❝ 𝚂𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎𝚜 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚜𝚑𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚘 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎 ❞
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Odette: I made it back at the house.
Odette: I just told mamá y papá.
Serenity: Okay stay safe.
Odette: I should be the one telling you that, Diabla. Please be careful tonight.
Serenity: I always am.
I put my phone down and close my eyes while I stretch out my arms. I've been training in hand in hand combat for the past two hours and right now we're taking a 30 minute break before we head back and finish our final hour.
Then we are free for the next few hours until we leave. A knock at the door makes me open my eyes and look over to see my mama. "Estrella told me I'd find you here. Are you doing okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just need to stretch out my muscles before we get back in."
"How are you and Elijah?" She asks, sitting on the bed next to me.
"Remember when I told you I didn't think I would be able to find love given what I do?" I look at her and she nods without saying a word. "I think I found someone because I've never felt this way towards any man."
"You love him, don't you?"
There's no point in denying this to my mama. I mean she's the woman who gave birth to me, she's obviously going to find out one way or another.
I answer by nodding my head yes.
She wraps her arm around me and I lay my head on her shoulder. "You know I haven't seen Natalie or Elijah since they were 15 or 16 years old and before that, they were only two years old before your father and I left."
"I know. Natalie told me about how two masked people saved her from being taken. I have a feeling it was you and papa."
"And you are right. Your papá and I watched them over the years but it still felt like they were 15 or 16 until I physically saw them face to face. That's when I realized they are both grown up."
"I'm sorry for hiding this accidental marriage that happened between Elijah and I from you and papa. I just didn't know if it was them who were after you two or-"
"Serenity, it's fine! Plus we already knew who was after us all along. We just kept quiet because we didn't want you going after Roman Miles alone. Knowing how stubborn you are, you probably would have without hesitating."
She has that right. I probably would have so I guess it was a good idea for them not to tell me who really was after them and just lie.
"We should get back. Break time is almost over."
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I've been paired up with the one and only, Valentino Morales to train with for the last half hour and I honestly don't know if he's going easy on me on purpose or if I'm actually doing a number on him.
"I wonder if it was only you and one of your enemies in a room, who's a skilled fighter and you have to protect Celestina from them." I say after I push him to the ground for the tenth time. "Would they actually be able to take you down this easily and get to her?" Before I even have time to react, Valentino throws a punch and hits me in my lower abdomen near my hip. "Fuck, that hurt. But that's what I'm talking about!"
"Serenity, I respect you. I really do. But do not make up those types of scenarios in your head that involve Celestina."
"Then why are you going easy on me?" I ask, as I quickly place him in a chokehold. "You see? I'm offended."
"I'm giving you my full fucking strength! If anything, you're probably the one who's going easy on me."
"Oh." I say, dropping him to the ground before I squat down next to him. "Well I mean you're right about me going easy on you because I am."
"Like none of my men or even my sister are able to take me down. Sure they tire me out but you- I'm afraid of you now. Lesson learned. Never go up against La Diabla in anything."
You got that right.
I hold out my hand for Valentino to take. Once he does, I help him stand up. But me being the amazingly nice person I am, I immediately wrestle him to the ground again.
"At this point you're just- Ow! Elijah, your wife is bullying me!" I roll my eyes and loosen the grip I have on Valentino's arm but I'm still holding him down.
Elijah chuckles as he approaches us. "You seem to be lacking skill, Morales."
"Only because your wife is one of the best assassins in the industry."
"Tied alongside yours truly." Cassandra says walking up to us, Ryan beside her. "Serenity, you should let the poor man's arms go. He'll need them for tonight."
"Oh that's right!" I say. Without thinking, I drop Valentino, face first to the ground. I held his arms behind his back so he was unable to catch himself.
"Diabla, Cass and I are going to buy food for everyone, do you wanna come?" Ryan asks.
"Absolutely!" I responded. I hook both of my arms around Cass' and Ryan's shoulder and begin walking out of the room.
A pair of hands then grab my waist and pull me backwards before I'm spun around and Elijah's lips meet mine. I grab onto his wrists which are holding both sides of my face, to keep my balance. "You know my papá will want to kill you even more now." I say after I pull away.
"I'll take my chances."
"Luciano, you don't mind if I borrow your son and his right hand for a few minutes, right?" I hear Jonathan say.
