Page 84 of You Don’t Kiss Your Brother's Best Friends

“C’mon.” His dreamy blue eyes drifted back to reality. “We need to find Andre.”

“Where is he?”

“Last I know he went upstairs.”

“Why?”

An explosion rocked the building, rattling a dozen or so books off the library’s shelves. Debris shot past us in the hallway. Pieces of mansion skittered across the floor, through surging waves of rolling black smoke.

The time for talk was over.

Kayden glanced back at Evelyn one last time, then grabbed me by the hips and shoved me from the room. We ran through the halls together, our heads low, his strong arms guiding me forward and into oblivion.

~ 51 ~

JOCELYN

Somehow, through the smoke and chaos, we managed to find Andre. There was no time for discussion when we stumbled upon him. I grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him along.

Corridor after corridor we ran, away from voices whenever possible. There were more gunshots, more sounds of fighting. We stopped short at the sounds of booted feet, just as a group of men sprinted past us. I recognized them as Foley’s men. They ran directly across the next corridor with terror in their eyes, but they kept moving.

Bishop?” Andre demanded.

Kayden shook his head as we ran. Another explosion assailed our ears, shaking the windows on either side of us. I felt my teeth actually rattle. The air smelled abruptly metallic, like something bitter mixed with gunpowder.

“To hell with this,” Andre declared, taking the lead. “We need to get outside.”

Eventually, we spilled out into the ballroom. The place was straight chaos compared to how nice it had been set up only hours ago. Tables were knocked over, and chairs were in pieces. One of the back doors to the garden hung off its hinges, the glass shattered.

The boys pulled me in that direction, but I pulled back. Eventually we all skidded to stop.

“We can’t leave without Bishop!” I pleaded.

“Don’t worry, we’re not,” Andre shot back. “I know where he is, and it’s not—”

He stopped talking so abruptly I knew it couldn’t be good. His scowl deepened, and his eyes went wide. I turned my head to look, but both of them had shifted protectively in front of me.

“Fuck…” Kayden said in a low, broken voice.

Men spilled into the room from behind us. Roman’s men. They fanned out along the walls to surround us from three directions, the fourth being the shattered entrance into the garden.

And they were all sporting weapons, leveled directly at us.

“Finally!” Roman boomed, stepping past his men. As he’d probably done for his entire life, he stomped his way into the dead center of the room. “The few people wedidn’tactually suspect… gathered together, all at once.”

His men looked exactly as I’d imagined, after hearing all the commotion. They were bruised and battered, their once perfect dinner suits shredded in places, and dirtied in others. They looked and smelled like they’d been through a firefight. Many of them, I noticed grotesquely, were covered in blood.

Just then Bishop showed up, hands raised, marched into the room by the man I knew as Morris. My heart sank when I saw the shotgun jammed into his back. Roman’s crooked grin spread even wider.

“Pretty sure one of you is responsible for this,” he said, pulling out the beige brick with the dangling wires, again. “Iguess it doesn’t matter which one, because you’re all dead anyway.”

He grunted at one of his men. “Someone grab Raif, get him down here too. Might as well kill all the birds with one stone.”

“Raif’s gone,” said Andre.

The man in the center of the ballroom looked momentarily confused. It was over quickly, as he replaced his confusion with a forced look of amusement. But it still happened just the same.

“Gone?”

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