Page 83 of Virtue & Vengeance

When they didn’t notice, I moved a little quicker, keeping my eyes glued to their backs. I knew once I opened the door I would have to run. Still, they didn’t notice.

I didn’t wait any longer. I turned and made a run for the door, but just as I reached it and pulled the door open, a set of arms hooked around my waist and threw me to the floor.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

There was no more time.

I screamed, the sound shrill and loud, hurting even my ears.

“Fuck! Shut her up, Winston,” Rodger yelled behind us.

Winston moved over me and pulled his gun from the waist of his pants before turning it on me.

This was really happening.

I was about to die.

Reflex kicked in, and I held my hands up to block myself as if my hands would keep the bullets from penetrating my body. He aimed the gun at my face, and I stared at the circular end of the barrel as it glared back at me like a one-eyed monster.

“Sorry, kid,” Winston said before he settled his finger over the trigger.

Again I screamed, and a loud bang filled the room as the gun went off. I jerked, the sound startling me more than being shot. Except, I didn’t feel as though I’d been shot.

Then I looked up at Winston just as his eyes went wide. He reached up and grabbed the back of his head and brought it back around to look at it.

It was covered in blood.

The blood dripped from his fingers and onto my pants.

Then he fell to the ground at my side like a heap of dead weight, and I was able to see someone was standing behind him. That someone was still holding the gun as if he were waiting to shoot again.

Slowly, he dropped his arm, and his emerald eyes moved from Winston’s dead body to my face.

Zander.

He was there.

Another shot rang out, and my eyes moved to the side of the room where Jerome was standing over Rodger’s body, tucking a gun into a holster hidden beneath his jacket.

Shocked, I turned my attention back to Zander.

“Are you okay, angel?” he asked.

But I wasn’t so sure I was.

My body began to tremble. So hard in fact that my teeth clinked together in a loud chattering noise.

“Eden?” Zander’s brows pulled down in worry as he knelt down beside me and cupped my cheek with his large hand. “Look at me, Angel.”

I listened, looking up into his eyes.

“You’re okay, baby.”

I nodded, still unable to put together what had just occurred.

Again, I looked around the room, my eyes landing on two dead bodies before bouncing over to Jerome who stood silently in the corner. Finally, I looked up into Zander’s eyes once again. It was then the relief slowly flooded in.

I wasn’t going to die.

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