Accidentally Yours (Merffy Kizzmet) novel Chapter 226

Chapter 226

Enzo

They stepped off the service elevator into the smell of metal and dust. The Strip’s neon was a distant glow; here, the light was industrial and fluorescents, concrete, the small mechanical breath of machines cooling. Fifteen minutes out from the hotel, the warehouse sat behind a row of empty storefronts, a property so far buried in paper work it was impossible to learn who owned it.

Close enough to move fast. Far enough no one asks questions.

Three vans waited under the loading awning, engines quiet, lights off. Men clustered around the center van like a loose constellation- thirty of them in a tight draft of shadow, half in jackets, half checking gloves. Dom was already on the crate, hands wrapping tape around his wrists like ritual. Gino perched on the bumper, a toothpick providing him a cameo of calm.

Jake’s voice came through the comms from upstairs, clipped and clinical. “Warehouse feed’s live. Hotel cams on closed loop. Suite corridor ready to go blind on your mark.”

“Good,” Enzo said. He dropped a thin folder on the metal table and flattened his palm over it without opening it. The plan was mostly in his head now–order, timing, temperature.

“Dottie wanted seventy–two hours,” he said. “We move tonight.”

Dom’s brows climbed. “Tonight? You cooking up a funeral or a lesson?”

“A lesson,” Enzo replied. “A hard one.”

Gino whistled, the sound more surprised than impressed. “So we’re really doing the Lola thing. Boss, you’re trying to get us killed.”

“Then wear your helmet like the rest of them,” Enzo said, quiet as a metronome.

Nervous laughter rolled through the crew. Men joked to fill the space where fear waited. They all liked her, some respected her, and all of them understood the shape of what they were about to do.

Enzo tapped the tablet and the maze lit up one long corridor folded back on itself, three sharp bends, a false dead end, a final room meant to feel like an answer that changed the question. He traced choke points with a fingertip.

“Thirty men,” he said. “Split into three waves. First wave: pressure. Second wave: escalation. Third wave: wall. No blades. No live rounds. Paint only at distance. Up close: hands, elbows, shoulders–delivered like you mean to end the night and retracted at the stop line.”

Enzo’s face didn’t change. The room felt it.

“How long?” Enzo asked.

“Short,” Jake said. “She’s moving. ETA to hotel: eighteen–fifty–five.”

“Stage anyway.” Enzo’s voice tightened like a string. “If she’s late, the pressure’s better. Don’t change timing because of sentiment.”

Gino looked half amused, half nervous. “Boss, we’re about to make it angry on purpose.”

“Good,” Enzo said. “Maybe the world will learn what that looks like.”

Dom walked the first bend, testing smoke density, feeling how the fabric drags would bite at a heel. He demonstrated a choke that started like a promise and ended the instant the space said stop – a strike delivered with the kind of commitment that sells danger. The men hit the pads as if it mattered; not practiced balletic taps but real blows painted to teach consequence.