“That may not be true,” Mitya said. “There’s a possibility that a copy was made of this notebook and sent to the Caruso family. Antosha drove from New Orleans to Houston and made a delivery. Most likely he glanced at the notebook and didn’t read it. Whether the Caruso family read it or it was stolen before they could, who knows, but we have to assume they read it.”
“Great. We’ll have to figure out a way to do damage control,” Drake said. “Watch your six, Jake.”
Jake gave him a look and then stood up. “Need to get home to my woman. Now I’m really paranoid.”
He took two steps and then the world seemed to come apart. A blast shook the house, hard enough to send nearly everyone to the floor. The sound was deafening. Windows exploded, sending glass in all directions. Gunfire erupted. Sprinklers went off as flames licked up walls. The small meeting room was intact, but no one was going to wait for another explosion.
19
“GET the women in the safe room!” Fyodor shouted and hit the button under the table so that the wall opened up to reveal an array of weapons as well as gas masks.
Mitya got to his feet, wishing he could see his woman. “Need to know she’s all right,” he said. “Sevastyan?”
Sevastyan stuck his head out of the room. The hallway was pure chaos. Through the doors opening to the great room, they could see a hole in the outside wall. Surprisingly it wasn’t as big as it had sounded, about four feet high and three feet wide. Smoke poured into the room along with dust and debris. Wood splintered, and great jagged pieces pointed toward the inside of the room like giant spears.
“Can that safe room stand up to explosives?” Mitya asked his cousin.
“Damn straight,” Fyodor said. “Made certain of it.” He was tossing weapons and masks to his cousins and the others in the room. “This has to be dear Uncle Lazar. He likes to make a big entrance.”
“Classic attack,” Mitya agreed. He’d seen his father do it a million times. He liked a big explosion to shock everyone, to kill as many as possible and then calmly follow up by entering the home and shooting everyone in sight.
The shock of the explosion would paralyze those Lazar attacked, making his appearance dramatic as well as terrifying. That wasn’t going to be the case. He thought he’d caught the cousins together and that they would be with their women. He had no way of knowing they weren’t alone, and each ally had brought their bodyguards with them.
There had been no one in the great room, so there wasn’t a single death. Timur was already directing his troops. He had the shifters all stay back, circling around. He wanted them to quietly take out any of Lazar’s soldiers they came across. Then they looked to Mitya. He knew his father and his methods better than anyone else.
“He will go after any woman or child. They’ll make certain you hear their screams. If possible, they’ll draw you out by dragging her in front of you and hurting her. Even raping her,” Mitya explained. “There will be another explosion soon. They’ll lob in gas, and he’ll come behind that one with his men. Do we have eyes on them? We need to stay away from the walls. If there are masks anywhere else in the house, tell our men the locations so they can get them. They’ll need them soon.”
He spoke to them as he slid weapons and ammunition into the loops on his coat, adding to his arsenal, but his gaze was on Sevastyan. He’d sent Vikenti and Zinoviy to check on Ania. Sevastyan gave a small shake of his head.
Mitya’s heart dropped. “Where the fuck is she?” he roared.
“She wasn’t with the other women when the explosion went off. She’d gone to the kitchen to get whatever had been prepared for refreshments. Vikenti and Zinoviy headed that way after her.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when another explosion ripped through the house, the shock wave even stronger this time. Mitya grabbed the heavy table for stability as the walls undulated and shook all around him. The blast was so loud, for a moment he could hear only ringing in his ears.
He felt desperate. He knew what Lazar was capable of. Worse, he knew Lazar would make Ania’s death slow and ugly, most likely uglier than anything Joshua’s killer shifters had visited