Page 32 of Warped

Tony leaned forward. “What are you talking about?”

“Two cars pulled up at the gates.”

He got to his feet. “Who?”

“Don’t know yet.”

We all looked toward the front of the property—the windows of Tony’s office looked out onto the grounds. External lights attached to the house floodlit the driveway and the couple of vehicles parked out there. A flutter of nerves attacked my chest. What was going on? Why did I have a bad feeling about this?

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Tony demanded.

“A couple of them are out of the car, we can see them on the cameras, but they’re not using the intercom.”

“What are they doing—”

A bang and blast of light from the gates stopped Tony mid-sentence. Instinctively, I flinched away, lifting my hand to cover my face, even though the explosion had been too far away to harm me.

We watched as the gates swung open.

“Get some men out there,” Tony roared. “I want these people taken care of!”

But the two vehicles had already swung around the front of the property, gravel flying up from beneath the tires. The windows were blacked out, but the passenger windows had been rolled down. I only caught a glimpse of heads covered in black balaclavas, before I spotted the muzzles of numerous weapons pointing out of the empty spaces.

Shit.

Could I let myself think this had something to do with X? Had he found people to help, and these new arrivals were here to kill Tony and take me away from all of this?

A bullet thwacked through the glass, punching a hole directly through it and taking a chunk out of the wall beside me. Before I had time to think any further, the world went crazy, a cacophony of semi-automatic shots being fired from both sides of the window. The glass imploded, the sound like a thousand champagne glasses dropped all at the same time. I fell to the floor, wanting to put my hands over my ears, but trying to focus on getting to safety. I’d never make it to the door, and I was unarmed, so it wasn’t as though I could fight back. On my hands and knees, keeping my body as low to the ground and as small as possible, I crawled toward the shelter of Tony’s massive desk. Something heavy hit the floor beside me, and I glanced over to see Stefano with a bullet through the middle of his forehead, lying with his eyes open and staring blindly in my direction.

Oh, shit.

Who was responsible for the shooting? Did I dare believe X and his friend had come to take me away from here? If so, where was Nicole? Was she in her studies? Despite everything my sister had done, I still found my thoughts jumping straight to her. Was she safe? How would I reach her?

Above my head, things weren’t showing any signs of calming down. Tony’s men were firing back, and it sounded as though more of his men were shooting from outside as well.

Who were they shooting? Was it X and his new friend, or someone else entirely?

I needed to get out of here and find Nicole. If this thing went wrong, something might happen to her, and I wasn’t there to protect her. The sound of gunfire had slowed now, but was still happening—I assumed the men had taken cover, but were still taking the occasional shot when they could. I set my sights on the second door leading toward the rear of the property. It had been locked last night, but now I could see it stood slightly ajar. I couldn’t go the other way—trying to get out of the main door would take me right across the front of the building, and not only would I be exposed to gunfire, I’d be crawling my way across a thousand shards of glass. No, my only way out was through the back.

With my heart in my throat, I squeezed my eyes shut to conjure up Nicole’s face, how frightened she must be, and then I set off at an army crawl, out from under the desk and toward the door. When I felt like I’d put enough space between myself and the men outside, I staggered to a low crouch and ran. I prepared myself for the punch of a bullet in the back, but I made it to the door and slipped out. I had no idea if this was even safe—whoever was doing the shooting wasn’t here to help. I was fairly certain of that.

Now where the hell would Nicole be?

The library at the back of the property made most sense. It was where she did her studies, and she hadn’t been in our room. I was sure I’d find her there. I set off at a run, wanting to put as much distance between me and the cars out front as possible.

I turned the corner and slammed into a body. My first instinct was to fight, so I pulled back my fist, but a hand clamped around my wrist, and then another hand smothered my mouth.

“Shh. You’re all right. You’re safe. It’s me.”

I brought myself out of my panic long enough to look up. X was standing in front of me, the man, Harvey something, close behind him. Both were armed.

X took his hand away from my mouth.

“What the hell was going on with all the shooting?” I hissed. “You could have gotten me killed.” Though I was ridiculously pleased to see him, the scene that had just happened at the front of the house had been way too much.

“It wasn’t us,” he whispered back. “I don’t know who those guys are.”

“Shit.”

---