10. ~Dante Mancini~

I watched Matteo gradually become more lucid as he continued sipping at the espresso I'd brought him.

Of course the first thing he'd want wouldn't be water, but rather a jolt of caffeine. He certainly consumed a great deal each and every day, either via espresso shots, or energy drinks. It was in his bid to be consistently on the top of his game and in a highly-alert state for me.

That was merely a glimpse into the lengths he'd gone to over the years to prove himself as one of my very best. His loyalty was unmatched also.

He put the cup down, his hand trembling at the effort, but he still pushed on, shifting himself into a sitting position against the headboard, careful not to dislodge the IV tubes.

"I'm sorry I didn't see it. That motion sensor was just—"

"None of us did. Not even me."

He grimaced as he leaned his head back. "So many didn't make it out like us."

"I know."

"And they should have. Elijah is way more slippery than I even figured." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're needed in this aftermath. In person, Dante, not just over video call and texts."

"Things are being handled."

"Having Alfonso hold the fort is nowhere near the same as you being there."

"That's not possible at current."

"As much as I know you care about me, I also get that you're not remaining here at King Manor for that. It's for King, yeah?"

"He requires my assistance."

"Why?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why are you so adamant about being here with him? You told me that, despite the explosion and Elijah slipping through our fingers, his empire is fucked beyond belief, that the overall mission was completed."

"I also told you that two of Caspian's loved ones were taken by the monster that is Elijah."

"And? That's outside of the deal you two had going, beyond the business you have with each other. Your part is done now Bane Industries is destroyed."

"Elijah is still out there."

"It's more than that. I know you."

I leaned back in my chair and clasped my hands in my lap. "Caspian is on the edge. I'm here to ensure he doesn't go over it. It would be detrimental to many, including us, if that came to pass." Although, him recently cutting me out wasn't exactly making that an easy task. He'd even taken off a few hours ago without a word to me. He'd basically snuck out while I'd been assisting with Skylar's mission in secret, ensuring she had protection nearby should things end up going south.

"Even so, the Syndicate taking a hit and you staying here when you should be back on home territory to guide them and reassure them through it is really close to you choosing Caspian King over the Mancini Syndicate. I've never known anything to take precedence over that, not in all these years we've been working together."

And only one thing ever could.

"I need you to head back in my stead. Tomorrow. You're well enough to travel and to take command back from Alfonso. I don't want him wielding that power for too much longer."

"I hear that. Goddamn hothead. The fact he hasn't already struck back all over the place in retaliation to what Elijah did is a hell of a surprise. What did you do, put the fear of God into him?"

"Something like that."

"What is it with King, Dante? Does the kid have something on you? Is there something you want from him? Is that why you've been spending so much time with him, why you're insisting on not leaving his side?"

There were certain things that I kept to myself. In my line of work, the compartmentalizing of information was more than necessary, often a means of survival.

But this particular issue was fast reaching the point of no return. The secret couldn't be kept much longer. Not now that I'd become an active part of Caspian's life.

And as it currently stood, it could no longer be kept from Matteo either. It had come to a head and any longer keeping up with the subterfuge risked impacting our relationship, fracturing the trust between us, and possibly even weakening his loyalty, something I absolutely couldn't afford while things were unstable and we'd taken a nasty hit.

Movement outside in the corridors of King Manor had me leaning in and lowering my voice to barely above a whisper, as I finally gave breath to that which I had kept buried for so long.

When I drew back, Matteo was more shocked than I'd ever seen him, through everything we'd endured together, all that we'd seen and done in the name of the Mancini Syndicate.

"Holy. Shit," he only just managed to utter a few moments later.

"Now you see?"

"I do. It all makes sense." He shifted his weight in the bed. "If you let this be known to the Syndicate, it would justify everything and absolutely lessen the pressure you're bearing."

"It's not me who I'm concerned about."

He went to speak more to it, but the door was suddenly thrown open and Luke Somers stood there in the doorway. His gaze flitted from me to Matteo. "Glad to see you're wide awake now. Looking much better."

Matteo gave him a polite chin lift, but I saw his natural suspicion there toward Caspian's Head of Security. Not just given Luke's military connections, but because Matteo automatically saw somebody in his similar position as a threat as it was coming from an outsider, somebody not working for the Mancini Syndicate. While I was all for developing an expansive network of allies, it was part of his job to be suspicious of those relationships and alliances from a security health standpoint.

