Page 42 of The Mobster's Nanny

Because Liss is holding a gun in her hands, its muzzle pressed right in the middle of his forehead, and the two of them are frozen like statues depicting the edge between life and death.

Liss has a grim frown on her face, her lips pursed in a tight line, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she wants to kill the man. Her finger is on the trigger already, but it’s clear that something is holding her back. No matter how furious or determined she is, Liss is not a murderer—and I don’t want her to be.

“Liss,” I call her again in a careful voice so as not to startle her. I walk closer, looking between her and her target. “You don’t have to do it.”

The man glances at me, and I see his expression harden. He doesn’t say anything, but when our eyes meet for a moment I catch a look of resentment in his eyes, his jaw set into a tense line. Well, I guess it’s good that Liss has him at gunpoint—looks like he wouldn’t hesitate before shooting me. Actually, now that I can see him clearer, he looks weirdly familiar, but I don’t have enough time to figure out where I’ve seen him before.

“I have to,” Liss says, keeping her gaze on the man, and the strain in her voice reveals her inner struggle. “I can’t just let him go, I—”

Her voice breaks down, and she has to take an audible breath to keep herself calm. The Escarra man stands still, probably sensing his own danger in her emotional turmoil, and only looks between us in a silent assessment of the situation.

“I know,” I say and, as I finally get close enough to her, I put my hand on her shoulder. Liss tenses up from the touch, making the gun in her hand move ever so slightly, and the man swallows. “But if you do it, everything will change. Think about your life, about your future. Think about…us.”

The words slip out of my mouth before I realize what I’m saying—and maybe it’s for the best. Because I don’t want to hold myself back, I don’t want to pretend like I haven’t been thinking about her all this time. If there’s any hope left for us, I want Liss to know that I am not going to turn away from her.

As soon as I say it, her eyes widen, and I can see her struggling to keep her focus on the Escarra man. She glances at me from the corner of her eye and licks her lips. “Do you think we still have a chance?”

“As long as we’re ready to trust each other.” I squeeze her shoulder and slide my hand down her arm. “Don’t go down this path, don’t get his blood on your hands.”

“But—”

“I’ll do it for you,” I say in a low voice, keeping my gaze on her face but noticing the man’s tension from the corner of my eye. “I’ll kill him, just…don’t do this to yourself.”

Liss blinks and glances at me with an unreadable look in her eyes. “Are you ready to kill him for me?”

“I’ve done it before, I’m not—”

At the same moment, I catch a movement and lunge at the Escarra man, reaching for his neck. He’s just a second ahead of me in his attempt to bounce away and get out of Liss’s line of sight, his attention focused more on her gun than me, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to catch him.

I grab him by the collar of his shirt, and before he has the time to shift his attention for a counterattack, I punch him in the face, kick him in the guts, and shake him by the collar before forcing him to stand up again. I may not be a member of the combat forces of the Messina Clan anymore, but trust me, I had enough shit to deal with when I was younger.

While the Escarra man is struggling to come back to his senses, I look at Liss and hold out my hand. “Give me the gun. I’ll finish him.”

But Liss only looks at the man for a moment, the gun in her hands lowered to the ground, before looking at me and shaking her head. “No, I can’t.”

Goddamnit! My heart drops, and everything inside of me freezes. She’s not gonna shoot him, is she? But Liss’s expression shifts into something softer, the look in her eyes deep and full of sorrow. She looks at the man again and takes a deep breath.

“I want to believe that the world is made of love, not hatred.”

As soon as she finishes the sentence, the Escarra man gurgles something and swings his elbow to kick my side—but Liss turns out to be faster than him. Before I know it, she lunges forward and uses the grip of her gun to hit the man on his head with all her strength. She doesn’t hold back with her force, and the man immediately flinches and goes limp in my arms, bleeding from the wound on the side of his head.

Damn, I didn’t know Liss had so much violence in her tender body.

“Let’s go,” she says in a tense whisper, looking around as I let go of the man. He slumps on the ground, but the wounds and bruises aren’t bad enough to actually kill him. “We don’t know if he has anyone else around, we have to hurry up!”

Without waiting for my response, Liss grabs her backpack from the floor and runs to the entrance, tossing the gun into the bag, and I follow her a moment later. I instinctively check our surroundings to make sure there’s no one around, but my gaze keeps coming back to Liss as she peeks over the wall or crouches through the bushes. She acts like a true Mafia leader, confident and calculating, and for the first time since I met her, I think that maybe she could find a place on my side of the law.

We get to our cars without much trouble, and I see Liss slow down, stand up, and breathe out in relief. But I know that it’s too early to relax—and a moment later, we hear voices coming from the distance. A man is yelling something from the direction of the railway station, and I don’t need to hear more than a couple of words to recognize Spanish. So the Escarra guy wasn’t on his own, after all.

Liss turns to me with wide eyes, clearly unaware of what to do in the face of actual danger, and I grab her shoulder and push her toward my car. “Go, go! Don’t let them see us!”

The Mexicans catch up with us only when we’re both already in my car. My hands are on the steering wheel when I see one of them running out on the gravel path and raising his gun at us. Liss gasps, holding her backpack to her chest, but I only tighten my grip on the wheel and focus on the man.

“Keep your head down,” I say at the last moment before pushing the accelerator hard.

The whole car jerks from the speed of our takeoff, and Liss immediately bends down to her knees while the Mexican opens fire, shouting something for the two men showing up behind him. Well, bad for them that my car is bulletproof. Their bullets bounce off the trunk and windshield, doing nothing to stop me, and all too late the Mexicans realize that I’m going to run them over.

The first guy attempts to jump away from my car, but the edge of my bumper still hits him, sending him flying to the ground. The other two Mexicans immediately take off in different directions, blindly firing bullets at me, but none of them does me any damage.

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