"What the hell happened?" I quickly pulled out my gun from my thigh sheath, as Eren too got his gun ready, we were both near the back entrance for the hall,sneaking a glance inside all i could hear was screams and people running around, only a few people had their weapons out, others afraid to let their legal associates know about their illegal connections.

"There." Eren pointed towards a group of men dressed in all black, with guns spreading out across the area. I turned to Eren, a small mischievous smirk making its way onto my face "these idiots are bound to come over here, the guys will have the inside covered. Wanna do Operation Coyote?"

He too smiled, "Thought you'd never ask."

You see, Coyotes are the type of animals who hunt their prey through a method called the throat clamp during which they clamp down on their prey's neck until they are either unconscious or dead, our plan works on the similar idea, you'll see.

Hidden on either side of the back door we waited for our opportunity, I had my dagger ready to strike while Eren was prepared with his gun. Four guys walked out of the door slowly, before they could get a chance to look around we were both on them.

I kicked a guy in the back of his knees, making him stumble forward, he regained his balance to turn back towards me but before he could strike,two shots from Eren's gun rang out hitting the guy in both his shoulders, as i stepped forward slicing my knife through his neck, blood spurting out from the wound as he fell to the floor.

The other guys more prepared now lunged at us, the skinny one came at me from behind, grasping my neck and pulling me back and hitting my head towards the nearest wall, I shook off the slight dizziness. I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen which I assumed was from hitting some corner. Turning towards him, punching him square in the jaw following it by kneeing him in the chest lightning fast.

Just in time Eren called out to me, he had a guy on his knees in front of me, we switched weapons, I shot the guy in front of me, in the shoulders as eren sliced the other ones throat switching again I sliced the last one's throat.

Breathing heavy, we both stood in front of the three dead men in front of us "Still works." "Hell yeah." Operation Coyote was one we had come up with when we were twelve and still new to all of this, while we were still working as a duo we would always succeed in our mission faster if one of us incapatated the enemy while the other killed. Hence this plan, where one of us would shoot the target in the shoulders making sure they couldn't harm us and the other would slice their throat killing them.

"I'm gonna take the inside, see if those guys need back up, you take the entry." With a final nod Eren was off to the entry area, while I made my way inside. My dagger held close. I took deliberate steps forward. My heels were long abandoned.

The inside of the hall looked in simple words: bad. It was almost empty now but there were a couple of bodies strewn about, but I didn't have the time to check if they were alive or not, but given the fatal wounds visible on their bodies I already knew the answer.

Nearing the stage, I heard voices. "I said drop the fucking guns." I finally caught sight of my family and Sophia facing me as a man stood in front of them, his gun aimed at someone who kept struggling in his arms. It seemed to be a little girl by the sounds of her grunts.

Xavier's eyes flitted to me for a second, a glimmer of hope and terror crossing his face but he faced the man again quickly so as to not raise suspicion. The others finally set down their guns. "Boss is gonna be so fuckin' happy to see you. She's been waiting real long for this."

I put a finger to my lips indicating for the others to stay quiet. Sophia seemed to be leaning on Xavier a lot and her face looked very pale, though at the time I dismissed it as anxiousness. When I was close enough to the man, I signalled to my brothers.

"Duck!" Xavier yelled at the little girl who thankfully complied and bent as low as she could go and I immediately caught the guy by his hair, slicing my knife through his neck without a second thought.

Blood poured onto my hands, the guy let go of the girl as he desperately clawed at his neck for air, on his knees now his gaze turned to me, "ты будешь страдать." He said before his eyes glossed over. His words rang through my head.
(You will suffer)

My attention was brought back to the real world by the sound of a thud, Sophia was on the ground, unconscious and looking sickly pale, "What's going on?" My own voice softer than usual due to exhaustion, "I- I don't know, Alex?" Xavier looked frantic, I was surprised he wasn't going total ballistic for Sophia right now, he was surprisingly level headed in a situation like this.

"She's burning up, there aren't any injuries but maybe it's something internal, we need to get her to a hospital now, something is seriously wrong." Alex and Marco carried Sophia out and towards the car.

While Xavier wanted to accompany her he decided to stay back and make sure everyone was okay before he left. Luca and Dante were already going around looking to see if there were any survivors and who all needed immediate help.

"Hey." "Hey." Xavier brought me into a tight hug, "Are you okay?" "A little tired but I'll bounce back." He nodded and hugged me tighter making me wince slightly, my hand going up to my stomach, he too checked on it and it was then I realised that I had been stabbed.

The adrenaline was finally wearing down and the awareness of my injury made me dizzy as I stumbled back, Xavier catching me before I lost my balance completely. "Damn it, why didn't you say something?" Xavier chastised as he removed his jacket tying it around my waist to put pressure on the wound and hopefully slow down the bleeding.

"Well because I wanted to bleed out in this beautiful dress." He looked at me quizzically "Obviously I didn't know!" He carried me bridal style, and carried me to the car, Luca and Dante were told to stay behind and make sure everyone left was safe as he took me too the hospital.

