Page 91 of Convenient Mafia Vows

Ivan’s top lip curls away from his teeth in a snarl, and I hope that I haven’t pushed it too far, but now that I’m on the subject of love, I sense him softening like butter left out of the fridge.

“Five years ago, there was a road traffic incident. My friend Sienna and Kyle Murray were both in the car wreck. The Murrays pulled Kyle from the wreckage, but they wrongly assumed that Sienna was dead. Kyle has never gotten over it because … because he’s in love with her.”

“V?” Sienna whispers behind my back. “What are you saying?”

I ignore her. I’m afraid to break eye contact with Ivan and lose our slim chance of getting out of here alive. “So, you see, you won’t only have Caleb seeking revenge if anything happens to us, you’ll have his brother too.”

“They’ll have to catch me first.”

Fuck.

“Wouldn’t you rather have them on your side? They won’t use your relationship to blackmail you.” I smile. The timeless act of friendliness. “Please, Ivan.”

I’m almost there. I think I almost have him when the door opens, and Olivia walks in, her arm linked with her father.

The tiny glimmer of hope flickers out and dies.

26

CALEB

Terry hasn’t just shownup armed; he’s brought an entire fucking army with him. No one messes with Terry Keegan’s family and walks away from the scene.

He approaches Lev Petrov, Kyle a couple of steps behind him while Cash and Bash surround the warehouse. His glance slides my way, noting the men flanking me, and the cuffed wrists, before settling on the man calling the shots.

“That’s my stepson you’re holding against his will.”

“We had no choice. We did it for his own protection.”

On cue, the men step away from me, and someone else unlocks the cuffs around my wrists. Terry’s eyebrows raise in question at me, and I nod in response. The pain is still reverberating around my skull, but I can live with that so long as Victoria is safe.

“So, you’ll stand aside?—”

Terry doesn’t finish because that’s when the gunshot reaches us from inside the warehouse. A second shot follows almost instantaneously. Everyone reacts at the same time.

I run towards the entrance, surrounded by the thud-thud-thud of heavy footsteps. There are men on the roof, impossible to tell which family they belong to, shooting open the skylights. Lev’s men shoot the doors open on both sides of the building and storm inside in battle formation.

My heart feels like it’s in my throat. “Stay back,” Terry yells, but I’m not listening. I can’t hear any more gunshots from inside, but one is all it would take to shatter my future to smithereens.

Windows smash as I run along a narrow corridor behind Terry and his guys. I don’t often pray, but right now I’m praying that it was a warning shot. Olivia must know that she’ll never get away with this. She’ll have the Petrovs and the Murrays hunting her down, and she’ll never be safe to roam the city streets again.

Terry and his men pause outside an internal door. Their faces are expressionless; this is just another job to them. They’re simply following orders: protect their own and shoot to kill. I don’t know where Lev’s men have gone, but I’m guessing there’s more than one way into the warehouse. Terry’s eyes meet mine, and then the men are spilling through the door, weapons raised, trigger fingers ready.

Voices. “Don’t shoot!”

Another, more familiar voice yells, “Hold fire!”

My stomach lurches upward with an image of Victoria lifeless on the floor of the warehouse, Olivia Dragonetti standing over her with a smoking gun in her hand. Terry won’t be able to stop me. He’ll have to shoot me himself if he wants to keep my hands off her. My fists are already clenching in readiness to squeeze her neck until her eyeballs pop.

So, it’s several moments before my brain can process what I’m seeing when I storm into the storage unit behind Terry. They spread out in formation, their weapons still raised, as the silence settles around the scene in front of us.

My eyes seek out Victoria and find her in a corner of the unit, on her knees between Sienna and Mason. She’s so busy scanning the faces of the armed men who continue to spill into the building that she doesn’t spot me at first, and for a couple of moments, I have her all to myself. She’s searching for me. She knew that I would come, and there’s no fear in her eyes, only anticipation of the moment when she finds me.

It doesn’t matter that she’s on her knees on the filthy floor, or that her hair is disheveled and half-hanging out of a loose ponytail, or that her face is smudged with dirt. She is, and always will be, the most beautiful woman I have ever set eyes on, and when she looks at me, my chest feels like it will explode.

Knowing that she is safe, my pulse settles into a steady beat. We heard gunshots. I scan the warehouse now for a body, blood, the perpetrators. Ivan is flanked by two men with similar dark looks and black clothes. His left hand is clamped over his upper right arm, blood oozing between his fingers. But it’s the old man walking unsteadily towards us carrying the body of a woman in his arms that snags my attention.

Don Dragonetti’s face is ashen; his cheeks have hollowed out since I last saw him, and deep grooves are etched across his forehead. In his arms, her legs dangling against his thigh, is his daughter Olivia. It’s obvious that he is struggling to carry her, but there’s a determination, a fire behind his eyes, that prevents anyone from interfering.

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