OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(106)

In true Indiana Jones style, I smirked. I had the gun.



I gave him fair warning. “Brace, man. You’d better hold on to those bars for your life, because if you fall, you might well lose it.”



I gave him a moment to comprehend what I had just said. I saw his hands tighten on the bars. Then, standing only a few feet away from him, I shot one knee and then the next in rapid succession. He screamed but did manage to hold himself up in between shots. As soon as the second knee went out, he lost his grip and went down hard on the floor, gasping and crying and shouting at once.



I didn’t give a fuck. He deserved every moment of pain, every drop of blood loss, and so much more. I let him cry it out. He was effectively hobbled, and that was all that mattered as far as I was concerned.



“You stay in that corner, you asswipe, and get your hands back up over your head and holding on to those bars, even if you have to do it on your ass. You stay down, but your hands stay up, you got me?”



He got me. His hands went up, and he lay there sniveling and bleeding with his legs splayed out at slightly odd angles. He’d be going nowhere fast on those.



Still, I kept my gun on him and him in my peripheral sights while I edged toward the table and to Zoe, whose sobs had finally stopped, probably due to shock from the gunshots and the sudden disappearance of the sick bastard from her line of sight.



I made sure I was staying closer to the cage door than Fielding could get and managed to locate the nearest knot above Zoe’s wrist. She was tied up in a way that screamed “sex slave.” I didn’t want to imagine what she had been going through, but I was damn glad to be able to get her out of here, finally. This girl needed out of here. And Clav needed his little girl back.



After what seemed like forever, and I was getting nowhere with that damned knot, I muttered, “Fuck it.” Her hand was free-ish, so I put my gun in it, pointed it in the direction of the slime writhing in the corner of the cage, and told her to keep it there and to shoot if he started moving in any direction.



That probably wasn’t the greatest plan.



She shouted, “Die, fucker! Die! Die! Die!” And she shot. And shot, and shot, and shot.



I slammed my body away from her and the gun, not wanting to be caught by a stray bullet. I went down out of instinct while she emptied the barrel on the asshole in the corner. Not all of her shots connected—in fact, I thought most of them didn’t—but I was pretty sure she nailed him a couple of times at least.



She was yelling and crying, he was yelling and crying, and I was just trying to get my bearings again. By the time it was clear she was done, he was still making noise, so it was obvious she hadn’t landed an immediate death blow. But if he’d had any plans to counterattack, he had certainly abandoned them by now. He was toast for the time being.



As quickly as I could, I took the gun back and set it on the floor, not near anyone’s reach. Then I went back to Zoe and tried to quiet her down while releasing her from her bonds with the help of my trusty switch blade.



“Shh, shh, Zoe, it’s okay. It’s all right. I’m here, it’s done, it’s over. Shh. It’s over.”



I don’t even know if she heard me. She was crying so hard, and once I got both her arms and legs free and finally cut the belt that had her around the middle, she just rolled over and would have fallen down straight to the floor if I hadn’t been there to catch her. As it was, she knocked me to the floor and ended up kind of curled in my lap. That was okay; if anyone needed a hug, it was this girl.



But I was aware she was naked, and she was aware, too. As fast as I could, I shucked my leather jacket and pulled it around her as gently as I could, having nothing else to offer her that might cover her better than that. She was small enough that it did the job. She pretty much swam in it.



Her breath was coming in deep gulps between sobs, and I knew it would be a while before she’d be able to calm down, but I was also getting really antsy to get up and get back out into that hallway and search for that other voice—god, I hoped it was Sienna’s—that I had heard. I couldn’t hear it anymore, not with Zoe’s gasping and sobbing and the sick bastard’s continuing whine.



Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Zoe, honey, I have to get up. I think there’s somebody else down here. I have to go look.”



She paused in her weeping and nodded. “There is. There’s another one. She’s new. He was so…” Her voice was scratchy and weak, and she broke off. I wasn’t sure what she was trying to tell me, but she either wasn’t able or wasn’t willing to find the words to convey her thoughts to me on the point.