Chapter 13

• Alaric’s POV.
• The night was thick, heavy with an intensity that clung to the air like smoke. Our meeting with the Salvatore syndicate had been tense from the moment I walked in. It should have been a quick discussion, a negotiation to remind them where their limits were. But it looked and felt like they had other plans. As I looked around, my senses alert, I could feel their eyes on me—calculating, waiting. I knew what that meant. A fight was coming, and I welcomed it.
• It happened fast. A flash of movement, a clinking of a gun being drawn. I dropped to the floor just as a bullet whizzed past my head, embedding itself in the wall behind me. That was it. My men and I sprang into action, returning fire in a hail of bullets that filled the air with the deafening sound of gunshots.