Page 128 of Working for the Mob

“Right as fucking rain.” If I don’t count the possible concussion and bruised back. “You?”

Henry, Lance, and George crouched behind the car with me. George had a nick on his left shoulder, but apart from that everyone seemed unharmed.

Valuncia still had two other men with him on the loading dock, and they weren’t letting up their fire.

Luckily, Miss Dunham and Mrs. Jenkins’ accurate shooting kept the Valuncias from rushing us.

“We’ll live,” Lance said.

A female scream pierced through the bullets firing. The girls!

“It came from around the corner,” Henry shouted, and pointed across me to the side of the warehouse.

I was closer.

“Cover me!” I yelled, leapt from behind the car, and sprinted across the asphalt.

Before I could make it more than a couple steps, something tackled me to the ground, crushing my ribs and scraping my face against the sidewalk.

“You’re not going anywhere, Necci!” Lawrence Valuncia growled in my ear.

I struggled against him. With Valuncia’s men on the deck and the Neccis taking cover behind the car, that left me and Lawrence in no-man’s-land in the middle.

No one shot at us. We were too close to each other for anyone to aim at.

Meaty fists rained down on me as I tried to cover my face. The blows came one after another. I screamed as a set of knuckles plunged into my kidney. I’m going to be peeing blood for a week.

I was in trouble. Valuncia had me pinned down, but I squirmed to my back and blocked my face as blows rained on me. The man out weighed me by at least fifty pounds and each blow pummeled me.

I didn’t know how much more my arms could take. Each hit bruised my forearms. When I didn’t think I could take anymore, the punches stopped.

Stupefied, I scrolled away to catch my breath.

“Go get your girl!” Lance yelled, holding onto Valuncia’s neck in a stranglehold.

I swung my head back to see Lance struggling to ride Lawrence Valuncia, but it was like riding a tiger. You have to stay away from the dangerous parts in the front.

“Go!” Lance yelled again, and I didn’t waste another second. I turned and sprinted to the Baker girls. To Genevieve.

Chapter 40 – Genevieve

“Open up and I swears we won’t hurt ya,” Lem’s reedy voice screamed behind the door, accompanied by frantic pounding.

The chair I jammed under the handle kept them at bay, but I didn’t know for how much longer.

Gunshots echoed through the window but I couldn’t see the source in the dark; It was too bright in our room

“What do we do now?” Lucy asked me.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if we were safer in here or out there.

I had tied a rope to the leg of the second chair and wedged it to the window sill. The first chair I threw out of the window.

It was at least a twenty-foot drop to the asphalt below. Not enough to kill you, but enough to sprain an ankle or break a leg. And I had a feeling from the poorly locked door and the gunshots that neither of us would make it far on a broken leg.

The rope from our bonds only went down most of the distance, which left us with a six foot drop.

More footsteps approached the door and the banging crescendoed.

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