Page 95 of Corrupted Temptation (Mafia Kings: Corrupted 2)

The beam and the footsteps stopped, right in front of Cesare, but it was silent.

No one spoke.

Maybe Cesare was pretending to be unconscious. Maybe they’d just leave him there and go search for me.

The heavy clang of metal echoed throughout the building all of a sudden.

“Where is she?” Diego’s voice roared, followed by the thud of flesh hitting flesh.

Cesare grunted.

More fleshy thuds.

“I said, where is she?”

“She’s… long gone,” Cesare panted.

“Is that so?” Diego said in a voice that was suddenly too calm.

Silence.

No clang of metal. No fleshy thuds. Nothing until the ominous click. The sound of a gun being cocked.

My heart lodged in my throat.

“SignorinaLuca? You have until I reach ten to show yourself or I will decorate the floor with this young man’s gray matter. One. Two.”

My heart was racing. I could barely hear him counting over the whooshing of blood past my ears.

“Five. Six.”

“No,signorina, don’t do it,” Cesare cried, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t hide like a coward while Cesare died because ofme.

I stood up, willing my legs to hold me up. I put one foot in front of the other while my knees tried to give out with every step.

“Eight. Nine—”

“Stop!” I screamed, running the last few steps. I stuttered to a stop directly in front of him, right in the beam of light cast by the flashlight in his hand.

He didn’t even look at me.

He kept his gaze on Cesare, and his gun was still aimed directly at him.

I’d done what he asked, and he was still going to kill him.

I stepped in front of Cesare. It was the only thing I could think to do—there was no way I could out-strength him, not with a cocked gun in his hand. But before I could open my mouth, before I could demand he put down the gun—though what leverage I thought I had, I wasn’t sure—I felt Cesare’s hand on my back. He shoved me forward. He shoved me so hard, I stumbled and fell, slamming my knees against the hard concrete floor.

“No!” I screamed, trying to regain my footing, but I was too late.

The crack of a gunshot pierced my eardrums and reverberated off the walls all around me. I swung around just in time to see Cesare’s body fall to the ground like a rag doll.

He looked back at me with sightless eyes, a bullet hole dead center between them.

And then I felt the sharp jab of a syringe tip in my neck.

Chapter Forty

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