Delgano: The Intro - Page 93

“Then, kid, she’s not the one.”

Silence filled the cabin.

Then, Lee snorted. “That is the shittiest advice I’ve ever heard in my life.”

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FOUR

The last location was different.

Where the other houses had looked like stops on a trafficking pipeline or drop houses, this one looked like a miniature palace. They’d spotted it from several yards out, the entrance bracketed by two stations that held armed guards.

Lee, sprawled on his belly on the roof of the truck with a pair of binoculars, tapped the metal frame. “There’s no way this isn’t some dragon or lion’s head or whatever they might call the guys at the top’s place. Reminds me of something you’d find in Bali. Pretty sure there’s a pool in the back that’s bigger than the rural town I grew up in.”

“Security?” Trevor asked, tapping on his phone screen.

“You mean other than the men holding M16s?” Lee paused. “I see cameras. There might be sensors. A place this big, they might have an invisible fence.”

The lights at the estate powered down.

“Not anymore,” Trevor said.

He put away his phone, reached into the backseat for a rifle, and exited the car. Adrían and Lee followed, slithering through the darkness, covering the yards between their parking spot and the entrance as quietly as possible. The guards at the front had left their posts and were now on the ground, standing in the middle of the driveway, loudly arguing about whose job was what when the power went out.

There were three.

Without any discussion, they each took down a guard. Trevor then leaned against the stone guard post, arms folded. Less than a minute later, the door opened, and he made a sweeping motion with his hand.

“Ladies first.”

Lee went ahead. “You think that offends me? I would have made it off the Titanic while you sank with the band.”

“Do they know about the Titanic in North Korea?” Adrían teased.

“Do they know about the Titanic in Brazil?” Lee tossed back.

Trevor silently gave the next directive, and Adrían initially felt the need to go against Trevor’s word, primarily due to an engrained sense of defying authority. Then he thought better of it.

This wasn’t his world.

Still, he found that he enjoyed “this world.”

It wasn’t much different from the world he’d known as an enforcer, but yet, it felt like here, he could determine a side. Here, in the clandestine, there was no need to try to determine legality. While his mother would have never approved of him clearing out an entire compound, he could see her eventually being convinced that there was a higher purpose behind the things he did now.

Leaves crunched several yards ahead. A cloud of smoke rose into the air, a mix of cannabis and tobacco.

Adrían lowered his gun and reached for a hunting knife. As the man raised his head to blow a ring of smoke into the air, he swiped the blade across the man’s throat as if carving a smile into his neck. The man grunted and collapsed into the grass just as another came around the corner.

The second man raised his gun.

Adrían raised his.

Then, the second man went down.

Adrían looked over his shoulder, and Lee pointed at him as if to say, “You owe me,” before walking off.

He continued in the same direction, wondering what made Trevor and Lee the people they were. There’d been brotherhood in Chamas, and while he never truly participated, it had made more sense. They’d shared a common background, a culture. These two owed him nothing, and yet, they were helping him avenge someone they didn’t know as well as he did.