his weight toppling down on her. I fire a single round into the back of his skull before I scoop her up in my arms. Now my shooting ability is compromised, so I know I need to run like hell to the panic room. I defend the basement stairs, my adrenaline pumping through my ears. She cries out with each jostle, but I can’t stop. Relief floods me the moment my hand locates the hidden outline within the concrete, causing the slabs to slide open for my fingerprints. It only accepts mine. The wall gives way allowing us to enter and then quickly shuts. Goddess guards her ribs as I set her down on the sofa, her tearstained face peering up at me.
“This is not the panic room you showed me.” She sniffles.
“No,” I confirm.
I make quick work of turning on the monitors to give me a visual of outside and throughout the house. We’re under heavy attack. Several bodies lay lifeless on the asphalt— some being my men. They’ve penetrated the house now. Some of my guys are still battling outside, but they were unable to hold them all off from breaching the house. That was never the expectation. Their duty was to hold off the men long enough for us to make it here where we are untouchable.
“Oh, God. They’re in the house,” Goddess cries out. “How long before they find us?”
“Shhhh. It’s okay,” I say to keep her calm. Not because they can hear us. “This room is soundproof, bulletproof, fireproof, and bombproof. And that’s even if they could find this room.”
“What about Marisol and Hazel?” she asks, the tears returning tenfold.
I walk over to the monitor behind her and switch it on. My housekeepers come into view. I turn on the intercom and speak into it. The audio can only be heard between the two panic rooms.
“Are you two okay in there? No injuries?”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Hazel answers. “I was praying you made it to your panic room. Is Goddess with you? I heard all the gunshots.”
I can hear the trembling in her voice while Marisol paces behind her. They’re pretty shaken up. They can’t see into this room unless I give them access. This is the master panic room, so I can control what’s heard and seen in the other one, but it’s not reciprocal.
“Yes. We’re safe. Just hang tight. Daniel and Jared would have activated reinforcements when this all started. It should be over soon.”
After they give me their okay, I switch all the monitors off. She doesn’t need to witness all of the chaos going on outside these rooms.
“That was the panic room you showed me,” Goddess realizes. She winces as she tries to reposition herself on the sofa.
I walk over and raise her nightshirt, and I can already see the huge bruise starting to form over her right torso and hip. There is also one starting to form over her left cheek. Fuck.
“That panic room is for my housekeepers and whoever I’ve been assigned to hide and protect. It’s closer to get to in an emergency and remains unlocked and semi hidden within the décor. It’s locked from the inside. This panic room only accepts my biometrics, so it would have been useless to show you this one,” I explain as I continue to study her bruise.
“Don’t worry. I can take a punch,” she assures. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
It takes a moment to realize what she’s referring to. “Did that motherfucker hit you?”
“He punched me in the face when he came into the room because I wasn’t letting him drag me out without a fight. But then you shot him in the head, so that’s some quick turnaround for Karma,” she says.
“I wish I could revive him and kill his ass all over again. He didn’t deserve a quick death.”
I grab some ice from the ice maker in the door of the fridge. I pull off my boxer briefs and wrap the ice inside. Goddess’s eyes widen in surprise as my dick hangs free. I grab some ibuprofen and water and hand it to her. I take a seat on the sofa next to her and place the coldness to her cheek.
“Do you realize you just put your underwear to my face?” she asks, attempting to find humor. She winces at the coldness.
“You do realize that you’ve had my cock in your mouth? This is just underwear.” I smirk.
“I guess you have a point. This room is just as luxurious as the rest of the house,” she says, changing the subject. “I thought the other panic room was nice, but this could easily be a salon. We had one of those at our house. It’s where Arlo would smoke his cigars and entertain his worshippers. I wasn’t allowed in that room.”
“Fuck him. He’s going to pay for all of this shit he’s put you through.”
“I’m afraid of the answer, but I need to ask anyway. Are my parents safe? Why couldn’t they be here?”
“I don’t want to lie to you, Goddess. I can’t speak to that yet, but I can say that your parents were brought to another house when they brought you here. The FBI needed immediate access to your father to build their case and to identify members that he now knows are a part of the Russian Mafia. Your mother wouldn’t have left his side.”
“Why do you only offer your service to the FBI to hide women— but not men or children?”
I note that she asks even more questions than usual when she's scared. I move the homemade ice pack to her torso, and she flinches. I have no doubt she has a few fractures, but I don’t want to bring attention to it at the moment.
“Most men would have too much pride to let another man protect him in an unofficial capacity. They would likely fight me at every turn and have their own ideas on what is needed to remain out of harm’s way. And children? Fuck no! I don’t know the first thing about being around kids. That and they don’t possess the mental capacity to listen to reason.”
She tries to push the ice pack away, but I hold firm.
“Have you ever had to use this room?”
“No. Nobody has ever found this estate, let alone breach the perimeters secured by my men.”
I grind my teeth. Now that I know that we’re safe, my mind has been trying to decide how is this even fucking possible? Was Jacob actually followed when he retrieved the package from Benjamin? One thing is for certain, our Operation Phantom has flaws. Our whole protocol will need to be reassessed and modified.
“Some of them are dead, aren’t they?”
