ELLIOT
The funeral was over, and Scarlet managed to not kill a single person.
I, for one, was pretty proud of that fact.
Seb seemed disappointed though.
“Why are you pouting?” Tristan asked him as we pulled in through the back entrance of the main home, a handful of our guys following us in two SUVs.
“Because,” he said, spinning the tip of his knife against his fingertips. “I wanted to see her let loose a little.” A bead of blood formed on the pad of his finger, and I rolled my eyes. “She deserves it.”
“She’s going to be able to let loose within the hour, Seb. Better to stick to the plan, don’t you think?” Seb rolled his eyes at Tristan as he put the car in park behind the garage, letting the other guys fall into the same spot.
“Finn and Kenna are at the warehouse on the south side, waiting to dispatch more men if we need them going into the reception,” Simon said as we all climbed out of our cars and waited for Niamh to escort us inside.
I leaned against the door of our car and cracked my knuckles. I didn’t like the waiting game. The anticipation of knowing that something big and brutal was about to happen was enough to drive a man insane.
Sebastian loved it. I watched him flicking and throwing his switchblades around like a kid playing with their favorite toy. I had no idea how Tristan ever felt about anything because of the way he was able to hide any emotion he might have felt.
Seb laughed at something one of the guys said, and then a gunshot went off, and my entire body went cold. Another gunshot and we were running towards the house.
Niamh ran out of the house and almost shot us in his frazzled state before realizing it was us.
“What the fuck is happening?” I shouted at him as we approached.
“We may have had a leak,” he said, bent over and panting.
“May have?” Tristan asked at the same time Seb asked about Scarlet.
“I don’t know,” he told Seb. “It’s fucking chaos in there. Last I saw her, she was still with Mots in the kitchen.”
Seb took off running inside without another thought, ignoring us all shouting at him.
“Fucking idiot,” I swore, turning my attention back to Niamh. “There has to be upwards of fifty people in there. How are we even supposed to know who to shoot and who is on our side?”
“You’ve met the guys already. Shoot anyone that isn’t them,” he answered, and I could feel a sort of nervous energy settle over me.
All of us had met some of their men, yes. About ten of them. And at the time, we were led to believe there were more, that they had the upper hand in this situation. But we were clearly going to be outnumbered, even with the men we brought with us just in case.
“You’re telling me that those dozen men we met are all you have on your side?” Tristan asked as another round of shots went off inside the house.
Someone came running out of the house, and I aimed and shot, his head exploding in a firework of blood and brain matter.
“We have to get back inside. We can argue about who misled who later. Get us through this, and you get your guy.” With that, Niamh went back into the house.
Tristan sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“You all remember what they look like?” he asked.
“Vaguely,” Simon answered, shrugging because he clearly didn’t give a shit right now who lived or died as long as we got Scarlet and didn’t lose any more fucking men to this family.
I had to agree.
“Good enough.” I rounded the door into what looked like a mix between a mudroom and a laundry room. I cleared the room, and the rest of the men came in, guns at the ready.
“Good luck,” I told them. “And if you see Seb, slap him for me.”
A few of the men laughed before they all split up, stalking through the doors and into various hallways.
“Kill who you can, and get out alive.” Tristan’s eyes were serious as we stood there for a moment, listening to men shouting and too many shots going off to count.
“I’m with Scarlet. We’re going to take the world’s longest vacation after this,” I muttered. “Let’s go.”
Between Tristan and myself, we probably killed off half of Scarlet’s family as we made our way from room to room. We came across a few men here and there that we had previously met, supposedly on the same side as us.
No one had seen Scarlet or Seb.
It was a fucking bloodbath. There was a dead body around every corner, and the soles of my boots were starting to stick to the carpet from the amount of blood I had to step in.
“Fuck’s sake,” I murmured under my breath.
“My thoughts exactly.”
Tristan went into one room, and I went into another. Moving back into the hallway, we both nodded. Clear.
It was weird to think of Scarlet growing up in a house like this. It just didn’t fit her personality at all. It was immaculate—barring the blood and guts currently littering the place. The walls were a crisp white, and there were pictures of family everywhere. Literally, everywhere. In gilded gold fucking frames.
“Bit eerie, innit?” We both turned around to find Seb had snuck up on both of us. “All these creepy-ass pictures everywhere.” He was absolutely covered in blood from his face to his arms to his damn feet—which were bare for some fucking reason.