"I'm getting kind of tired here."
"Hey, hey, no sleeping, keep your eyes open okay? We're gonna be there soon." I had barely managed to stay awake till the hospital, I was out the second my body was on the gurney.

The door to Sophia's room was right next to me so I didn't have to wander around, walking inside all the others were there and Sophia was awake as well. "You're awake." Dante was the first to run up and hug, mindful of my wounds.

The others came too, "What are you doing out of bed, I was just inside your room and you should be taking rest." Alex scolded like a mother, making me laugh "Oh, relax it was just a flesh wound, wasn't even that bad. Now I want to know what happened here."

My question was directed towards Sophia and her whole situation. Seeing as how Sophia was not in a condition to fully explain the whole situation, Alex decided to explain it all while I sat down on the chair next to Sophia and across from Xavier who still had a tight hold on her hand.

"The doctors found traces of Gu in Sophia's stomach, it's a Chinese venom based poison, hard to obtain but it's deadly. Fortunately the doctors had some sort of antipode for it. According to them she ingested it in the past couple of hours so our best guess is she ate or drank something during the party that had Gu in it."

"Still can't understand how they pulled it off." Luca sighed. "But one thing is for sure, those fucking Russians know their poisons."

"No they don't." In fact those people were pathetically dumb. As the others looked confused I explained "Why do you use poison? Why would someone put their time and energy into finding specific ingredients when they could easily shoot someone and be done with it?"

"To send a message." Sophia replied after thinking, "Exactly" I say pointing towards her. "Poison delivers a clear message, no one is safe from you- anywhere."

"Now, if these idiots were smart they'd have used strychnine leaves, leaving the victim contorted and convulsing for hours. Or at the very least they could have used  sodium cyanide- the victim is dead in seconds." Now I wouldn't say I was showing off— but that's exactly what I was doing.

"The Russians using Gu shows they don't know their poisons, it just tells us that they wanted the work done, and they didn't care with research. If we hadn't been more attentive we wouldn't have seen any real symptoms until a week later."

After a moment of silence Dante finally spoke up "So what do we get from this?" I truly wanted to laugh out at the stupidity of my brothers. "We get that the Russians don't have a game plan, all they want right now is to generate fear, we have no idea what's their endgame right now but the fact is that they don't either. They just want to do something bad. But the details are still unclear."

"What we should be doing right now is securing our assets, every warehouse, every building we own should be secure and once that's done we can move on to making a move on them." I explained my theory.

" I like that plan." Sophia spoke. "Braised its way better than anything your brothers could have come up with."

Unsurprisingly there wasn't any argument, guess I got the smart genes in the family. "Okay so here's how we go forward, tomorrow all of us-." I cut Xavier off "Actually I can't tomorrow."

"Why?"

"I'm meeting a friend tomorrow."

"What friend? You're best friend is gonna be with us and the other is gonna be way too hungover to even move tomorrow." Xavier replied in a matter of fact tone.

"I have other friends, and it's kinda offensive that you think I don't have any other friends."

"Whose the guy?" It was Sophia this time. "What? Phs, please there-there is no guy." She gave me an unimpressed look "You're terrible at this. Whose the guy?" I caved way too quickly than I'd be willing to admit.

"Ace Alvarez." "What!?" The boys all but screamed. "What? Come on look I know you've got that whole overprotective brother thing going on but I really like this guy. He is literally the first person I have ever been interested in and the major thing is that he is interested in me too. I mean that has literally never happened before so if I can maybe have something real with him I'd like that."

I never talked like that with them so their shocked expressions were expected. "Well I think you should go for it. You're brothers are not gonna be in your way." Voices of protest were heard but Sophia just pretended they weren't here. "I'm happy about him and for you. You deserve a good guy and believe Ace can be that for you. And I'm also really proud that you aren't shutting yourself from these kinds of experiences because of your past. It really shows the kind of person you are." She took a hold of my hand, squeezing it slightly."

I felt tears burning at the back of my eyes, and fuck, it was hard to control them, I thanked her, god was I thankful for her.

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I know I'm late! I had a whole thing with my results coming out and well they weren't exactly top of the world so I had to buckle down meaning I could give less time to writing.

But not to worry I'm back at you with another one which I'm hoping you all liked.

The operation Coyote was inspired by the Lynx Flush from Shadow and bone. It's a was also a little bit of a flash back to how Eren and Kate's live use to be when they were together.

The poisons stated here are real but their effects have been slightly modified to fit the storyline. Did you all like that part?!?

Also the next part is gonna be about our main couple Ace and Kate. Now although Ace might only have a small impact on Kate's journey. Kate plays a really important part in Ace's and I wanted to show it.

If you have read the character update you'd know that Ace's life isn't a perfect fairy tale either so I want show the effect Kate can have on the people in her life.

Until next time!

Love you all!💕💕✨✨