Page 92 of Sin & Secrets

The next blow I land hits skin with a sickening crunch.

“Cassandra!” Teo shouts out next to me as I hear him stomping down on another assailant.

But it’s another female voice that shouts back. “Princeling?”

“Mia?!”

I aim a kick at my assailant’s chest, sending them falling back off the stage, and run toward her voice.

“What the fuck is happening, Mia?” I shout toward her.

“Someone’s taken…agh!” She shouts in pain, then lets out an angry growl. A second later, an unknown voice groans in sickening agony, and Mia’s gray figure emerges from the darkness. “Someone’s taken Cas backstage.”

I take off, praying to every god that might listen that it’s Martino, that he had the sense to take her somewhere safe.

Two sets of feet pound behind me, and a shaking phone torch appears to guide my path.

Around us is more gunfire, more screams, more unknown horrors that I couldn’t have prepared for. But if my paranoia was warranted, then where the hell was my backup?

“Do you have a gun?” I yell at Teo.

“I’m not firing blind. There are civilians in here!”

A shriek sounds behind us as the room is temporarily illuminated by more gunfire, just as another assailant steps into our path.

Under Mia’s phone light, I get a better picture of what we’re dealing with.

Dark clothes, concealed face. Nearly identical to the goons we took out that night at the dock.

BANG.

The man drops as Teo absorbs the impact of his shot. “Fucking Cartel.”

I waste no time leaping over the body to ram open the doors that lay just behind him.

The sterile corridors of theCandelabra’sbackstage are lit in the eerie green of the illuminated exit sign above the back door. And the sliver of light that quickly narrows as it closes.

“Someone’s just left,” Mia breathes in my right ear before careening forward. Only to stumble on something that grunts on impact.

“Martino!” I yell at the sight of the giant man curled up on the floor.

Martino groans again. “T-they took her.”

“WHERE.”

“B-behind you.”

Thump.

Mia gasps as her eyes roll back into her head, her body crumbling to the floor.

Teo and I turn just in time to see a beast of a man lunge toward us next.

We scatter, causing his fist to pound into the wall behind where my head had just been moments before. The brickwork cracks on impact.

“Who the fuck are you, ugly?” Teo jeers as he tries to split his attention.

He isn’t wrong—the man’s arms are abnormally large for the size of his body, which already rivals Martino’s stature. And the dark balaclava over his face does nothing to hide the gruesome scars that run all over his skin.

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