Page 110 of Blood in the Water
She sprinted, hair wild, eyes wide. She grabbed the railing and practically flew down the flight, taking two or three stairs at a time. She glanced over her shoulder, and I followed her line of vision. Volpe stalked after her, gun in hand.
The rage that came over me in that moment had evenmesurprised.
No one fucking follows my woman with a gun.
I aimed my weapon and fired, but Volpe yanked himself back at the last second. The bullet embedded in the wall not three inches from his face. His head snapped to mine, and our eyes locked.
Wait… my woman?
I didn’t have time to double-check myself for some head wound that led to such an idiotic thought. Instead, my body lurched forward as Wynn provided cover fire and took out the last soldier standing in the way of me and Leona.
“Ryuji!” she shouted as she leaped off the last set of stairs. Her fingers closed around my outstretched hand, and I yanked her to me.
Behind us, more shouts and footprints thundered into the mansion. Fuck. Reinforcements.
“Let’s go!” Wynn yelled, firing another shot at the fucker stomping down the stairs behind us. Volpe’s face was an impassive mask, but his eyes were locked on Leona with murderous intent.
We could have whirled on him right there. Wynn and I could have taken him out, two-on-one. I caught my brother’s glance, the question in his eyes, but we couldn’t. We couldn’tget more involved with this. Taking out the head of one of the Five Families without an official contract could blow back on us intensely, especially after overhearing what her father had been doing.
The bodyguard was one thing. Killing Volpe was another. And we didn’t have time. Not with Leona tucked under my arm and tears streaming down her face. Not with God knows how many other Italians pouring into the house.
Even if we turned on him now and killed him, we’d still have to fight our way through his army.
And despite all our hostility toward one another and how she constantly drove me crazy, I couldn’t make the call. I couldn’t put us all at greater risk.
I shook my head at Wynn and pulled Leona back the way we came.
Killing Volpe would have to wait until we knew what we were getting ourselves into.
We tore through the house’s hallways until I spotted a giant window overlooking the garden in the backyard in some library or reading room.
“Here.” I shouldered the door fully open and kicked it closed when all three of us were inside. Wynn shot three rounds into the glass. I yanked Leona’s face against my chest as the window shattered.
“Through. Now,” I commanded as we waded through the fragments. Leona didn’t look, instead burying her face into my side, so I had to specifically slow down to make sure she didn’t slip, fall, and slice her neck open.Fuck, we didn’t have time for this. Ciel was waiting, and we needed to get back to the van.
I didn’t care to overanalyze exactly what happened to my chest as her arms tightened around me.
Just adrenaline. From the shoot-out.
We were just about through all the glass pieces when the door to our escape room flew open. Leona’s head snapped up and locked on a figure behind us.
Time slowed.
This had happened to me before. Once, in Tokyo, when my oldoyabundecided to shoot me in the stomach for trying to buy my freedom from the Yakuza. The world had seemed to freeze as his finger pulled the trigger, and the bullet tore through my gut. Only the pain brought everything screeching forward with a jolt.
The same thing began to happen here when I looked over my shoulder as Volpe aimed at my head.
Without even thinking, I moved to protect Leona.
Which was stupid. I should have pushed her in front of the bullet. She was a pain in my ass.
But I couldn’t. I wrapped my arms around her and waited for the same tearing, excruciating pain. For the jolt that brought time back to life.
Except this time, my vision shifted ninety degrees. I was falling. We both were. Leona pushed us.
The sound of the gunshot reverberated in my head.
Her push angled us both out of the way. With my balance and reflexes, I caught and righted myself before I hit the ground.
