Page 58 of Vengeance

Neither I nor Adrian ask how she figured that out. Delilah always did have her nose in places she shouldn’t. Instead we rush down the stairs to the floor Adrian referred to and open it to a large open conference/ballroom floor with a clear pathway to the south stairway on the other side. We run across the floor. Adrian practically snatches it off the hinges as we enter only for it to be empty and to hear nothing coming from above or headed below.

“You two go down. I’ll head up,” Delilah says.

“But what if—”

“I’m not afraid of that fucker.”

I look at Delilah. My sister. For all the hell she’s given me, and all the decisions I made that she didn’t like, we’re going to look out for each other. Even if we don’t particularly likeorlove each other. Something tells me she’s going to pull one of her disappearing acts after this, but maybe it’s better that way.

“Don’t die,” I say.

“I stopped taking orders from you at thirteen.”

There’s no time to tell her she’s been taking orders from me for the last five years as Adrian and I rush down the stairs. When we get to the end, we open up the door to outside and instantly both our vision and hearing is impaired thanks to a chaotic gunfight. It’s impossible to know who’s who and, more importantly, who’s shooting at who because of the chaos. And even more important than all that, we can’t find Pray.

With little choice, Adrian and I begin the perilous journey through the firefight to find Pray, if he got down here. He may still be in the stairway. But if he’s not, we can’t risk losing him.

Adrian suddenly shoves me behind him as three people in all black grab approach, but they raise their arms in surrender.

“Miss Bianchi. Wyan sent us to meet you.”

I recall the six young men and women Wyan brought with him for backup but that I wasn’t able to bring in with me when I drove Adrian in under the guise of being his driver and single guard. My “Fangs,” as the children have apparently dubbed themselves.

“Mrs. Fantoni now, actually,” I correct absentmindedly.

“What do you need?” says the shortest one. A young girl, who I know is at least all of eighteen, but looks twelve with her black doe-shaped eyes, warm ivory skin, and deep copper-red hair.

“We need to find Stephen Pray.”

The tall one with golden brown hair pauses to listen to his earpiece and says, “We’ve got eyes on him, he’s about to get away.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. Now make yourself useful and lead the way,” Adrian snaps.

“You don’t have to be an ass,” I chide even though the three lead us anyway. But I still take the time to say, “Sorry about him.”

I don’t miss the way they preen under the consideration and make a note of it for later. They lead us around the corner to the other side of the building where Pray’s men have broken the perimeter we secured to get Pray out.

We could let him leave. If he comes back, he’s either a dead man at our hands or the feds are going to get him because of my back up plan. But that’s not enough. Not enough for me. Not enough for Adrian. Not enough for my children.

Without thought, I launch myself forward and fling myself through the men trying to cover Pray and get him into a car. I land on his back and we fall backward to the ground. His men converge onto us, but I lock my legs around his body and my arm his head, trying to cut off his circulation even as he viciously bites into my arm, tearing a chunk of skin, and tries to disarm me.

His men begin to fall from bullets on top of us until someone, likely Adrian, grabs them and literally tosses them away like dolls until they’re away from us and Adrian has a gun pointed directly into Pray’s temple. The only thing he’s waiting on is for me to get out the way.

I immediately let go of Pray, and Adrian lifts him up by the collar before hitting him hard in the side of the head with the butt of his gun. The old man is dazed enough between Adrian’s hit and blood loss from me shooting his wrist earlier that when Adrian drops him, he can’t do anything but slowly try to get up.

Adrian points his gun at Pray, while my Fangs have their guns raised at what remains of Pray’s security in a standoff to see who’s going to shoot first. I raise my guns and block their view of Adrian.

“It’s over,Sansone Fantoni,” Adrian says.

“It certainly is Mr. Blake,” comes the voice of a man walking up behind Pray’s men.

Then, suddenly, we’re surround by the actually fucking feds and not our men who are disguised to look like feds to make this whole thing look legitimate.

Even Adrian isn’t impulsive enough to commit a blatant murder in front of the real feds and very reluctantly, he stands down. Then so do Pray’s guards, and so do I and the Fangs.

“Alright. Take him away,” says, the lead federal agent. A man with long black hair pulled up into messy man-bun with a mustache and goatee.

His men more than outnumber Pray’s men and gather both his guards and Pray himself to take into the secured prisoner trucks.

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