Page 58 of Twisted Empire

His finger closed around the trigger—and as I wrenched myself to the side, Mom dove in front of him.

“No!” she cried out just as the gun boomed. Her good hand had snatched something from her pocket and plunged it at him, but in the same moment pain tore across my shoulder.

The bullet had gone wide, but not wide enough. Doom’s Seed and I stumbled in opposite directions, me toward the bed, him toward the bookcase. The gun slipped from his fingers.

He clapped a hand against his side, where he was bleeding… because of the blood streaked blade my mom was still clutching in her white-knuckled hand.

Mom had stabbed him. Mom had interrupted his shot and attacked the man she said she loved in her attempt to save me.

But as blood coursed down my sleeve from the burning wound that had my left arm sagging, I wasn’t sure it’d been enough.

CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR

Madelyn

Iwas just stepping out of the storage room ahead of Slade when a gunshot blared through the building. My nerves jumped with a jolt of panic.

Without a word, both me and Slade took off for the stairs. Thudding footsteps behind us told me that at least one other of my guys was hurtling after us.

Where had the shot come from? Who had been shooting at whom? Had any of my guys been injured?

The frantic thoughts propelled me up the stairs and into the upstairs hall. A thump from a room farther down told me where to go. I dashed toward the doorway with Slade at my heels.

We barged into the room and jerked to a halt. It took me a few seconds to take in the scene in front of me and make any kind of sense of it.

Yvonne was standing almost directly in front of me, a bloody knife clutched in her regular hand, her body braced in a defensive stance. At her left, a man with gray hair and a flashy suit had sagged back against a large bookcase—which was pulled away from the wall to reveal a hidden doorway. He was clutching his side, where blood streaked from a wound on his belly. Yvonne’s gaze was fixed on him as if she was worried about what he’d do next.

At her left, Logan was slouched near the room’s bed. He leaned against the footboard while his other hand pressed to his shoulder—wherehisblood was coursing down his arm.

I couldn’t suppress a yelp of alarm. At the same moment, Beckett burst into the room. He slipped between me and Slade with his pistol raised. His aim swung toward the man in the flashy suit the second he set eyes on him.

“Doom’s Seed,” he bit out. “Seems like the tables have turned just a little, don’t you think?”

Thiswas Doom’s Seed. And Yvonne had stabbed him? Who had hurt Logan?

What the hell was going on?

Before my whirling mind could figure it out, Yvonne ducked down. She dropped the knife and snatched something else off the floor—a gun that had fallen. And the pieces clicked together.

Doom’s Seed must have shot at Logan, but Yvonne had tried to protect him.

Clearly she wasn’t totally turning against her lover, though. She lifted the gun and stepped between him and Beckett, protecting the man she’d just stabbed. Her hands shook, the prosthetic one supporting the one gripping the gun, but her face hardened.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she said to the man she was shielding. “I—you came at him so quickly—I had to protect him—”

“Fucking bitch,” Doom’s Seed muttered, and Yvonne winced. But she didn’t waver from her position in front of him.

She motioned at Beckett with the gun, and Beckett backed up one step, his jaw tightening. “You made the right choice with your first response,” he said. “Don’t screw it up now.”

“Leave him alone,” she snapped back. “If you try to hurt him, I’ll shoot all of you. I don’t care what happens to me.”

My heart thudded at an anxious pace. I eased toward Logan and, when Yvonne’s attention didn’t leave Beckett, hurried the rest of the way to my stepbrother. His startled gaze shifted from his mom to me.

“She saved me,” he mumbled.

“Not completely. Let me see that.”

Bracing himself, he lifted his hand from the wound. I sucked in a breath of dismay. The bullet had only clipped his shoulder, but deeply enough to leave a thick gouge through the muscle. Blood streamed down from it before my eyes.

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