Page 118 of Beautiful Scar

His skull explodes in a lovely pink mist.

“Kill him!” Seamus McGrath stands at the top of the SUV, lips pulled back in a snarl, as eight well-armed men converge on me.

Bad odds. Really fucking bad odds. A smart man would turn and run.

I’ve never been all that clever.

Instead, I drop to a knee and shoot Seamus in the thigh.

He screams and topples, and suddenly two dozen men come barreling down the block carrying assault rifles and screaming in Russian. Evan is at their head, looking like he’s enjoying himself.

All hell breaks loose.

The Irish try to fight back, but they’re surrounded. Evan and his troops move in, killing the Irish one by one. I get into cover and help where I can, picking off several stragglers until the SUV’s wreckage is a flaming bloodbath. Corpses are scattered everywhere, their flesh torn to shreds by high-caliber rifle shots.

I hurry to the car door. It’s not easy to open, but I pull with all my strength. It starts to bend outward, and it finally cracks and swings wide when Evan adds his strength to mine.

“Grigor!” I shout, reaching inside.

The old guard is alive. He’s bleeding from a wound in his forehead and holding his ribs, but he’s breathing. “About fucking time,” he mutters at me as Evan hauls him out. “Did you get them?”

“That’s a good fucking question,” Evan says, looking at the bodies. “Is he one of these?”

“No,” I say, leaving the injured guard with my brother-in-law. I hop down off the SUV and stroll toward the far sidewalk, following a bloody trail. “He went this way.”

It isn’t hard to find Seamus. He’s trying to escape, but he’s not moving very fast with that hole in his leg. I catch up to him half a block later, whistling as I slowly get closer and closer, savoring the terror in his eyes as he struggles to escape.

“Fuck you,” he snarls, grabbing a chair from outside a café. He throws it at me, but it weakly clatters off the ground. “Get the fuck away from me.”

“Oh, Seamus,” I say and raise my gun. I shoot him in the other leg, and this time, he goes down. “You never should’ve come back for her, but you couldn’t help yourself.”

“Fuck you,” he groans, trying to stem the bleeding, but I must’ve hit an artery.

Poor bastard doesn’t have long.

I crouch down beside him, dimly aware of several bystanders. Cops are coming soon. I’d better finish this.

“You know how I got you?” I ask, savoring the moment. “I realized I was never going to catch you on my terms. I had to offer you something you couldn’t resist to lure you out.” I kick him in the leg. “She was never in the car, Seamus. Not after the first time. You don’t think I can afford a doctor that makes house calls?”

“The ultrasounds. I fucking saw you two?—”

“No, you saw my guard drive to the hospital and back. You never saw someone get out. You never saw me.” I tap my gun against his head. “Think, Seamus. Why do you think we used that private hospital?”

“The entrance is blocked by that fucking fence.”

“Exactly. Every week I dangled the bait. I made sure it was so easy for you to get to it. We spread the rumors and waited, nice and patient, for you to make your move.”

“You fucker,” he says with a groan.

“Killed by your own sick obsession. It’s almost funny, if it weren’t so fucking disgusting.”

“It doesn’t have to go down this way,” he hisses, looking scared. “I don’t care about Dasha. I’ll leave her alone.”

“Don’t start begging now. That’s just pathetic.”

I put the barrel of my gun against the bloody wound in his leg and lean into it. He lets out a strangled scream of agony.

“Please,” he whispers, going weak now. A lot of blood has spread out in the cracks of the concrete, filling up the holes like little rivers of death.

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