Grayson and I stop our conversation. I look at my papá and widen my eyes. I begin to frantically shake my head while mouthing the word 'no' to him. All he does is grin before he nods his head.
"It was nice being your best friend, best friend." Grayson says in a low voice.
"Shut up Gray. The most he'll probably do is throw a single punch at both of our faces."
Plus he wouldn't want to see both of his daughters unhappy. Because I know for a fact if I had a daughter and I found out she's been seeing someone, I would want her to be happy but I would prefer to throw a punch in at the guy's face before I'd be okay with it.
"Not at all, Jonathan." My papá is such a traitor.
At the same time, Jonathan comes closer to Grayson and I, I swallow a lump in my throat. He firmly grips onto my shirt and turns me around, doing the same to Grayson before giving us a push to walk out of the room. He brings us into the room where we hold our meetings and shuts the door. Jonathan walks past me and up to Grayson. He stares at him for a solid minute before he slaps him once, then twice.
"That was for being with Odette without me knowing."
Then I'm the one getting slapped twice.
"And that was for being with Serenity without me knowing. I just needed to let my frustration out on the both of you. Knowing that both of my daughters have found themselves boyfriends or in your case-" Jonathan points at me, "Husband- which I'm mad at. Anyways, I'll be having a talk with the both of you soon."
Bella came into the room shortly after and tried to apologize for Jonathan's behavior. Notice how I said 'tried' because Grayson and I refused to accept her apology on behalf of him because we both explained to her that we would do the same if it were our daughter's significant other.
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Serenity and the others came back shortly after with food for everyone. She also told Grayson that she stopped by to see Odette on how she was doing.
For the next hour and a half we ate and the two hours after that was spent making sure all of our weapons had enough bullets as well as all of our blades are sharp enough.
I changed into the clothes I'll be wearing for tonight which is a black long sleeve bodysuit, black jeans with a belt and black ankle heeled boots.
I applied my red lipstick before walking back to the bed where I have four knives set out. I grabbed each one and strapped them to my legs, two on each one.
Once I do that, I spray on my perfume and head downstairs where Aria and Jayden are distributing guns to everyone. Jayden hands me two.
"Is everyone ready to head out?" Elijah asks. Everyone one of us either replied yes or nodded our heads.
We all split up and got into the cars.
Cassandra, Ryan, Grayson, Elijah are in the same car as me. Natalie, Vanessa, Aria and Jayden took a car. My parents along with Estrella and Luciano took a car. Valentino, Marcus, Gabriel and Rafael another. And finally, Mariella and Samuel took one. Mariella will be watching the building where we're headed to and telling us where every Albanian is as we approach it.
Pretty much the backseat is full of the computers and screens she'll need to watch all the cameras, the same thing Cassandra does for me while I'm out on my missions.
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The drive to the abandoned factory was fairly quick for some reason. When we arrived, we first turned on all of our mics and all of the cars split up into different directions.
Mariella told everyone in each car where some Albanians were standing and to shoot them down and each of us obliged to what she said.
Once the car came to a stop, everyone in my car hopped out and pulled out our weapons.
"Hey, Serenity!" Elijah says. I turn around.
"Yeah?" His hands cup my face and he leans in to kiss me.
"Please stay safe, I love you." He whispers after pulling away.
"You stay safe as well, I love you." I whisper back.
Our foreheads touch and a second later, the both of us take a deep breath and pull away and jog the other direction. I meet up with Cass and Ryan and the three of us hide behind a wall by the door and wait for Elijah to call each of us through the mic to confirm that we're ready.
˗ˏˋ𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'ˎ˗
—
˗ˏˋ𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐨 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐮𝐩𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞'ˎ˗
"Team 1?" I look at Cass and Ryan who both nod their heads, indicating they're ready.
"Twins of Death and La Diabla are ready." I say.
"Team 2 is ready. Team 3?" Elijah and Grayson are team two, Natalie and Vanessa are team three.
"Ready, E."
"Ready."
"Team 4?" Aria and Jayden.
"Ready."
"Ready."
"Team 5?" Estrella and Luciano.
"We're ready, hijo."
"Team 6?" Valentino and Marcus.
"Ready."
"Ready."
"Team 7?" Rafael and Gabriel.
"We're both ready."
"Team 8?" Mariella and Samuel.
"Ready."
"Ready."
"And team 9?" My mamá and papá.
"Ready to take that son of a bitch down." Mamá says.
"All right. Let's move in."
