CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JASIEL

I knew, more-or-less, the plan for today. I'd wracked my brain to remember, and when it mattered the most, my brain worked to tell me. The basement was connected to everything, and I partly remembered it being mentioned, so that's where I made my way to and that's where I found Daddy.

He wasn't impressed that I'd got myself caught, but in all fairness, this was their third time trying to get me, and by the third time, luck was already on their side.

"Vittoria has just gone into one of the rooms on the first floor," Trojan spoke through the comms. "How far away are you guys?"

We were in the service elevator. I had a mask on, and the bag filled with C4 on my shoulder. As nice as this place was, the only way we could get what we wanted, was if this place was leveled out and everything in it was turned to ash.

"I want to be the one who kills her," I told Daddy as we stood, staring at our reflections in the metal surface on the inside of the elevator. "You can kill Benicio but I want to kill her."

He turned to me, adjusting my mask. "Don't let it slip," he said. "You can have whatever you want, baby. Just get everything back first."

I didn't even realize she'd taken my ring from me, but now that she had, my hand felt naked. I'd only had it for a few days, and it was part of me. And if she didn't have it with her, we'd have to go find everyone she knows, kill them, and blow up everything in my path until it was back in my possession.

"She's alone. If you're going in. Do it now," Trojan said through the comms. "I'll make my way down to the basement now."

Out of the elevator on her floor, I didn't waste a moment. Into the room, we caught her undressing out of a dress Trojan had accidentally spilled a drink on.

"Get out!" She screamed at us. Her large, oversized pageant hair wobbling as she shook.

Daddy locked the door, standing behind it as I barged toward her, swiping her legs out from beneath her. She dropped to the ground in bundle of fabric. Her beige underwear on show, alongside several weapons she'd been concealing.

"Who are you?" she asked. "I'm a guest here. You can't hurt me."

I handed Daddy my bag with the explosives before turning back to her. "It's me," I said, taking my mask off. "Surprise."

"You. I—"

Holding up my bare hand where there should've been a ring, I forced it in her face. "Where is it?"

"What?"

In my other hand, I wielded a knife with a serrated edge. It wasn't my usually knife, not the best for throwing, but good for making fine slices, usually against animal product, but just as well against human skin. "My ring."

"Your ring?"

"My ring!"

"I—" she grabbed her clutch purse. "I have it somewhere."

"You know, you should have people following you around," Daddy announced from the door. "You don't think you're leaving this place alive, do you?"

She looked at him. "The man from the phone," she said. "I've heard you from somewhere before."

He pulled his mask away. "The ring," he said. "You know. You didn't have to do what you did. You touched my boy. You're lucky I didn't come after you that night. I killed what, three of your men to get the location of that warehouse. I would've killed every single last person who had the slightest connection to you just for his location."

"I—I didn't know you—you—"

I dropped into a squat at her eyeline. Placing the blade at the side of her face. I forced her to look back at her clutch bag. "The ring."

"If you'd have just waited, we were coming here today, Benicio won't see much beyond his birthday, and unfortunately, neither will you," he said in a calming tone. "You couldn't see the bigger picture. You wanted to make a deal by giving Jasiel to him. And for what, exactly?"

She shook her head. "I didn't want to be one of his underbosses. I wanted my name and business," she said. "He'd agreed to give me that. It wasn't personal. It's just business." She pulled out the black metal ring with the diamond. I snatched it from her and placed it back on my ring finger.

Daddy placed his mask back over his head, reminding me to put mine back on.

"This was yours too," she said, offering me up my lighter.

"I would say thank you, but I can't," I said. "I'm not thankful for you, in fact, this is extremely personal, and not at all anything business related. I wish we were getting paid for this." I looked deep into her eyes before sticking the blade in her throat. Blood immediately sprayed out a line across the room. It gave another dramatic pulsing spray when I pulled the blade back out.

Before we left the room, I placed a little block of C4, already prepared with the trigger embedded. Each of the blocks had a trigger embedded, and I had control of that trigger, once pressed, each block would blow. The idea excited me, and since we had the floor plans, we knew which walls were keeping the structure of the house together, and those were primary targets.

Over the comms, they were talking about the next phase.

I'd been safely rescued, although I didn't need rescuing since I'd got myself free, much like when I could get myself free from the prison. Sure, they drove the bus, and they turned it on its side, but, I was the one who was able to press all those buttons in the warden's office to get myself on that bus.

And after I got my ring and lighter back from Vittoria, and she unfortunately had an altercation with the sharp end of my knife, we were moving onto the next phase of the plan. Getting as many innocent people off the island as possible.

Trojan had been slowly getting the service people to leave without causing a panic, and Midas had been hitting up the wall and floor vaults. Given his name, I thought everything he touched turned to gold, but it was more of a case that he could sniff out gold through vaults.

Most of the bedrooms had vaults, and I knew from experience that Benicio was paranoid, so he split his precious belongings up between many different vaults.

As we went around the upper floors of the house, planting the C4 bricks, we were taking out the security on their routine walks to make sure the house was still secure. One by one. Before they could reach for their gun as they approached us in the hallway, I threw my serrated knife with a sixty per cent chance of the pointy end hitting them.

Hit after hit, I got bullseye!

I gave Daddy a high five as I pulled my knife from a man's eye socket. It still had the gooey eye on the end. "Ew," I let out, wiggling the knife around to get the eye off, whacking it against the wall.

"It's a shame we're blowing this place up," he said. "The neighbors are gonna be pissed, but at least we'll be giving them all a show."

"When we're on the island, will we have a house like this?" I asked. I didn't know much about our plan for leaving. The less I knew, the better. "I don't think I want somewhere too big, like, all this space, why would we even use it for?"

"It can be as big, or small as you want," he said, lifting his mask slightly as I lifted mine to kiss him. "And if you don't want to stay on the island, we can travel too. But I'm not letting you out of my sight, ever again."

"Good," I told him, reaching out and touching the scratchy facial hair on his chin and cheek. "Because I never ever ever ever ever want you to stop watching me. But that's only because I might do something super cool and if you're not watching me, then you might think I was lying about it."

I felt his face smile before I pulled his mask down. We still had a job to finish.

"You two finished?" Midas asked through the comms. "I got the last vault. A lot of diamonds in here. Are we doing a fifty-fifty split?"

Daddy shook his head at me. "All yours," he said. "We're going to head into final position. When you two are ready, send out an alert to let everyone know there's been an attack."

My belly tickled. I was excited to hit the final phase of our plan, although I might've not been paying attention to it, I knew it was the final phase, and final meant last, so, we were super close to leaving this place and blowing it all to dust.

Daddy took my hand. "Remember," he said. "I got to kill him. You get everyone else. But he's mine." He was referring to Benicio, and I'd already agreed to let him kill him, even though he'd put me in prison, and I'd suffered, but I got to press the trigger once it was all done, so if he didn't die, my explosion would kill him.

A countdown went from five, as Trojan was ready to sound the alarm.

Once that happened, Benicio would be taken away from any harm. The rest of the family would be forced to go into hiding spaces around the house, and all the remaining guests would be ushered off the island.

We knew this because Daddy had been part of the team that put all of this into action to save Benicio if his life was ever under threat.