Page 41 of Contracted

Leaving me behind.

Oh, crap.

With the rotors fading, silence grew. Until one of the women on the ground floor screamed.

A soldier barked at her. “Don’t fucking move!”

Bang.

I sucked in a strained breath. Had he killed her?

The Irish don didn’t appear to give a shit. Menace poured from every cell in his squat body as his muscles unlocked and he stalked toward the dead driver and snarled, “How the feck did the Agostinos find us so quickly?”

Was the don expecting a reply? Was he that deranged?

He shook his head and added, “We only just got Serafino’s whore.” His lips flattened as he turned an accusing stare Jarrod’s way. “Did you double-cross me?”

Jarrod gaped, his face now bone-white. “M-me? No! Of course not. I’ve proven my loyalty by bringing you the Agostino whore. I’m here to serve you.”

“Don’t effin’ lie to me!” the don bit out, his face red and his body bristling. He unholstered his gun. “Tell me now why I shouldn’t kill you.”

Jarrod sputtered. “I have intel on the Agostinos! How else could I have known how smitten Serafino was with his whore? Even your driver knew how desperate I was to join your family.”

The Irish don snorted. “A pity your only witness is now dead.”

Jarrod shook his head. “I still have one witness alive.” He turned to me, his eyes wide and beseeching. “Tell the boss how much I wanted to impress him by bringing you here.”

I glared even though one eye was so puffed up I could only see out of my good one. Did he seriously imagine I’d do him any favors after he’d brought me here? “My memory must be failing me,” I said sweetly. “All I seem to recall is you telling me we all die one day. And that some of us die sooner rather than later?”

“I can’t dispute that,” the Irish don said, depressing the gun’s safety before he lifted the muzzle and pointed it at Jarrod.

He gaped at me, his face going from white to gray. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “You’re no killer.”

“Do I look like I have the gun?” I asked.

He’d brought this on himself.

Bang.

I looked away from his body as it slumped to the floor. I was already in survival mode and stayed motionless as the don stepped toward me. It was only when he reached for me that I put every ounce of my energy into punching him between his legs.

“Oomph.” He doubled over with a strangled breath and I pushed to my feet and pivoted away, leaping over Jarrod’s lifeless form before sprinting down the stairs in a noisy clattering of my heels.

This was my one real chance to evade the don. He’d be in too much pain to issue commands. I doubted he’d even walk for a few minutes let alone have the capability to run.

I absently touched my swollen jaw as I hit the ground floor.

Karma really was a bitch.

My head swiveled between the door I’d been brought through and the room where the women had been working. I chose the room. No doubt the entry would soon be swarming with the don’s soldiers.

I had no idea what I’d face out the back, or if there was even a door that way, but the two soldiers were gone. I assumed they’d taken the women somewhere safe.

I grimaced. One woman had been left behind. She wouldn’t be going anywhere. Her limp body was sprawled face-down on the filthy concrete in a pool of her own blood, one hand clutching a bag of coke that had spilled free, creating macabre-looking slurry on the floor.

No doubt the Irish don would be more furious about his wasted coke than he would the death of one of his workers.

I ran in the direction the woman had been heading, detouring around her body and its spreading blood. I couldn’t think about her family, especially the children she might have. It was better not to think at all.

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