Luke turned to me. "Sorry to interrupt, but Skylar just returned. I assumed you'd want to debrief her before King returns."

I rose from my seat. "Thank you."

On my way to the door, I laid a hand on Matteo's arm. "Rest and eat. I'll be back shortly. Don't overexert yourself, Matteo, I need you strong."

He smiled, reading the subtext to my words. I was worried about him—from a personal standpoint also.

I left the room with Luke falling into step beside me as we strode down the corridor toward the mansion entrance.

"I appreciate you assisting with this. I know it wasn't easy to make such a decision given how loyal and dedicated you are to Caspian."

"At the end of the day, I want the best for him." He shook his head sadly. "Currently, he needs some help in that area. Besides, I could never allow Skylar to go out there unprotected. With you unable to deploy your own people after the hit they just took, it had to be our team out there."

"Perhaps this will go some length to allay your suspicions of me."

"Let's not get crazy."

Off my look, he held up his hand. "All right, yeah, I don't think for a second that you actually mean King any harm, I can see you're an ally through and through. I just don't trust it all the way, because you've always evaded the why of it all whenever I've slipped the question into a conversation here and there." He lifted his shoulder. "And Caleb is also suspicious, and he's not generally like that with this sort of thing."

Thankfully, before we could travel further down that minefield of a conversational path, the doors to the mansion flew open and Skylar rushed on in, urgency dancing in her eyes.

Damien came rushing down the stairs and made a beeline for her, looking her over. "Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere? Did those bikers—"

"I'm fine," she assured him. "It's all good."

"All good? It was a risk you going out there while Elijah is still loose. Could've been you getting taken next."

"Yet you still didn't stand in my way," she said with a smile. "Which I appreciate."

"I just wish I could've gone along to back you up."

"Luke's team was there covertly. And it was just a precaution. Besides, you do know that I can defend myself, right?"

He gestured at her left side. "You're still recovering from that injury."

"It's barely an ache now."

"All right, then how about last time you defended yourself, huh? You were hurt bad, and Seb was taken."

She gritted her teeth. "We were both caught off guard. That was an anomaly."

He sighed, then reached into his hoodie pocket and handed her back her necklace.

Her eyes brightened as she took it from him and put it back on, running her fingers reverentially over the pendant. "Thanks for taking good care of it."

"I made you a promise."

"I hated taking it off, but I couldn't have Caspian tracking me." She rolled her eyes. "Now that I know it has a state-of-the-art tracker in it."

"It's just his way of expressing his love and care for you."

He was actually defending Caspian. Completely unheard of. And it was clearly in a bid to make her feel better.

That had her smiling. "Yeah, you're right. It really is."

Luke and I both exchanged a look as Damien gently took her hand and urged her, "Let's get you something to eat. I bet you haven't eaten since you left."

He'd certainly taken a liking to her and from what I'd observed, it seemed to be more than just out of respect for Sebastian. Wherever she was in the house, whatever she was doing, he was always there with her. Or when she was occupied, he was watching over her, making sure she was eating, sleeping, and keeping well, in spite of being so incredibly on edge with her men missing and in captivity.

"Soon," she said, easing away and giving his hand a pat. Then, as we drew closer, she looked out at us. "First, we need to see to this," she said, pulling a memory stick from her leather jacket.

"He gave up the intel to you?" Luke asked.

"Everything I needed."

"Just like that?" Luke pushed, his suspicion matching mine.

"I had to make him a deal." She looked out at me. "And those photos also worked wonders."

"What deal?" Damien asked her.

She waved her hand at the three of us. "It's not important. This intel is." With that, she brushed past us all and called over her shoulder, "This needs uploading to the command center now."

We all followed after her through the mansion.

"What was the deal?" I asked her.

She blew out a breath, not breaking her stride. "I agreed that Caspian wouldn't get wind of Scott's unwitting involvement with this whole fucked-up thing."

"And?" I pushed, knowing that couldn't possibly be it, not to obtain this sort of intel.

"And I also agreed to throw a fight with one of his club members, once all this is done."

"What?" Damien demanded.

"It's no big deal."

