Page 206 of Tangled up in You

“Just fucking say something.”

He stares at me with wide eyes but doesn’t say a word. When I pull the gun off his skin, I can see an angry darker circle. The gun is still hot from the bullet I shot in his guard’s leg.

“Give me a fucking reason to put a fucking bullet in your head and end your miserable fucking life.”

ISA

Oh My God!Danni’s pressing a gun on my father’s head, growling in his face like he’s about to lose the sliver of restraint he has left, any second now. My big, tall, scary father doesn’t dare move a muscle. He fucking knows who he’s dealing with. Knows any of these men would end his life as easily as they draw their next breath.

“Danni, please,” I plead.

I watch him crack his powerful neck from side to side, then turn my way and nod one single time, before pulling the barrel of his gun from my dad’s face. Then he pockets the firearm and wraps a huge mitt around my father’s neck, squeezing and almost lifting him off the ground!

Stephane Sinclair is not a small man. He’s taller than six feet and heavier than two hundred pounds of muscle. But Danni O’Malley is a motherfucking beast. Only a few inches taller than my dad, but with at least a dozen pounds more of pure muscle. Plus, he’s blazing with fury. His eyes seem lit up from the inside. The veins at the back of his hand are popping.

“Not so fun being on the receiving end, huh? Dipshit,” he growls again.

His lethal gaze never leaving my father’s face, as if reveling in the expression of agony, the bulging eyes, the frantic hand gestures grasping on his hold. My father’s voice is barely audible, and the faint wheezing sound escaping his lips is but the ghost of his desperate supplications. His feet kick the air. And just when his eyes start rolling back in his head, Danni lets go, and my dad collapses on the floor, taking large gulps of air, a mix of anger, fear, and despair flashing through his eyes. One of his men kneels before him and helps him sit up. Another slides a hand inside his jacket and takes a step in our direction. Danni raises a single eyebrow.

“You fucking pull that piece out. Please. And you see what fucking happens.”

The guy swallows with difficulty, his hesitant gaze sifting from our small group to my father. Dad manages to shake his head.

“Get out,” he rasps out in a croaked voice, face still constricted.

Probably from having the fucking daylights squeezed out of him.

“Get the fuck out of my house and take this rat bitch with you.”

At his words, I feel the air shift in the space we’re occupying. The already enraged vibe turns feral. Sal shoulders Danni out of his way and advances to go tower over my dad.

“What the fuck did you call her?”

His face closed off in some ridiculous act of bravado. My father lifts his chin and looks away. Pretty stupid when you know who he’s dealing with.Sal leans down and, in a quick and brutal move, shoves the tip of his gun into my father’s mouth. We hear teeth brutally clattering against metal, accompanied by a pained whimper.

“You watch your fucking mouth, old man,” he adds in a guttural tone that makes shivers run down my spine. And they’re not entirely fear-induced…

“Just go, now,” my father mumbles when Sal removes the gun from between his lips, holding his bleeding mouth, the guards frantically hovering over him.

“That’s what I fucking thought,” Sal rumbles.

Then my eyes meet my dad’s and I read so much rage, so much hate, so much pure, unadulterated resentment, that my skin crawls. His eyes are clearing, stating that if he ever gets his hands back on me, I’m a dead woman.

SAL

“Are you fucking stupid?What the fuck did I just say, you fucking piece of shit?” I bark at Stephane Sinclair.

He lowers his gaze, keeping his fucking eyes averted. Yeah, that’s what I fucking thought.

“Let’s get out of this fucking place,” Danni says.

And we all file behind him, guns in hand, still forming a protective circle around Vito and our girl. Misha and I walking backwards behind them til we exit the house.

We came in separate cars. We always do. Safety first. Using in a single vehicle would make it too easy for our enemies to decapitate four families in one shot.

The three of us walk Vito and Isa to his gleaming black Maserati Levante. He gently settles her into the passenger seat, then swiftly rounds the car and takes off. There’s no time to waste. Isabelle needs to be taken to safety, and who knows how long it will take Sinclair to start thinking about retaliation. Misha, Danni, and I jump into our luxurious sports cars and speed away, making gravel fly, and dust fill the air in the mansion’s circle driveway. Vito’s driving in the middle, sandwiched between us, and we all know where we’re taking our woman.

We drive awayfrom Delmonte and the coast, inland, pass the Alisal River, and end up on the winding dirt road that climbs up the Santo Lucio Mountains. Thirty minutes after we left Stephane Sinclair’s mansion, we arrive at our destination. From the outside, it’s a modest one-story house, hidden behind lines of tall trees, tucked away high up.

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