Edrix's POV
My brain was basically short-circuiting. Michael Angelo Watson?
I cursed under my breath as the reality hit me-Angelo was one of them?
But there was no time to process the shock because Angelo barked at me to get in.
I scrambled into the back while he took the passenger seat. The moment the doors slammed shut, Elara floored it.
"Where are we going?" I asked, clutching the leather headrest as the engine let out a terrifying growl.
Elara's eyes reflected in the rearview mirror-cold, focused, and lethal. "Watson Mansion," she answered shortly.
I looked at Elara's blood-stained shirt and then at the high-tech interior. There was no way a girl could do all this alone. "Elara, where are your men?" I asked, looking out the tinted windows for a backup convoy.
"Bodyguards, soldiers, whatever. Since you've clearly got the budget for an armored tank, I'm sure you have a private army nearby."
"No," she replied, her eyes fixed on the road as she swerved around a sharp turn. "Not right now."
My jaw dropped. "What? Then how are you supposed to fight a house full of armed guards?"
Without taking her eyes off the street, she lazily pointed a finger toward the passenger seat and then gestured back at me. "He'll fight," she said, nodding at Angelo. "And you too."
"Then what will you be doing while we're busy dying?" I stammered.
"I'll scroll through reels," she said with a straight face.
"WHAT?!" Angelo and I both yelled at the same time.
We reached the massive gates of the Watson mansion, but Elara didn't even tap the brakes.
Instead, the engine roared louder. Angelo sat there, totally unbothered, as if we were just pulling into a grocery store. He looked at her and asked, "Can we trust you?"
"Yes," Elara replied, her voice cold. "But for now only."
Before I could process what that meant, she slammed the truck into the gates. The heavy metal flew open like it was made of paper, and we screeched onto the lawn. Immediately, men came running from every direction, some already raising their guns.
We scrambled out of the car.
Elara walked to the back door, her movements calm despite the chaos. She pulled out a massive, heavy suitcase and clicked it open. Inside was a high-tech gun that looked like it belonged in a sci-fi movie. She handed it to me, and I nearly dropped it-it was incredibly heavy.
"I don't know how to use this!" I yelled over the sound of shouting guards.
"I know," she said without looking at me. "That's why you give it to him." She pointed at Angelo. He grabbed the weapon without wasting a second, loaded it with a metallic clack, and started shooting. It was like watching an action movie in real life-every shot was precise, clearing a path through the guards.
Elara pulled out one more suitcase and suddenly grabbed my wrist. Her grip was like iron.
"Move," she commanded, dragging me toward a side door.
We ran through one hallway, then another, with Angelo right behind us, providing cover fire and keeping the guards back.
We finally reached a heavy, technical-looking door at the end of a corridor. Elara slammed her suitcase onto the floor and looked at Angelo. He gave her a sharp nod, his face covered in sweat and determination.
My heart is beating in my teeth, my ears are ringing, and I'm pretty sure I've forgotten how to breathe. Angelo is a war machine, and Elara... she's the one holding the remote control.
Elara kicked the suitcase open, and it wasn't full of clothes-it was a portable command center.
She started pulling out high-fidelity equipment: a multi-frequency signal jammer, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disruptor, and a laser-grid bypass tool. She slapped a magnetic decoder onto the door's electronic lock, connecting a tangle of fiber-optic cables to two rugged laptops.
Her fingers flew across the keys, entering lines of complex bypass codes that made my own hacking skills look like child's play. She slid one of the laptops toward me. "Sync the bypass and keep the firewall from rebounding," she ordered.
I instantly understood the protocol. As we worked together, the heavy gears inside the door began to groan and rotate-the lock was giving way.
Meanwhile, the hallway was turning into a graveyard. Angelo was starting to struggle; there were just too many guards pushing from the stairs.
He was running low on ammo, and the pressure was mounting.
Suddenly, Elara didn't even look up from her screen as she reached behind her back and down to her tactical boot.