"No big deal? To throw a fight in those underground fighting circuits, you'll basically be beaten to a pulp. The spectators won't buy it any other way. They can tell what's fake really easily, Bluebell."

She shrugged her shoulders. "It's fine." As we reached the entrance to what she'd termed The Jackals Lair, she looked out at us. "A small price to pay for this intel that could finally be what we've been needing in order to get a lock on the guys."

When Damien went to argue his point some more, I held up my hand. "Let's focus on the immediate."

"I agree," Luke said, as we descended the stairs, Skylar leading the way. "We need to hurry. Input this new intel, then I'll deploy a team to the respective locations before Caspian gets back. We can't have another dead-end, so he can't know about this until we've determined it's viable and truly something to go on."

"Well, that plan has failed before it's even begun," a voice sounded, a moment before Caspian emerged from the far corner of the room—a hidden entrance through a false wall that seemed to lead out to the south side of the property.

He hadn't emerged alone either.

There, right beside him, was none other than Asher Monroe.

"Jesus Christ," Luke breathed. "You didn't."

"Careful there," Caspian warned, flipping down his hood, which I recognized as one of Caleb's, as he came to us. "I'd caution you to reserve judgment. Especially when I'm looking at Skylar standing here in her Onyx gear, aware that the tracker in my Harley was tampered with so that you could clearly have her take it out far away from the mansion without me being able to track her whereabouts, knowing also that a team was deployed without my authorization." He glared between Luke and I. "You circumvented me and launched an operation without my knowledge, one involving the woman I love."

Asher hung back, looking completely unaffected by the tension rapidly escalating in the room to a dangerous level.

Of course it wasn't so much as touching the unfeeling bastard. He was, however, using it as an opportunity to study us in that known invasive way of his.

When he saw me notice, the little shit smirked.

I hid my tense reaction as something flitted across his face, something more than what he'd employed with studying the others.

He knew something.

In that moment, the pieces fell into place and it became apparent to me that Caleb had reached out to him regarding his suspicion of me. It seemed Asher had discovered something, or come very close at least.

Either way, it was clear that he hadn't conveyed that to Caspian, or he would be reacting a whole lot differently toward me right now.

What was his game?

"Dante discovered a potential lead," Luke informed Caspian. "We both agreed that it needed to be verified first before we brought it to you. You've already suffered through too many false ones already. We didn't want you enduring another."

"That's not your call to make. The buck stops at me. Everything goes through me."

"We're in this together, Caspian," I reminded him.

"And yet, you've just proven otherwise."

"Bullshit," I bit back. "You're on the edge." I gestured at Asher. "Bringing this psychopathic puppet master here is a definitive testament to that."

"There's no need for name-calling now," Asher spoke for the first time, finding amusement where there shouldn't be any. Psychopath indeed.

"Damn, I really wish Cal could be witnessing this," Damien commented.

"Shut your mouth," Caspian snapped.

"Involving him is pouring gasoline on already raging flames, King," Luke told him.

"Agree to disagree," Caspian shot back.

"We're already dealing with unruly elements, adding another one into the mix—especially the likes of him—is majorly detrimental."

"A security risk also," I cut in.

"You know, the way I see it, we can use all the help we can get. The whole psychopathic element sounds like fighting fire with fire, just what we need against Elijah," Damien spoke.

"Yes, because you are so well-known for your strategic thinking," Luke threw at him.

Damien lifted his shoulder then gazed at Asher. "Plus, he's smoking hot. Never hurts."

"I said, shut your fucking mouth," Caspian snapped at him again.

He was definitely feeling the weight of things, unable to keep himself checked like he would normally be able to do so incredibly well.

He was fast coming undone.

And having a dangerous element like Asher Monroe here working beside him could prove to be extremely detrimental in that area.

"Enough!" Skylar's voice rang out.

In the next moment, she stole all our attention, as she strode toward the command center with the memory stick in hand, telling us over her shoulder, "This thing has the tracking information for the two trucks used to transport Bastian and Caleb once they switched out the vans about a hundred miles north of that intercept point, as Dante managed to determine."

She was just about to insert the stick into the system when a whirring beeping sounded, the monitor above the center console flashing with a blue swirling circle.

Caspian pushed away from us and ran to it. "That's Bastian's pendant," he breathed, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "It's just become active."

"What?" Skylar cried. "How the hell?"