"Vanessa get down!" She immediately gets down as I throw one of my knives at a man who was pointing his gun at her.
Serenity, I fucking love you for helping out with my skills on throwing knives and hitting right in the neck.
"Damn that was a perfect throw." Vanessa says when she sees where my knife landed.
"I give my full thanks to my sister in law." I say, jogging up to pull my knife and put it back in the slot of my jeans. I sense movement down both hallways so I pull my gun out and shoot the men I see in both hallways.
I turn around and see Vanessa twisting another man's neck before dropping him to the ground.
"Let's get going." Vanessa says. I follow after her, passing the tumble of cement that is now covering the tunnel.
"Jayden, I can't reach the fucking bar!" I'm currently trying to reach a bar to pull myself up but even with my ankle heeled boots, I can't.
Jayden finishes placing the bomb by the tunnel exit and rushes over to me, placing his hands together so I can step on them. He pushes me up and I'm able to pull the rest of my body up and roll over onto the small balcony.
Once I see Jayden pull himself up, he uses his hand to signal me to begin pulling myself along the floor as far as I can away from where the explosion is about to take place. "Aria, hold on." I stop and turn around and see Jayden coming closer towards me.
When he's close enough, he tells me to cover my head and his arm covers my head as well. In a matter of seconds, I hear him click the button and feel the floor shake from the explosion before feeling cement falling to the ground.
"Time to have some fun." I say, picking up my sniper rifle and heading back to where I can now see a bunch of men running down the hall towards the tunnel. I aim at someone head and shoot. "Bullseye."
Mariella and I have been fighting and shooting a lot of men since we stepped foot in this damn tunnel. I honestly think that the actual security room will be worse, meaning there will be a lot more people in the room than there is right now.
After I twist someone's neck, I see a body hit the wall then fall to the ground and I immediately realize it's Mariella from her red hair. I pull my gun out and shoot everyone I can see running down the other direction of the tunnel before I go help her.
"Fuck, my arm-"
"Are you okay?" I ask as I bend down, putting my gun on the floor next to me.
"Idiot slammed me into the wall and I think my arm's broken." I help her sit up and against the wall. I walk over to the other side to check her arm.
A few years ago, Estrella made everyone who lives in the Castillo Residence sit down one day and she gave us a crash course on what to do when one of us gets injured. "You're going to be fine, it'll just be a not so pretty looking bruise for a while."
"Fun." She forces out a chuckle.
"Here, take my hand." I helped Mariella stand and I did the rest of the fighting which wasn't too bad while she helped me out by shooting anyone in the distance. Once the two of us reach the room, we barricade the door so nobody can get in and start looking at all the cameras on the screens.
On camera 5 I can see Natalie helping Vanessa out by pulling someone off of her before she herself takes them to the ground and shoots them in the head. I smile as she runs out of view and into another room and shoots everyone down.
That's my girl.
Let me just say that I've missed the action that comes with going on missions. What I missed more is seeing my wife in action. I think my eyes were too focused on her to the point I was taken down to the ground, bringing me out of my daydreaming.
"Luciano, you idiot!" From the corner of my eye, I see Estrella smash the man's head she's fighting to the wall and dropping him to the ground. She then takes her gun out and shoots the man's head who's pinning me down and he drops dead. Leaving me to push him off of me. "You need to start paying attention to your damn surroundings." Estrella says, rolling her eyes.
"I know, I know." I pull out my gun and make sure there's plenty of bullets inside. "Let's get go-" I'm quickly cut off before I could finish what I was about to say.
"Wait, I just saw him!" Estrella sprinted down the hallway and I caught up to her and pulled her into a hallway because I felt the ground shaking, meaning there would be more Albanians coming closer.
"You five follow me, the rest go after Luciano and his wife."
Estrella and I gave each other a look, the look that meant we are about to do a surprise attack on the Albanians coming closer to us and I am so ready for it.
"Jonathan, there's movement behind that yellow pillar." I say on a separate line on the earpiece after I fire two bullets at two other men trying to escape.
"Got it." He responds and I hear a gunshot and look over and see the body that was hiding behind the pillar is now lying dead.
"Bella, Jonathan, there are about four Albanians that escaped heading near team 3's tunnel." Samuel says through the main line on the earpiece.
"Scratch that, make that nine." Mariella adds.
"Copy that." Jonathan and I say at the same time before we open fire on them.
