Page 122 of Last Shot

Frankie closed her eyes. Maybe she wouldn’t ...

But then Max saw the decision ripple through the girl’s body. ‘NO!’ Max squeezed.

POP!The gun recoiled like a bucking animal. Sulfur and metal blurred her senses.

Had she really—?

A scream. Frankie.

A shoulder hit. Exactly how she’d been trained.

But Frankie’s gun went off too. Grey ducked behind the bed. Shots fired erratically, Frankie’s face red and blistering with anger. Grey was in the way of her and the Barbarani fortune, and she wasn’t going to stop until he died.

‘Max!’ Grey choked through the rubble of debris from Frankie’s fire. ‘Run. Now!’

‘I’m not leaving you!’ She tried to put everything into her voice. She tried to tell him she didn’t believe him about the boy, that she was sorry. She tried to tell him he was enough.

‘How romantic.’ Frankie’s hand was soaking red where she pressed it against her shoulder.

‘Frank,’ Grey said, ‘you need to sit down.’

Typical fucking Greyson. Still trying to look after the Barbarani who was pointing a gun to his head.

‘Stop telling me what to do!’ She fired again. Grey dove back down as a photograph shattered on the wall where his forehead had just been. ‘Everyone always underestimates me!’

‘Frankie, stop.’ Max said, the recoil still thrumming through her from the last shot. ‘Or I’ll shoot again.’

Frankie blinked, gun wobbling in her shaking hand. A tear streaked down her face. She turned away from Grey and pointed the gun at Max.

It was too quick. Max’s finger closed around the trigger as she heard thePOP.

And at the same time, she was tackled to the ground.

There was a thump and then something heavy collapsed on the ground.

Grey wasn’t moving.

‘Greyson. Grey. Get up. Get the fuck up. Are you hit? Did she hit you?’ Max felt blindly for bullet holes and blood across the massive real estate of the Giant’s back.

No one was shooting anymore. Where was Frankie? Max couldn’t see anything over Grey’s back.

‘Max ...’

‘Thank god.’ She buried her face into his neck, his veins pumping blood against her lips. His shaking breath enveloped all the tiny pockets of air between them.

‘Get up.’ Raphael’s voice pushed Grey off her. Max wished he’d crushed her through the floorboards and they’d disappeared into dust together.

Frankie lay crumpled in a pool of blood, her chest still rising and falling. A blue dart stuck out from her shoulder-blade. Raphael stood over her, the dart gun slung over his shoulder. He must have come back in after finishing off the others.Oh god.

‘Youkilledher?’ Max couldn’t keep the incredulity out of her voice.

‘Stunned. There’s an antidote.’ Raphael’s tone was clipped and unlike what Max had come to associate with the suave bartender. ‘She’ll be fine. Quinton will give it to her before the cops come.’

Max raised her weapon.

‘Don’t, Maxella.’ Raphael held up his long finger with the thick black ring.

Grey took a heaving breath. ‘You’re both done ... you’re both ... you killed ... you killed them all ...’

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