Page 119 of Wicked Duty
All the men around us are trading fire, but we can’t see who’s winning or losing. Callum must be squaring off with at least three guards.
Heather squeezes my hand. “Lucy, come on. We really?—”
To our right, a vase shatters, causing us both to jump.
“No one’s going anywhere.”
The sinister voice sucks all the air out of the room.
Marco Benetti stands at the end of his palatial living room, anger carved into his features.
He strides toward us with his gun trained on me, but I barely notice him.
Behind him, the monster from my past materializes, his mouth tipping up into a delighted smile when his dark gaze settles on me.
“Sweet Lucy. I’ve missed you.”
The smooth tenor of Viktor Roguilin’s voice plunges me back into a nightmare. The fervor in his brown eyes hasn’t dimmed at all in my absence.
“How…you can’t be here. You’re supposed to be in prison until the trial.”
He smirks. “Didn’t anyone tell you? The judge changed his mind about holding me without bail.”
An image of the missed calls and texts from the DA flash through my head, and panic locks my muscles. Horror claws at my bones.
This is it. I’ll never leave here alive now.
Chapter 46
Callum
Got him.
The asshole shooting at me plummets to his knees, weakened by the holes I just plugged into his chest. I hope Darren shows up soon. And that Lucy?—
A woman’s shriek pierces the air. Blood solidifies in my veins before a fresh burst of adrenaline floods my system.
I need to get to them. To Lucy. She has to be okay. Alive. A shriek has to mean they’re caught, not dead.
The last guard charges me, pounding down the hallway, and it’s like fury and fear narrow my world into a single goal. My hands operate without conscious mental command, aiming and shooting at the enemy. I discharge my gun’s final bullet and hit the guard charging me right between the eyes. Without pausing, I withdraw the dead man’s weapon I tucked into my waistband and fire again.
My aim is true.
A red hole blooms right between the fucker’s eyebrows. He spasms to the ground. I’m already gone, blazing around the curve in this corridor and out into the living room.
The sight that greets me flatlines my heart.
“Uh, uh, uh. Not another step.” Marco Benetti issues the warning and digs the tip of his gun into Heather’s temple.
Worse by a mile, though, is the monster restraining Lucy. I don’t understand how Victor Roguilin is here and not in prison where he belongs, but the reasons are unimportant. What I need to focus on is finding a way out of this clusterfuck.
I skid to a halt at the edge of an ugly yellow rug now stained with blood. That same fury and fear storms through my limbs, tautening every muscle with anticipation. My lips curl like a rabid animal’s. “Let them go.”
Heather whimpers and hunches in fear, but despite the tremors in her hands, my Lucy stands tall. An Amazonian warrior with murder in her eyes.
“It’s simple.” Benetti presses the gun into her head with more force. “Drop your weapon, or I kill her.”
Though Roguilin holds the gun trained on Lucy in a less aggressive manner, his free hand strokes her hair like he would a treasured pet. Watching me, he leans closer and licks her cheek. Lucy’s shudders, and I summon every ounce of willpower to stop myself from ripping out his tongue.
