Chapter 2: Take What I Can, Give Something Back... If I Fucking Must

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Vi

This night really hadn’t gone as planned.

This last month hadn’t, for that matter.

“Are you sure about this?” One of my men, Ren, asked me quietly as he readjusted the gun he now refused to part with after that raid, in his large holster at his left side. We’d already released a decoy, a man to draw the few men standing guard outside the great Lettiere’s Estate, to their rather untimely death. Another one of my men had successfully contaminated the airflow throughout most of the damn near castle of a home, from the ducts leading to an external vent, allowing me an opportunity to use something I hadn’t in quite some time.

And it was safe to say that I probably would’ve failed that rope test in PE if they forced me to do it now, judging by how sloppy this climb up the brick side of this estate had been, even with the grip from my leather gloves and my steel-toed shoes. The only thing that felt right was launching my grappling hook through the darkness of the night, up there in the first place, and making sure it had a firm, sturdy hold on the windowsill of the highest window at the rear of the home, facing the forest.

I felt like the damn prince in the story of Rapunzel as I climbed this flat brick wall; however, the person I was about to face was absolutely not a beautiful, sleeping damsel in distress.

Breaking into the estate wasn’t quite the plan, not even 24 hours prior to this... that was, until I caught wind of something on these hustling, bustling streets of Boston. Something rather troubling. A little birdie had been whispering the opposite of sweet nothings in my ear for quite some weeks at this point, but there was something I had to pivot and set my sights on in order to achieve what my ambitions truly were.

That required a change of plans for the night. And a potential sacrifice of a few of my men.

It required me to also read an unhealthy amount of historical plans for the estate I was currently climbing, some I acquired through more costly means, just to even begin to understand how the hell I was about to breach the unbreachable.