We planned on having time to get the kids out before Moreno showed, if he showed, but he was here within minutes. No way could he be here within minutes of us taking the place.
Someone told him we were coming.
“Tyler, target confirmed?” Deck asked.
There was radio silence.
“Fuck. Tyler.”
Nothing.
“Vic,” Deck said.
“On it.” Vic was out the door and gone.
“Deck. We do this. Now.” He looked at me, paused, and then nodded.
Moreno was the target and he’d come here with a shitload of firepower. Firepower that Deck and I couldn’t handle on our own and with kids potentially getting hurt in a shit storm of gunfire. We needed a controlled take down.
Deck ran to the wall, grabbed one of the ladders and lowered it into the pit closest to him. He gave me an abrupt nod and then disappeared inside.
I stood in the middle of the yard when Moreno’s men barged in. I’d never surrendered before, but as I stood in the yard where I’d spent two years of my life, I realized I had surrendered—to Vault.
I tossed my knife to the right of me then held up my hands. Two guys covered the door while five took the perimeter of the yard and three surrounded one man—Moreno.
They walked toward me then stopped five feet away, guns aimed at my chest.
Moreno was tall and probably why he didn’t look overweight, but he had a belly that hung over the belt on his pants. His hair was greased back and curled slightly at the curve of his neck. He also had a sharp, long nose with a notch in the center, and cruel, beady brown eyes.
His face was weathered from too much sun and made him appear older than his fifty-five years. He wore black pants and a white, cotton button-down that had the first three buttons undone and revealed his two gold necklaces, one with a cross and the other with an oversized emerald.
“Moreno.” I lowered my hands and one of the men gestured with his gun and I put them up again.
I’d recognized the necklaces from when I was a kid. This was the man who’d stared down at me in the pit. The man who had stood with the other Vault members and watched my father tortured then killed by my mother. Who’d watched my sister beaten.
I practiced for years and years to conceal my anger and numb myself, but fuck, I wanted to kill the bastard. I wanted him to die the way my father did. I wanted to cut that smirk off his face and have him beg me to let him live.
I clenched my jaw and forced a smile. “How have you been? Been a while, Moreno.”
“Yes. Since your sister’s little… mishap.” He clucked his tongue. “Such disloyalty you and your sister have shown to those who have raised you. Given you everything.”
I had so much to say to that, but words had no meaning to him and it only gave him power. Instead, I ignored the guard’s order to keep my hands up and lowered them to my side. They tensed and looked to Moreno who merely shrugged. Cocky bastard.
“You could’ve done better, Kai. I expected something a little more creative from you. Taking my wife and telling me to meet you here or you will kill her?” He laughed. “What…. Did you think I’d show up alone? That I’d let you live once you hand over my wife? What do you want? Money? Drugs? Power?”
I decided to play it off like I knew what he was talking about as it gave me an advantage. “Ah, the beautiful Catalina. A little young for you, isn’t she?”
That pissed him off as the fingers on his right hand twitched at his side. “You think you come into my country, into my house, kill twenty of my men and leave with my wife?” His house? Killed his men? Ernie and Tristan had eyes on him. They weren’t going in.
He laughed and the shrill sound echoed off the cold, sterile walls of the yard. “You dare to threaten me? My wife? You must not like your family very much.”
I chuckled. “I killed my own mother. And as you know my father is already dead.”
He took a step closer and so did the assholes with the assault rifles pointed at me. “And what about the girl… what’s her name? London. And your sister. Both would be nice additions to my bed.”
I glared, the twitch in my jaw and tension in my body sparking. I didn’t even want her name to pass his disgusting lips.
There was a slight movement above me to the left on the wall surrounding the yard. I didn’t look, to avoid drawing attention, but they were getting into position, Tristan and Ernie. I had no idea what happened to Vic and Tyler.
A man like Moreno didn’t let something go down like this and let anyone live, and he sure as hell wouldn’t give me money, power or drugs in exchange for the return of his wife. But what I couldn’t figure out was why he thought I had his wife. But I had an idea who did.
“My wife, Kai.”
I needed a few more minutes for Vic and Tyler, but I didn’t know if either was still alive. “I very much doubt your wife wants to go back to you.”
He smiled and it was a tight, cruel smile. “Grab one of the kids,” Moreno ordered to the man on his right.