Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(77)

My face sours into a grimace. This isn’t an accident — I’m driving right into whatever they have planned, and I know it. But I’m going to press on.

I’ve taken a bullet for a student I hardly know. For Liv, I’d give my life.

For a moment, I see her in the back of the car, and my heart leaps into my throat. I want to blow out the brains of every man in that car with her, and I will. But one wrong shot, one slight movement at the wrong time could make the unthinkable happen, so I have to stay my weapon. My blood boils as I see the man holding her down bring his hand across her face, though, and I raise my weapon and let out a shot that takes off the left side-mirror. I can almost feel Will flinch, and it gives me a special pleasure.

Then the man in the back leans out the side window with an Uzi in hand, and I nearly have to drive off the road to avoid the spray of bullets that flies out. We drive towards a pair of thick trees, and I brace myself to go off-road when the man is suddenly jerked back into the car, and I realize Liv has got a hold of them, and they’re grappling in the backseat.

My whole body tenses at the sight, fraught with concern for her. I’ve started to train her well, but if she angers the men too much, I wouldn’t put it past them to do something drastic before reaching their destination. I’m so concerned with the sight that I don’t fully notice his sudden acceleration, and it’s too late when I notice the man by the side of the road rolling a small, round, metal object into the road in front of me.

I feel fire under me as the grenade goes off below the car, glass shattering all around and smoke and dirt billowing up in every direction as my ears are deafened to a harsh ringing. Bits and pieces of the car go flying, and the driver’s side door is lost, leaving the smoke-filled air to fan the flames within the vehicle as I charge forward.

In truth, the pain hardly registers with me. I feel it like a thought in the back of my mind, but I’m so driven by adrenaline towards my goal. Up ahead, I have just enough time to see Will’s car coming to a halt before another grenade goes off in front of me, sending up another wave of smoke and dirt, and the sound of metal clinking tells me bullets are peppering the vehicle like a thousand angry wasps, and there’s a burning sensation under my feet.





26





Liv





I hear the second explosion go off, but the brute on top of me has his knee on the back of mine, and he’s pinning my arms behind my back, pressing my face into the seat, and I all I can do is feel my heart leap into my throat again.

“Much better,” I hear Will’s insufferably cruel voice say, and that pushes me over the edge. Feeling the slightest slack in the henchman’s grip, I wrench my arms free the way Max taught me how, and in a flash, I push myself up, and an elbow shoots back to smack the man in the mouth, and I feel teeth crack under the blow as he howls and I turn my eyes to the rear window.

I wish I hadn’t.

Out of the smoke, I watch Max’s car roll forward, the once-splendid vehicle we’d planned to drive away to a new life inside, coasting across the French countryside away from all this terror. Instead, I watch it sputter forward, smoke billowing from every opening, and as we come to a stop, the men who’d been hiding in the forest on the sides of the road step out, guns blazing as they riddle the sides, the back, and the front with bullets.

I let out a scream, tears streaming down my eyes as I slam my fist into the rear window, not even caring that the ogre-like man beside me is pinning my arms again. I can’t even feel the pain compared to the sight of Max’s car, and visions of what he must look like inside flash in front of my mind’s eye unbidden. I clench my eyes and look away, tears stinging terribly.

It isn’t fair. This can’t be real. This isn’t real. Absurdly, I become vaguely aware that I’m still in my wedding dress, half-torn and filthy by now. This was supposed to be the best day of my life, a day I’d dreamed about since I was a little girl, even if I’d never imagined it taking place in such a place as this.

This whole time has been a kind of dream turned nightmare. And just when I think Max had woken me from the nightmare and brought me back into the real world, into my real life, I just slipped back into the depths, getting dragged down as I watch my last glimmer of hope get gunned to pieces on a dirt road in the woods.

My mind flits to everyone back at the wedding. Did the bastards take anyone else? Oh god, what about Maggie? She saw them all again, she saw Will, she relived the trauma. Was she okay? What if they took her? Could she stand the pain of being plunged into darkness all over again?

Then there’s a third explosion, and as Will laughs, I realize one of the shots must have hit the car’s gas tank, as I open my eyes and see the car hitting the ground with a metallic thud a moment later, upside-down.