Page 62 of Married with Mayhem

With shaking fingers, I snatch a bath towel and wrap it around my body. I’m petrified of what I’ll find when I open that door but I cannot leave Monte out there alone.

Water drips from my skin and my heart pounds as I crack open the door.

A horrible sight awaits.

The other night I joked that there’s no way the mafia could possibly track us down at some obscure roadside motel.

What a time to be wrong.

12

MONTE

The unmistakable sound of a gun hammer clicks inches from the back of my head.

My first thought:I’m dead.

My second thought:Okay, I’m not dead because I’m still thinking.

My third thought is an internal scream:SABRINA!

Dying is now out of the question. If I die, then Sabrina will be alone with whatever psycho is holding a gun to my head.

This is my fault. I’ve become sloppy on this trip. I failed to take even a cursory look outside before stepping out of the room. All I wanted to do is get a minute of fresh air and clear my head so I would stop picturing Sabrina naked in the shower a few feet away.

“Don’t move, hero,” says a man at my back. Heavy accent. Italian.

I weigh the odds that I’d be able to knock him off his feet before he shoots my head off. They aren’t fantastic.

The man coughs. A sour tobacco odor rolls off him. “Where is the girl?” he growls.

A furious button is pressed inside my brain. This bastard is holding a gun to my head because he’s here for Sabrina. The reason doesn’t matter. It can’t be good.

“She’s in the shower,” I say in a glum, defeated tone to let him think I’m too scared shitless to do anything.

But a split second after the last syllable is spoken I drop down and hurl myself into his belly until I feel his body hit the wall hard enough to crack bricks.

He’s one hefty son of a bitch but I’ve caught him by surprise. The gun fires wildly toward the clouds. He’s also definitely no martial arts expert and he wasn’t expecting any resistance. Maybe he was under the impression that I’d just curl up in the fetal position or pass the fuck out.

With the breath briefly knocked out of his lungs and his back to the wall, he loses his only weapon when I clamp down on his wrist and waste no time twisting the shit out of it. The gun drops even before I’ve got him spun around with his arm all the way up his back. In desperation, he rears his head back and the move probably would have broken my nose if he wasn’t half a foot shorter. Instead, he just knocks into my jaw, which pisses me off, and I wrench his arm toward his neck.

Something pops. Probably his shoulder. I don’t care. This motherfucker has got to go.

An incoherent yell is all he manages to produce before I pitch him over the balcony railing. My would-be killer flies down to the concrete and lands with a hearty thud.

His agonized screams echo from below, which means he’s not dead, and I don’t know if he brought any friends. What I need to do is grab my gun and Sabrina and get the hell out of here.

However, that plan is cut short by the appearance of a second gun. And a third. In quick succession, a small army of guns has appeared and they are all attached to men in dark suits.

Fortunately, or maybe not, I know one of them.

Vittorio Messina separates from the pack. Luca once described Sabrina’s uncle as an Armani-clad Count Dracula dripping with gold jewelry. The description fits.

Vittorio’s unblinking black eyes are glued to my face. “Where is my niece?” he says in an ominous tone that warns I better tell him what he wants to hear.

One floor below, Gunman #1 has quit screaming and now sobs pitifully. One of Vittorio’s other buddies gingerly steps over to the railing, peeks over the edge, and erupts with a string of Italian curses. My fluency in the language starts and stops with profanity so I don’t know what Vittorio says when he barks out some orders. Two of his men peel off in another direction so I bet there are instructions to deal with the broken man on the ground.

The rest of Vittorio’s entourage is clearly not happy with me. The screaming man must be a buddy of theirs. Whatever. The appearance of Sabrina’s uncle has erased any fears that she’s in serious danger and that’s all I care about.

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