Page 107 of The Devil's Pawn

“Do you want to be next?!” Dante snaps.

She has to be okay. Please. She has to survive.

I tremble with a heavy ache in the middle of my chest, my entire body riddled with shock as my eyes finally look to Dante.

“I know you’re worried,” he says. “But don’t you move for anything! I’m not losing you, okay? I love you. Do you fucking hear me?”

He grips my jaw with the rough pads of his fingers and pulls his mouth to mine, grazing his lips over my damp ones and leaving me with a kiss before he rights himself.

“I’ll be back.” His jaw pulses before he pulls a gun from his ankle and reaches out his hand. “Take this.”

I nod frantically as tears stream down my cheeks. I can’t seem to make my mouth move as my trembling hand extends toward the weapon and I grip it in my unsteady palm.

“You’re everything to me. Remember that.”

Then he’s gone. I lose him to the fight, unable to see him now from the angle I’m at.

A silent scream slices through the fog in my brain, clouding over the sound of bullets whizzing past me. My stomach curls with fear. There’s so much of it.

Fear for Chiara. For Dante. For all of us.

I rock back and forth, hugging my knees with the gun hanging from my hand, waiting for this horror to be all over so I can get to Chiara. So I can see that the people we both love are all okay.

I want them all to be all right. We can’t lose anyone.

When will enough be enough? When will my family stop hurting people?

Agonizingly slow minutes trickle by, and the gunfire doesn’t seem to have slowed. If anything, it’s grown.

Someone falls to my left with a loud thump, and I jolt my head with startled panic before finding a man in a black t-shirt with blood dripping out of his mouth, his unblinking gaze staring at me lifelessly.

Is this what my life with Dante will always be like? Never-ending wars?

We can’t sustain a relationship this way, or have a future. Look what happened to Chiara. She might lose not only her baby, but her damn life. And for what?

My uncle Faro deserved what she did. He deserved it years ago. As for my father? He made his bed. He knew what his brother did to Dante’s family and didn’t care.

The bullets are less frequent now, but the fighting isn’t over yet. I wonder if Joelle is okay where she is with Enzo gone. She has a son to live for. That poor woman.

“Give us Chiara and Raquel. That’s all we want,” says a voice I know quite well.

It belongs to my uncle Benvolio, the new don.

He’s here? The bastard came for us personally?

My hand stiffens around the gun, wanting to kill them all.

“I want that whore, Joelle, too. Where is she, huh?” my uncle Agnelo chuckles, sending a chill running down my spine.

They’re both here. I can only hope this is where they die.

Enzo’s demonic laugh breaks from his chest. “I’m gonna rip your damn head off just like I did to your men, who are lying dead, where you’ll soon be. Both of you. I’m gonna enjoy gutting you like a pig.”

“You fuckin’ jackass motherfuckers,” Agnelo says. “Who do you think you are, huh? You’re all about to join your mommy and daddy. My nieces, Joelle…they’ll all be following you there too.”

Dante growls like an animal possessed before a single gunshot cuts through the conversation. I jerk back as my body shudders from gripping fear, not knowing whose weapon it came from. My heart is heavy in my rib cage, like I’m trapped under pounds of boulders, unable to move or breathe.

“Nice try,” Agnelo taunts.

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