Damien came running over. "They must have escaped."

"Or it's a trap," Asher cautioned.

"It could just be the necklace being moved after Elijah just discovered what it does or something," Luke said.

"Why move it and not just destroy it then?" Damien said.

"To mislead you, redirect your focus and resources and, worst case, to actually bait you into an ambush of some sort," Asher explained.

"No," Skylar said. "It's got to be them."

Her and Caspian exchanged a pained look, then I saw him struggle to focus as he analyzed the blinking blue dot traveling across the map on the screen. "It's moving fast. Definitely not on foot. The ground it's covering, we're looking at a speed of—"

"Seventy-three miles per hour," I said.

He shot a look at me over his shoulder. "Exactly."

"Don't look so surprised, math is one of my fortes."

Asher brushed past Damien who was more than happy about the brief physical contact, unfortunate lust filling his eyes, as he watched him walk to the second keyboard and fired up another monitor. A security message blocked him before he could get started on whatever he was intending to do.

"Caspian, grant me access."

"King," Luke warned.

Asher rolled his eyes at our concern. "I can blow right on past your security protocols, but it will slow things down. Your call. Full access if you want me to confirm if it is Sebastian and Caleb rather than some elaborate ruse of Elijah's."

I watched worriedly as Caspian made his decision.

And then he did what I'd hoped against.

He pulled from his keyboard and leaned over Asher, typing rapidly and giving him access. "Full access."

Asher nodded, his fingers flying across the keyboard, command screens and hell knew what else being brought up rapid-fire. Keeping his focus, he told Caspian, "You might want to reach out to King-Tech. To do this fast enough, I have to forgo covering my tracks as well as I normally would."

"Covering your tracks with what?" Caspian asked, his eyes on his screen again.

"One second," he said.

Moments later, he had several traffic cam images opening up on the screen.

Then he was inside a couple of databases and pulling up yet more imagery, some even actual video footage.

"You're backtracking the path of the vehicle?" I realized aloud.

"Several potential paths," he answered, while still maintaining his focus. "Here we go," he said in a few moments. Before we knew it, he was hacking into the police force itself, departments in and around the area he'd identified, gaining access to cop car cameras, and hell knew what else.

"There's a new housing development there," he said, pointing to Caspian's screen. "Get me the name of it."

We saw some of Caspian's skills in action as he pulled up some real estate information for that area, and relayed the name to Asher.

And then he was delving into the records surrounding said development, construction information, permits, the whole nine. "There it is," he said, as he brought up a home security company. "Each home was outfitted with top-of-the-line security by this company, part of a deal made during construction."

I grimaced as he pushed things further and accessed the home surveillance of dozens of civilian residences across the development.

"Jesus Christ," Luke breathed at him breaking so many laws all over the place.

Caspian shot a look over his shoulder at him. "Have our best at King-Tech access the system and cover him."

Luke nodded, then headed to the back of the room, pulling his phone out as he went.

"Here," Asher spoke, nudging Caspian, and then we all looked to see zoomed-in footage of a license plate from several angles, a Chevy pickup truck, and most relevant of all, compiled imagery of Sebastian right there in the passenger seat of the truck asleep. "Your boy's there all right."

"Oh my God!" Skylar cried. "It's him. He really got out."

"Anything on Caleb?" Caspian asked.

"No. Just Sebastian and the driver."

Caspian cursed and shoved a hand through his hair.

And then he bolted from the command center, "I'll head out there with a team and intercept the truck."

I stepped into his path and pressed a hand to his chest. "I understand you want to be there in person, but the teams you have already scouring that five-hundred mile area are much closer. That truck is currently at least three hundred miles away from King Manor."

He gritted his teeth, took a moment, then stepped back and nodded.

In the next moment, he was contacting his teams and ordering them to intercept the truck.

As soon as he was done, Skylar was there wrapping her arms around him. "We found him. Bastian is coming home to us."

"Fuck, yeah!" Damien exclaimed.

The celebration was muted by the fact that Caleb wasn't.

Asher was well-attuned to that fact and he called to Skylar, "Fire up that intel you retrieved, we'll see where it leads."

We exchanged a look and I actually saw more than his unaffected fa?ade for a moment.

He was as worried as I was that Caleb wasn't there alongside Sebastian.

It didn't bode well.

Not at all.