Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Three men stood just outside the back of the house, staring into one of the wide, curved windows of the kitchen. There was a bank of windows surrounding the kitchen, making it light and airy and giving those inside views of the flower gardens as well as the vegetable and herb gardens just around the curving landscape.
One of the men stepped closer to the window, breathing heavily. “Damn, that’s hot. Wish I was assigned inside. How did they manage to get that assignment and we got stuck out here?” He lifted his hand high and flipped whoever it was inside off. “He’s fucking her face and flipping me off. What a dick.”
The other two guards moved closer to the window to see the show. Emmanuelle shadowed them. She made certain her image didn’t appear behind them so their buddy couldn’t see her as she moved into position. She caught the head of the third one, the one not so eager to see, between her hands and jerked, breaking his neck, murmuring “Justice is served” as she lowered him to the ground and immediately was on the second guard.
They were so intrigued by what was happening in the kitchen that they weren’t paying attention to anything else around them. The first guard had unzipped his jeans and was stroking his cock. She broke the second guard’s neck, lowered him to the ground and waited a moment until the man in the kitchen was fully engaged in what he was doing, too far gone to care or know what was happening outside, before she killed the first guard. She left them for Valentino’s trusted crew to put in the garage where no one would find the bodies until everyone was far away from the premises, with alibis that couldn’t be broken.
Hearing voices, she stepped into a shadow that was wider and longer, an easy one that was more like a highway, one she could leisurely navigate, allowing her to take a look at how many guards were in the section of the grounds she had been assigned to clear. Mariko had started on the other side of it. They would meet in the middle. It was a large section.
Emmanuelle counted five more guards just in the area around the kitchen and vegetable garden. Thankfully, they were spread out. Two had met near the tomato plants and were talking in low voices, warning her someone was close, but these men were taking their job much more seriously than the other three had.
She left them to their conversation, giving them time to say whatever they thought was important. Hopefully, they would split up, making her job easier. She went after the other three who were patrolling alone. She took them, one by one, softly reporting where she dropped each body, giving the location to Dario, although not using names, only a coded location of the bodies. She went back to locate the other two chatty guards. They had separated. She needed to get to both before they came upon the three bodies she’d dropped.
She had to depend on her cousins to do their jobs and get rid of any eyes on the roof and balconies. Not wasting time looking up took discipline. She had to use every ounce of her radar for her immediate section of the grounds to be cleared. The guard she stalked was closer to the street than she would have liked. The street wasn’t cleared yet and wouldn’t be for some time. That wasn’t a priority yet. They needed the rear entrance clear, the roof and balconies and then the house. At the same time as the house, the street would be cleared. It was all a matter of precise timing. She sighed. Anything could go wrong.
“With you,” Valentino’s voice whispered in her ear on their private channel.
He’d heard that sigh. She was never certain their channel was really private. Giovanni had assured her it was, that no one, not even Val’s geeky, techy, whiz-kid friend could penetrate the encoded channel, but she still worried. She didn’t want Valentino to look less than he was in front of his men. She was coming to understand that appearances of strength were everything in his world. They could even mean the difference between life and death.
She came up behind the guard and killed him easily, lowering him to the ground behind several wide shrubs, whispering the location and a warning that it was close to the street. She switched back to the private channel. She felt Valentino close. He was no longer in the safety of that house just two blocks away. She didn’t like that he was close. The streets weren’t safe. This was how it felt to him when he thought she was in danger.
“Just so you know, you are the love of my life. The one and only.” Before he could reply, she stepped into a shadow tube and let it take her back to the highway tube. She needed to find that last roving guard before she proceeded toward Mariko. They had to get into the house and start looking for the girls.