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“We need help upstairs! Josh is inside the study, and I’m locked out of the room! Hana!”

“I’m hacking into the system so you can get in!”

Fuck.

Fuck.

Josh is powerful, but he’s going to be surrounded by three killers.

We rush upstairs, and I let Sara and Noa go first. I grab the two bombs from the dead guard and head upstairs.

We come up behind the pillars, and carnage awaits us.

Bodies are scattered around the floor, killed by the two men, but five guards are still standing.

One’s holding Oliver, and Josh is nowhere to be found.

Chapter thirty-nine

Noa

At the far end stands a single, massive door.

Dario. Lucas. Evan.

They’re all in there, but fifty feet of polished marble stand between us and that door. And five heavily guarded men.

Four of them snap their assault rifles up in perfect unison, red laser sights dancing across our chests. The fifth guard is standing right against the door, his arm locked brutally around Oliver’s neck in a choking stranglehold, a pistol pressed hard against his temple.

“Let him go!” I yell at the guards, keeping my gun pointed at them.

"Drop your weapons!" the lead guard barks, his voice echoing off the high ceilings. "Now, or pretty boy dies!"

“You think I’m pretty? Thanks.” How can Oliver find humor in this situation?

“Shut the fuck up or your boyfriend is next!”

“If you touch Josh, I’ll saw off your arms.”

The time to negotiate is now, but these men only have one purpose: to guard Dario and to kill anyone who tries to assassinate him. Sara and I freeze, hands twitching. We are outgunned, and our dear friend is a hostage. The stakes are way too high.

But when I look to my right, Lana doesn’t freeze.

I watch her from the corner of my eye. While Sara and I are locked in a desperate verbal standoff, her gaze shifts across the room with terrifying, mechanical precision. She isn’t panicking; she’s auditing the architecture. She calculates the distance, the blast radius, and the geometric angles of the columns in less than a heartbeat.

From the corner of my eye, I notice what she's holding—two sleek, matte-black fragmentation grenades.

The guards are ordering us to stand down and to surrender, completely ignoring Lana’s gaze settling on Oliver. Then it hits me.

She’s silently communicating with him. I need to have these bozos focused on Sara and me so Lana can do whatever she plans to do.

With a subtle, sharp tilt of her chin, she points towards her weapons, then locks eyes with Oliver, gesturing toward the guard’s knife. If I blinked, I would have missed it—the silent, wordless transmission of data. I look at my friend, and he nods a fraction of a millimeter. He understands her plan perfectly.

She doesn't look back at us, but her voice cuts through the tension—low, sharp, and dripping with absolute authority. "Pillars. Now. Trust me."

"What—?" I start.

"Down!" she roars.