"I just detected movement on the roof, be on the lookout. They seem to be unarmed though." Mariella says. I quickly sit up since I've been lying on my stomach and look around, scanning the roof.
After I stand up and turn around, someone jumps onto me and I drop right next to the edge of the roof. I begin throwing punches mostly at his neck which gets him off of me. "Jonathan!" I start crawling away backwards to try and regain my breath, at the same time my left leg begins cramping.
The man stands up and I look around to see where I left my gun. Come to find out it flew out of my hand when I was tackled to the ground. Before I know it, he jumps onto me and I manage to flip us over so I have an advantage, trying to strangle him. I didn't think that would be a bad idea because next thing I know is that I'm hanging off the edge.
"Jonathan!" I yell again. I see a shadow figure coming, once they're close enough into the light, I see it's my husband. He quickly springs into action and fires his bullets at the man who's holding me down by the edge. Jonathan drops his gun and sprints towards me and pulls me up and away from the roof.
"God, I'm so sorry I didn't come sooner. There were more who came to the roof."
"Mamá, papá! Are the two of you okay?!" Serenity says at the same time I hear a gunshot coming from her side of the line. Jonathan and I don't even get a chance to respond when Serenity says something else. "I see him, I'm going after him because we can not lose him."
"Diabla!" Ryan shoots someone in the neck. "You can't go after him by yourself!" He adds.
I pull out one of my knives and throw it at an Albanian who's heading towards Cassandra. The man drops dead to the ground right next to Cass who looks at me. "Serenity! Don't you dare!" She yells.
I choose not to respond and instead run the opposite direction, dodging every punch I see coming towards me and at the same time, shooting them.
"Mariella, Samuel, Serenity just went after Roman by herself. We were just in storage room six and she went down the exit doors." Ryan says through the earpiece.
"Serenity, wait for backup!" Luciano says.
"Serenity, where the hell are you?" Elijah adds and I ignore every single person.
Roman Miles turns down corner after corner, thinking he can outrun me. Bad news is that he doesn't know that I've been training daily to not get tired from running a lot.
We soon come to a stop in a room where the only exit is the door behind me and I sure as hell am not going to let him get passed. "Well, well, well . . . we finally meet." I say, walking in.
"If it isn't the one and only La Diabla." Roman says.
"Let's make this easy shall we?" I speed walk towards him, having both of my hands holding my blade and gun. I notice him forming a fist and I take it as a chance to slice his leg then kick in the same spot to the ground. "Sleep tight, bitch." I get behind him, put my arms around his neck and tighten my grip until I feel his body go limp.
Well that was easy, I think and let his body go. Once I stand up, I look around the room and notice there's a group of what looks like five men here.
Never mind this is not going to be easy.
I managed to take three down. It's the last two I'm having trouble with. One group tried to move Roman out of the room while the other group tried to distract me. My first focus was to take those who were trying to move his body before I solely focused on those who were attacking me.
I throw a few punches at someone's face and back away to grab my knife that's laying on the floor. When I look up, I see the other man left I haven't killed yet, pulling Roman's body farther away.
"Shit." I grit through my teeth. I flip my knife and throw it at the Albanian, landing right in his neck. A second later I'm tackled to the ground. He has his leg on my lower hip, one hand pinning one of my arms down while the other tries to throw punches at me.
I'm able to keep him from hitting my face by blocking him with my forearm. Hurts like hell but it's getting the job one until I get free. I then hear footsteps run into the room then several gunshots go off. The man who has been pinning me down, falls right next to me and I take it as an opportunity to quickly catch my breath.
Valentino comes into my view and has a grin on his face. "I never thought I would be the one helping La Diabla."
I roll my eyes. "Shut up." He then helps me stand up.
"Are you okay? You're bleeding." I look down at my body and back at him.
"Oh, it's not my blood." I tell him. Except for this one cut on my wrist when I tripped a few minutes ago because of something stupid.
"I got him." I say into my earpiece. "Set fire to everything. Destroy it . . . destroy it all."
"Copy that, Diabla."
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This chapter was a lot of fun to write with all the different POVs. This is probably the longest chapter I've written so long because it's 5 pages long on my google doc
By the way, this chapter was posted yesterday by accident so if anyone tried to click on it and wouldn't work, it's because I quickly unpublished it when I noticed the mistake I did. I hadn't finished writing the chapter yet and in the title, it said 'long' which only meant the chapter was going to be a long one.
— cristal