Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(154)

Standing there at the entrance of the store is Cherry, mouth agape as she pushes past my man posted at the door and looks me dead in the eye as my fist is raised toward Mickey.





29





Cherry





“What the hell is this?” I exclaim, looking around the liquor store with my mouth agape.

After hearing the motorcycles rumble by earlier, I couldn’t resist the urge to follow them. Even though I knew I should be cautious, something told me I needed to find out where they were going. I followed them in my rental car, keeping about a block behind just in case they decided to look back and recognize my Focus. I was confused when I saw them pull into the parking lot of the liquor store which has been here ever since I can remember.

Mickey’s is where my dad used to stop on the way home from a long day at work to pick up a six-pack for himself, and a soda for me. It has memories, but they’re all innocuous. So I had no idea what the biker gang could possibly want with the store, besides just buying alcohol to fuel whatever criminal activities they were getting into tonight.

At first, I sat in my car in the parking lot, biting my lip nervously, trying to talk myself into just driving back to my hotel and pretending none of today happened. But when all the biker guys disappeared into the store and stayed inside for longer than an average trip to the liquor store should take, that same sense of duty and fate urged me to look into it.

So here I am now, standing in the midst of what looks like some kind of shakedown. Various motorcycle guys and even a couple women I didn’t notice before are stationed throughout the little liquor store. In any other situation, their arrangement might just look like a bunch of people who just happen to be browsing the shelves at the same time. But with my heightened awareness of the tension in the air, it is apparent to me that they’re strategically spread out to cover the store.

And Leon is here, with his fist raised in a combative stance, looking like he’s just about to rip into some wiry, fifty-something guy in a shabby business suit. The guy looks vaguely familiar, and it dawns on me that I saw him around the store on the few occasions when my dad stopped off here and left me sitting in the truck. I think it’s Mickey, himself. The guy the store’s named after.

In the next few seconds, a million little things seem to happen in slow motion. The man I shoved past at the doorway comes up behind me, his footsteps heavy and quick. Leon has turned to look back at me, his green eyes going wide with alarm and confusion.

A woman’s voice somewhere to my left cries, “Watch out!”

And then my eyes flick back instinctively to Mickey, who has used Leon’s moment of distraction to quickly draw out something small, black, and shiny.

A gun.

“Don’t tell me how to run my damn business!” Mickey shouts, a wicked grin on his face as he lowers the gun to point toward Leon’s chest. My whole body goes hot and cold with fear. Instantaneously, several biker guys come barreling down the aisles of liquor, bottles shattering to the floor left and right. One of the guys closest to the showdown between Mickey and Leon dives for the store owner, his thick, tree-trunk arms wrapping around Mickey’s legs as the two of them fall to the floor in a heap.

On the way down, there’s a deafening crack as the gun goes off. I can feel the bullet whiz past me, and then there’s the sound of more glass breaking as the bullet goes through the window. The next sound I hear is the worst one yet: an agonized scream in a foreign language.

Someone’s been shot.

“You fucking mudak!” Leon bellows, kicking Mickey hard in the side as he lies crumpled on the ground, pinned under the bearded biker guy’s powerful arms.

“I’m sorry, Prez,” grunts the biker, shaking his head and looking up at Leon dolefully. “I didn’t know the gun was gonna go off. Chert voz’mi, I tried to stop him — ”

“Not your fault, Genn,” Leon replies, “Just keep him down.”

“Oh my God,” I murmur, turning around to see a woman in a leather jacket bolt out the entrance and kneel down beside a fallen guy outside. Through the shattered window I can make out the spread of scarlet blood pooling on the pavement.

“B-blood,” I mumble, just as my head starts to get fuzzy inside. I don’t do well with blood. Not at all. They make me lie down on a stretcher any time I have to give blood because I have a reputation for fainting. I start to feel that familiar, terrible wave of nausea and lightheadedness.

“Man down!” shouts the woman from outside, looking up through the hole in the window to give Leon a panicked expression.

“Where’s he hit?” asks a guy running past me.