Chapter 101 Chapter 101
"You made it." Victor scoffed, with a lopsided smile, but his eyes remained wide with disbelief. He nodded to himself, looking around the room.
"You're trapped. There's no escape for you, Victor. What did you think? That you would take my territory just like that? As if it were that easy to own something you did not earn?" Damien asked, pointing his gun at his head.
"Well, I never expected it to be easy, but with my men stationed all across town, it must have been a real tough one." Victor straightened up.
"Hello, Lisa." He nodded at me with a smile. "I see you are still trotting behind him like a dog? Wagging your tail whenever he says jump, you scream how high, am I right?" He mocked, laughing at his own joke.
Damien turned around to look at me, but I merely shrugged. "It's a real shame, though," Victor continued.
"Alexander was really looking forward to working with you. Too bad you changed your mind." He smirked.
"I never agreed to do anything. Not even once." I retorted sharply.
"Yes, yes, what a shame. I bet it did a number on Damien when that video came in." He chuckled. Damien's jaw clenched, and he pushed the gun further on him. Victor raised his hand in mock surrender, but was laughing.
"You should know that Alexander is coming for you both, and you know that he will destroy both of you. You should have joined us when you had the chance." He smiled, and a knock sounded on the door. Just as we turned to look, I saw Victor press the button, and he went up in smoke.
"No!" I yelled, and Damien turned in time to shoot, but Victor was gone. We rushed to where he had previously been standing and found that it was a trap door he had been standing on all along. He had picked that hotel room for a reason.
Damien jumped in about six feet down after him without saying a word to me. "Damien!" I yelled, but his footsteps pounded against the floor as he chased after Victor. I contemplated jumping in for a minute before making the decision to actually follow after him.
I ran through the corridor and came upon a door ahead. I burst through it and, shockingly, ended up in the hotel's kitchen. The kitchen staff stared at me wide-eyed, frightened but unsurprised. My eyes wandered before I saw the bleeding man on the floor.
He was losing a lot of blood, and that confirmed it. I let out a gasp. "Call 911!" I yelled and rushed past them towards the back door. It busted out to the back street. That was where I found Damien crouched on the floor with a gun in his hand and blood over it. I was shaking, thinking of the man who had been shot inside. I looked around, but Victor was nowhere either.
Damien straightened up, and I looked at him with teary eyes. He looked withered and upset. The sound of an ambulance sounded in the distance. He looked at me, and then at the door.
"We should go." He said in a raspy voice and turned away from the hotel. I followed him just as the ambulance drove in and the kitchen staff pulled the man out of the kitchen. I prayed quietly that he would be okay.
Damien and I hotwired a car and met the guys at the safe house. "Victor got away," Damien murmured with silent fury as he walked past Duke and the other men.
We walked into his office, and as soon as I shut the door, he raised his hand. "I did not shoot him. Victor did....Fuck!!" He pushed a bunch of things off his table to the floor.
"Calm down, Damien. You'll get him again, but right now, we need to focus." I sighed. Relfief flooded me because he had not gotten an innocent man's blood on his hand again. As well as the fact that he acknowledged how uncomfortable it made me.
He ruffled his hair erratically with his hand, and his finger toyed with his upper lip. I walked up to him and grabbed his free hand.
"We have to work towards getting Alexander. If we get Alexander, we get Victor, we get the Syndicate's leader. We get this war finished. Let's focus on the goal, okay?" I said to him. He looked at me and nodded.
"Yeah, you're right." He touched my face, sweeping my hair back from my face, and then he planted a light kiss on my lips.
"I'm sorry about all of this. I know this is not the life you are cut out for." I was quickly taken aback. Was Damien Paulo apologizing to me?
"Thank you." I blurted out, slightly confused. He smiled and turned around. "We have to figure out how to smoke Alexander out.
"Let's look at the file Claudia sent again. There has to be something on it that makes perfect sense." Damien said and pulled out his laptop. I sat beside him on the sofa in his office as he plugged in the flash.
The folder came up again, and he pulled up the list of people on Alexander's list. "What could these names possibly mean? There are over two hundred names on this list."
"It is possible that he is working with them, or perhaps targeting them? But Gabriel was working with them, and he admitted to him, and he had the same escape trick as Victor." I said, thinking how it all added up.
"I think it adds up. Look at this," he pointed to one of the names on the list. Mr. Chastain Dominic.
"Who is he?" I asked, not recognizing the names as one of the people I had seen Damien interact with.
"He is one of the leaders of the San Huan rival group. They are rivals of the syndicate." He replied. It made me wonder why the name of someone not associated with the syndicate. I clicked the mouse and entered the next page, and a totally different write-up came up.