Owning the Mafia Don

Lucien.

They moved slowly as they approached the house, little more than a make-shift shed. Simmons was in contact with Aiyana as she radioed back instructions, her voice not sounding as cool and collected as she watched them through the camera they had fitted.

“Watch out!’ she called and they saw a light move in one of the rooms inside the house.

Suddenly, with no warning, a volley of fire came from the house and the bushes surrounding the house. Lucien and his men dove down, crawling in the undergrowth on their stomachs. They took care not to return the fire. They did not want to provide any clue to their whereabouts.

Panting, Lucien rolled onto his stomach.

His brass knuckle dusters were in his overcoat pocket. It had been difficult, climbing up the hill, loaded with their weapons.

But this was one weapon he would not abandon for anything.

He turned his head and met the eyes of his man, Rhyme.

Schwartz also nodded as Lucien gesticulated, jerking his chin coldly.

The tall man rose up for a minute, raised his arm and hurled the grenade he had been clutching, straight at the house.

They had managed to reach close enough to the house to make sure that the grenade could cause the maximum damage.

Sure enough, the explosion and the billowing smoke, the panic-stricken cries and the shouts of men as they prepared to retaliate, all of it alerted them to the fact that they should expect more firing.

Sure enough, Dmitri’s man, Yaroslav and a handful of men rushed out, guns blazing, blindly targeting the woods bordering the house. Lucien jerked his head, and Schwartz and Simmons headed to the side, bent low and running. Ngoc and Rhyme took the side to his right.

Lucien lay, firing steadily, and when he had managed to draw the men out, getting them to head straight towards him, he reared up and flung a grenade at the men, lobbying it straight at the man leading the group.

The firing, bursts of it, could be heard from inside the house. Dmitri Rudenko had been prepared and must have been lying in wait, perched on this hillside hut but he had not expected this forceful display of firing from Lucien, such an intense attack.

He had not truly understood the hatred that the Mafia Don had harboured in his heart ever since Dmitri Rudenko had attacked his house and tried to harm his children.

To make matters worse, he had kidnapped Lucien’s love, his wife Proserpina when she was vulnerable and carrying his children.

Worse, he had attempted to sell her off as a sex slave.

It was after the abduction of his heavily pregnant wife that Lucien had turned into a man seeking only to wreak revenge, at any cost.

Now he ducked and ran, using all the survival skills, the fighting and attacking tactics he had learnt as a young man, while participating in street fighting, avoiding the enemy firing. A bullet grazed his arm and he swore, clutching it. He glanced at it as the pain shot up but he swore again and continued to slip and slide, dodging bullets as he raced around to the side of the house where he knew Schwartz must have broken into the house

They had decided to throw Dmitri off the track by sending the rest of his men in a car, with one of them dressed in Lucien’s clothes. The vehicles had deliberately raced away from the town, to give the impression that Lucien had given up and was leaving at the approach of Salam Khan.

Dmitri had his men along the way, and they had reported spotting the Mafia Don as he left in his sedan and his cavalcade.

That had afforded Lucien and his companions a window of time, a valuable element of surprise.

It had been a gamble, but Lucien had grown up gambling. And this had been the most dangerous gamble of his life. He stormed into the house, with Simmons, who had appeared at the door, to escort him safely inside.

“Where the f*ck is that B*stard?’ he roared, coughing as the clouds of smoke enveloped him.

‘He left that way!’ yelled Ngoc, shooting at a man who had emerged from a room, firing in discriminatorily.

With a groan, the Vietnamese fell to the ground, clutching his chest. Lucien grimly turned and fired a volley, straight into the man’s face, walking away even as the man’s body jerked and slumped to the floor, blood spattering everywhere. He wiped his face on the arm of his overcoat and said,

“Show me.’

Simmons, who had turned to gather Ngoc in his arms, grunted,

“Sir, you cannot…You can’t go out alone.”

Lucien fixed him with a cold glare and the man went on, holding his dying friend in his arms,

“They went that way, into the forest…’

“They?’ asked Lucien sharply even as he began to walk down the path the man had pointed.

“He had a young boy, a teenager with him. Looks like him too..’ said Simmons, his face weary and crumpled as he held on to his friend who was gasping, the blood flowing freely from his chest wound.

“Get him outside,’ snapped Lucien, crisply, ‘Stop blubbering, man; he is going to live’

And then as he discarded the guns he had used, he went on, without looking at Simmons,

“Radio Aiyana for help. Our chopper is close by. She can send it.’

The man continued to sit, slumped, holding Ngoc in his arms.

Lucien scowled. Raising his voice, he roared,

“Do it NOW, man!’

Raising his head, he looked at the miserable-looking Simmons, and he roared.

‘I said NOW!’

Simmons nodded and scrabbled to obey Lucien.

Stepping over a couple of bodies, he shot casually enough at a couple of men who were still alive, ignoring their wretched screams as they writhed on the ground in the final throes of a painful death.

Lucien put on his familiar brass knuckle dusters, reloading his guns as he walked.

“Wait up, Mate, I’m coming.’ called Schwartz, emerging suddenly from a side room, eyes gleaming.’ He had his rifle over his shoulder and looked as debonair as ever, the ruffled hair, and with the scruff on his face making him look even more dashing, unlike his cold-faced, hard-eyed companion who looked dangerous.Nôvel/Dr(a)ma.Org - Content owner.

Ignoring Lucien’s frown with a rakish smile on his face, Schwartz added with a wink,

“I got to go back and hand you over safely to the little lady. Or I will be toast.