Chapter 833
The rain outside lashed against the Platinum Hotel like a thousand whips.
Down on the street, Alistair Thorne stood next to a black tactical van. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat. Water soaked his white dress shirt, making it cling to his chest, but he didn’t seem to notice.
His eyes were fixed on the 30th floor.
“Charge set,” Lucian’s voice crackled over the radio. “North face. Structural weakness identified.”
“Do it,” Alistair said.
“Wait!”
Thomas Tate came running out of the police barricade, waving his arms. He looked disheveled, his face pale. But he wasn’t worried about the building.
“You can’t blow the wall!” Thomas screamed, grabbing Lucian’s arm. “The Phoenix… he said he’d kill everyone if we breached! My son is in there!”
Lucian didn’t even look at him. He backhanded Thomas across the face, sending the older man sprawling into the mud.
“Your son chose his side,” Lucian spat, his voice dripping with the venom of a man who had let a prisoner slip through his fingers. “He escaped my custody to rejoin his masters. If he is in there, he is standing with the enemy. And if Skye has so much as a scratch on her, I will bury you in it.”
𝗧𝗵𝘰𝗎𝗌𝖺ո𝖽s оf rе𝖺𝗱𝘦𝘳𝘀 о𝗻 𝘨a𝗅𝗻о𝗏𝗲ls.𝖼о𝗺
Thomas scrambled back, terrified by the cold malice in Lucian’s eyes.
“Three,” Lucian counted. “Two. One.”
He pressed the detonator.
BOOM.
The explosion wasn’t a fireball; it was a precise, cutting charge. The entire north wall of the 30th floor disintegrated outward, showering the street below with glass and concrete dust.
Inside the vent, the shockwave slammed me against the metal. Victoria screamed, covering her ears.
Dust billowed into the salon below.
“What was that?” Bianca shrieked, dropping her wine glass.
The hole in the wall was a jagged mouth open to the storm. Wind and rain roared into the penthouse, swirling the expensive curtains.
Through the smoke, grappling hooks shot into the ceiling.
Black-clad figures swung in through the breach.
Lucian led the charge. He landed on the Persian rug, an assault rifle raised.
“Clear the room!” he shouted.
The wolves who had been fighting Liam turned, confused by the new threat.
It was a massacre. Lucian and his team moved with mechanical precision.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Double taps.
The wolves fell before they could even raise their weapons.
Liam, bleeding from a cut on his forehead, took the opportunity to dive behind a marble pillar.
Then Alistair walked in.
He didn’t swing in. He stepped out of the service elevator that Lucian’s team had just overridden.
He walked into the room like he owned the very air inside it. He held a handgun loosely at his side. He stepped over a dead wolf without breaking stride.
“Find Bianca,” Alistair said. His voice was low, barely audible over the wind, but it carried the weight of a death sentence. “I want her alive.”
Up in the vent, I kicked the grate. It clattered to the floor of the walk-in closet below.
“Come out,” I whispered to Victoria.
We dropped down. Softly.
I crept toward the closet door, peering into the salon.
The room was a war zone—smoke, bodies, rain.
Bianca was scrambling backward, away from Lucian’s advancing team. She was heading for the antique desk in the corner.
She wasn’t trying to escape.
She pulled open a drawer.
My eyes widened.
She pulled out a gold-plated revolver. The barrel was long, ornate, and deadly.
She wasn’t aiming at Lucian. Or Alistair.
She turned, her eyes scanning the room wildly until they locked on the movement near the closet.
She saw me.
A twisted smile broke across her face.
“Found you,” she mouthed.