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Their housekeeper answered. “Bennet residence.”
“Hey, Lulu, it’s Ever. Are my parents around?”
“Good evening, Ms. Bennet. How are you today?”
She seemed happy to hear from me and didn’t sound like she thought I’d been missing the last few weeks. Have they even noticed I haven’t called in a while? “I’m good. Are my parents around?”
“They’re getting ready for a dinner party at the embassy. I’ll see if they’re free to take a call.”
I heard footsteps and then a muffled conversation. “Hello, darling.”
At the sound of my mother’s voice, my breath hitched.
“Hey, Mom.”
“I can’t talk long. We’re meeting the Sheffields in twenty minutes, and I can’t find my little black purse with the crystals on it. But it’s the only one that matches my dress.”
She trailed off, and I knew her attention would be on finding her purse, not on talking to her daughter. “Ah, there it is. I have to go, dear. We’re running late.”
Despite having lived with absent parents my whole life, her dismissal still hurt. “Okay, have fun.”
“Well, then, I’ll talk to you soon.”
She hung up, and I wondered why I’d even bothered calling her. She didn’t even mention Archer.
I returned the phone to Dalton. “Thank you. I better go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He nodded at me, and I went to the spare room that I’d call mine for the next few days. I didn’t bother turning on the lights or changing out of my clothes. Instead, I closed the door behind me and fell face first into bed.
19
LUCIUS
“We have a problem.”
I turned to Santino, ignoring the sweat running down my face as I gripped my gun tighter. “What happened?”
He crouched next to where I was behind a garden shed. “They barricaded themselves into Maurizio’s suite.”
I slumped against the wall. We’d been here for two days. And to say the last forty-eight hours had been a mess would be calling a marathon a stroll in the park. Somehow, we’d screwed things up so bad, we were now in a stand-off with the few remaining men intent on claiming the mansion as their own.
But I wouldn’t leave anything standing. I refused to give any of the men a chance to rebuild. The warehouse in Georgetown already had an unfortunate electrical fault and Maurizio’s apartment in the city a rodent problem.
The mansion was the last thing remaining. It was also the most crucial. We’d brought enough explosives with us to blow it up, but we couldn’t set them until everyone had left. I hadn’t counted on anyone staying behind.
Maurizio had surrounded himself with soldiers, men who were used to getting orders and following mindlessly. I didn’t think any of them would be ambitious enough to attempt a takeover.
Every day I was delayed was one more day away from Everleigh. I hadn’t had much hope I’d be able to return to her when I left her at the airport. But we’d almost accomplished the impossible: raze Maurizio’s operation to the ground so there was no way of building it up again.
I was burning with the need to finish this. Not only did I have information that the hitman I’d been looking for was hiding out in Venezuela, but he could also lead me to his boss. I wanted revenge for Sam’s death, but I also wanted to know why they’d targeted him.
The delay was grating on me, making my already frayed nerves brittle. I wiped my face with the end of my T-shirt. “Do you have any smoke bombs left?”
Santino nodded. “A few. But there’s no way to get them inside.”
Lucky for us, I knew the mansion inside out. And I knew that there was an issue with the vents going in and out of Maurizio’s office. And there was a way to access them.
“Is the air-conditioning still on?”
