Page 100 of Phantom Mine

His hand hangs above him for a taut, taunting second, a promise of the violence that’s to come.

I refuse to close my eyes.

Pop.

A muffled gunshot echoes in the dark alley.

A pained howl rips from Rocco’s lips and the right side of his body jerks back.

I gasp, blinking up at him with wide eyes. He still sits astride me, except he’s groaning now and clutching his hand against his chest. Blood drips from a gaping hole in the center of his palm.

Slow, heavy footsteps echo in the dark of night. A dark figure emerges, peeling gradually away from the shadows. His gun comes into the light first, steady and aimed straight at Rocco, followed by the rest of his large body.

Matteo’s face is twisted in fury, his eyes burning with a rage that I can feel in my bones. He’s a dark avenging god, his wrath changing the very particles of the air around him.

He came.

I don’t realize how loudly, how desperately, I was chanting his name in my mind until he appears. I could weep from the intensity of the relief surging through me.

His eyes are rimmed with dark circles, haunted but steady on Rocco. They falter when they fall to my face, the light in them dimming for a split second, but his hand doesn’t waver.

Matteo’s gaze lingers on me for one charged moment before they lift back to his brother, the promise of complete and total annihilation in them terrifying enough to send entire armies fleeing.

“When you meet Satan, brother, let him know I sent you,” Matteo seethes, his voice pitched unrecognizably low.

Without flinching, he shoots Rocco again.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Matteo

Rocco’s inability to make me react evaporates in a breath, thrown out the window the second I find him on top of Valentina, his face inches from hers, his hand raised to strike her. Violence takes over until all I feel is the sweltering, crushing heat of my rage.

I was able to swallow my anger and be patient when it came to offenses committed against me, buther?

Dead. He’s motherfuckingdead.

Rocco screams like a rabid animal being put down—an outraged, enraged howl rips from his throat as his body recoils from the second shot.

He still has Valentina trapped beneath him.

“Get the fuck off her.” My left eyelid twitches dangerously, a drumbeat to accompany the rapidly spiraling hold I have on my sanity.

Knowing this was going to happen doesn’t make actually catching my brother in the act of killing Valentina any easier to witness. I may have been braced for impact but I didn’t expect said impact to max out the Richter scale when it hit.

“What the fuck are you doing, Matteo?” he roars.

“Get off her,” I repeat, my voice deceptively calm. “You won't live to hear me ask it a third time.”

Well, I aim for deceptive calm but hear my tone land somewhere between madness and hysteria.

Rocco grimaces, his face twisted in an awful rictus. He waves at her with his uninjured hand.

“This little cunt—”

My vision goes bright, bloody red. He screams when the third bullet buries itself in his other hand.

This time, his body jerks back just enough for Valentina to free her arms from under him. She shoves at his chest, pushing him violently off of her. Rocco reaches for her as she starts to scramble away, so I fire a fourth bullet, enjoying seeing his index finger completely sever from his hand and fly off.

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