In one fluid motion, she pulled out two sleek black handguns.
Without stopping her coding with one hand, she used the other to fire behind her.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
She didn't even need to aim-every guard that stepped into the hallway dropped instantly.
Damn! My jaw actually hit the floor. She's hacking a high-security vault with one hand and taking out professional assassins with the other.
I'm officially the most useless person in this room. Everyone is a secret super-soldier except for me.
The door hissed as the vacuum seal broke, sliding open to reveal a dark, cold room filled with humming servers.
Angelo stepped back, breathing hard, looking at Elara with a mix of respect and genuine fear.
Keifer's POV
The blindfold was rough, and the cloth in my mouth tasted like grease. They had thrown us into the back of a van like cargo, and for an hour, the only sounds were the engine and the muffled breathing of Section E.
When we were finally dumped onto a cold floor, I didn't wait. I rubbed my face against the concrete until the blindfold slipped. I looked around.
We were in a high-tech holding room-cold, metallic, and reinforced. I scanned the faces. Sixteen boys. Aries. Percy.
Angelo and Edrix were missing. And there were no girls.
"Free yourselves. Now," I ordered, my voice muffled by the gag.
The room was a mess of raw emotion. Some of the boys were visibly scared .
Aries looked like a caged animal, his face twisted in pure, unadulterated rage.
We worked in a frantic, ugly silence. Aries managed to snap his ties against a sharp metal edge and helped me clear my mouth.
Within minutes, we were all untied. We moved on the two guards stationed inside the room like a pack of wolves. There was no finesse-just the desperate need to survive. We used our fists and heavy equipment to put them down.
I ran to the main door, but it was dead. Electronic locks.
"Step back!" I yelled, looking for something to ram it with. We were trapped.
The air was thick with the scent of fear and sweat. Some of the younger boys were backing into the corners, terrified that the Monster's men would come back with more than just zip-ties.
Then, the door hissed.
The heavy steel panels slid apart. We braced ourselves, ready to fight whatever was on the other side.
Angelo stepped through the smoke first. He was covered in soot, a tactical rifle in his hands, looking like he'd crawled through a furnace. Behind him came Edrix, looking pale and clutching a laptop as if it were a shield.
But it was the third person who made the entire room freeze.
Elara.
Elara didn't give anyone a chance to breathe, let alone ask questions. She tossed a handgun to Percy and another to Aries with the precision of a seasoned soldier.
"Take everyone out to the cars," she commanded, her voice like ice. "And the Watsons... come with me."
The word hit me like a physical blow. Watsons. Plural. I glanced at Angelo, whose face remained a mask of grim determination.
She knew. She knew about me, and she knew the secret Angelo had been hiding his entire life.
She grabbed a heavy suitcase and headed down a different hallway, moving with a purpose that left no room for argument.
I followed, because at this point, she was the only one with a map to this nightmare. We didn't head for the exit; we moved deeper into the heart of the mansion until we reached a door I hadn't stepped foot in for years.
It was my mother's room.
"Why are you going in there?" I demanded, my voice low and sharp. That room was a sanctuary, a place frozen in time.
She ignored me.
"What are you doing, Elara?"
Angelo asked, his tone more urgent than mine.
She ignored him too. She threw her blood-stained coat onto a chair and rolled up her sleeves, revealing pale arms and a focused, surgical intensity.
She walked straight to the large painting on the far wall-the one my mother had loved most. Without a hint of hesitation, she swung the frame aside.
Behind it sat a high-security electronic lock.
My blood ran cold. I remembered what Keigen had mentioned in his diary.
He had mentioned a hidden vault in this room that contained the only real evidence against our father-the kind of evidence that could dismantle his empire and send him to hell for good.
I stared at her back as she began to work on the lock. Why was she doing this? How did she know where it was? This wasn't just a classmate helping out anymore.
She was reaching for the one thing my father would kill anyone to protect.
"Elara," I said, stepping closer, my hand hovering near the weapon in my belt. "How do you know about that door?"