Page 19 of Broken Sins (Volkov Bratva 3)

When we’re close enough, Dante and I dive forwards. We hit the concrete and roll to a stop behind the SUV. It’s a pool of blood over here. I count one, two, three dead lieutenants on this side alone. “Goddammit,” I curse under my breath. These were good men. Proven men. Loyal men.

And now, their loyalty to my lunatic father has gotten these three killed. Perhaps the rest of them, too. The windows of the car are tinted, so I can’t see inward, but there must be at least one or two others who sit dead in their seats.

I hear groaning and look over to see my father slumped up against the concrete embankment. It looks as though he has taken a shot to the knee. That leg was already ruined from a long-ago brush with a cartel when he was just a young man though, so it is not such a great loss. His eyes—flecked with pain and fury in equal measures—fixate on me.

“What are you doing?” he roars. “Go kill them!”

I don’t even bother to respond. There are at least two dozen shooters spread throughout the darkness, maybe more. If Father truly expects me to go full Rambo and try to take on a well-armed, well-prepared Bratva army from an unfavorable position with my bare hands, then he’s even more insane than I thought he was.

I turn to the car. Staying low so no stray gunfire can come lancing through a window and take me out, I slide towards the driver’s seat. I pull it open and discard the body of the man who had previously occupied the seat. In my head, I offer his soul a silent apology. But there is no time for decorum here. Not if we want to survive.

The engine is still running. That is one small stroke of luck in a night that has been utterly bereft of it so far.

Over my shoulder, I call to Dante, “Get Father in the car.” He and Sergio move over to where our father is seated. Each of them loops a hand under his arm and picks him up. His limp feet drag over the concrete, trailing blood like the slime of a snail, as they move him towards the vehicle. I open the rear door in time for them to shuffle him inwards.

The whole time, he is ranting and raving. “Put me down! Go kill those fucking bastards! What the fuck are you doing?”

“Ignore him,” I tell my brothers, though I know they don’t need the reminder. Dante stopped listening to Father long ago. And Sergio … well, there’s no telling what Sergio is thinking.

When Father is situated, I tell Sergio and Dante to climb into the back and shoot out the glass section of the trunk so they can provide covering fire from the rear. They nod and jump into position, as I move back around to the driver’s seat.

The gunfire continues to rain down on us like deadly hail. I hear the intermittent burst of Mateo and Leo offering up some token return fire, but it does little to stem the tide of enemy bullets. We need to get out of here, right fucking now, or we will never have the chance to do so again. The longer we sit, the closer the Bratva troops can approach, pinning us against the concrete embankment.

If you stop, you die.

So it is go time. Now or never.

I stay hunched over as I jerk the gear shift into drive, floor the accelerator, and yank the wheel as hard as I can clockwise. The tires squeal and burn on the concrete, and there is a half-second delay between the RPMs increase and the car finally engages.

We take off like a rocket.Thump-thump-thump—sniper fire lights up the side of the car, though there are brief lulls as Sergio and Dante in the trunk manage to find targets in the night and take them out. It is too little and too late, but at least it is something.

I peek over the dashboard and see where Mateo and Leo are cooped up behind the burning remnants of our vehicle. I slow down. They see me and rise to get in. It all goes so impossibly fucking fast—Dante throws the door open from within, Mateo throws Leo into the back seat and jumps in after him …

Then Father bellows, opens his own door, and goes tumbling out of the car, shooting in any and every direction.

My eyes go wide. “What the fuck are you—“

Crack. Crack. Crack.

We all watch in horror as our father, the unkillable Giovanni Bianci, powerful don of the Bianci Mafia, king of the Los Angeles underworld, the most feared and hated man in the entire western United States, takes three large caliber slugs in the torso.

He manages to keep to his feet for a moment before a fourth bullet right between the shoulder blades sends him face-planting onto the concrete.

He is dead.

That much is obvious.

If you stop, you die.

I press down on the accelerator again, trying desperately to escape through the last sliver of the window of time we have left …

Just as Sergio dives out after Father.

“We can’t leave him!” he bellows. “We have to get his body!”

“Sergio, no!” I cry, but he is already out of the vehicle. I watch in the rear-view mirror as he hits the ground, tucks into a sloppy combat roll, and comes up running. His lower leg is a mess of blood and tattered fabric, and yet he keeps going, closing the distance, just ten feet until he’s at Father’s side, then eight, then six, then he’s there and I’m fishtailing the car back around so we can save my little brother before he meets the same fate my father just did, and—

Mateo’s hand clamps down on the steering wheel and forces it straight. “Drive!” he commands in a voice that sounds like God’s coming down from the heavens. “If you go back, we all die.”

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