“I killed that piece of shit this morning. Give me your address and I’ll have my people send you his shiny bald head in a little box with a pink bow.”
Santino faltered for a second, I could see him getting hot under that collar and edging towards the danger zone, but he shrugged and tried to regain his composure.
“Well, we would have ended up killin’ him for runnin’ with you in the first place anyway, no big deal.”
“Yeah, true. Hey, if we’re coming clean, let’s talk some more about your daughter. Did you know I corn-holed that bitch? Man, she cried when she took it, but she was back for more the next day. The last thing I wanted was a worthless slut like that again though, so I told her to fuck off.”
Santino’s eyes went from attempted-smug to murder in a blink. With a shaking hand, he brought his gun up and held the barrel against my forehead. The various Picolli, maybe some Bertolini, soldiers leaned forward, enthralled, waiting. Checkmate, motherfuckers.
“Everybody here knows you’re too big a pussy to do it,” I said.
I could feel all that rage in every quiver of the muzzle against my skull, and time slowed to a crawl. Every blink I took seemed to last for minutes. Every breath, for hours.
My job was done. I let my mind wander and memories of Kendall drifted in front of my eyes, blurring reality. I was lucky to have had that, to have had her, even if it wasn’t for long enough. Forever wouldn’t have been long enough with a girl like her anyway. Fuck sake. Goodbye.
Bang!
Chapter 31
Kendall
Jace’s gun kicked back and I wasn’t able to completely halt its momentum before it struck me right in the middle of the forehead. I flinched at the impact and then held the gun out again as quick as I could, smelling a strange burning odor.
The way things looked, the trigger on the gun might have been connected to time itself. Nobody was moving. Jace was still tied to the chair, head bowed, while mobsters in suits stood watching the impending execution with several of their colleagues dead on the floor.
Even the one holding the gun to Jace’s head still stood there, still as a statue. The only difference was that I could see a red hole just behind his ear, and a spray of gore on the wall opposite.
Holy shit! I shot somebody!
All at once, things started moving again. The older man started to tumble as Jace brought his head up, eyes narrowed in concentration.
The Mafia men started turning around, reaching inside their jackets, and I aimed at the closest one. Terror gripped me with every squeeze of the trigger, replacing the desperation with which I had pulled it the first time.
The noise was terrifying and after the second shot, I sprayed bullets almost randomly, looking out at the chaos through squinted eyes. Men were diving and falling in every direction, some of them still oblivious as to what was happening.
Jace leaned forward, standing to his feet with the seat still strapped to him, before throwing himself backwards to the ground and breaking the flimsy old chair into a million pieces. The last thing I saw was him struggling with ropes before my nerve broke and I stumbled to the side of the doorway, cutting off my view.
To my ears, the noise in the other room was no quieter than inside that car with Jace when the Picollis attacked us with those machine guns. Gunfire, screaming, crashing, thumping. I clutched Jace’s gun, my lips pulled back in a petrified grimace as tears streamed down my cheeks.
Through the doorway came a man with his hand clamped against his belly, on top of a dark red stain that was quickly spreading. Looking around in a daze, he soon spotted me.
He tried to aim his gun in my direction, but raising his arm seemed to be causing him some incredible pain and it was slow going. I screamed, pointed my weapon and pulled the trigger.
Click.
In quiet horror, I stared up at inevitability. I could almost see the line between the gun and where it was aiming, but there was nothing I could do about it. The floor, now my foot, now my knee…
A blur of muscles and tattoos charged through the door, taking the Mafioso off his feet. He and Jace crashed to the ground with grunts of pain and whooshes of knocked out breaths.
Jace was just beginning to scramble to a kneeling position when I heard a gunshot go off, and he slumped back down. Three more followed and then all was silent.
The two of them went still. I heard myself make a strangled sound that would have meant “please, no!” in a time before language, as I dropped the gun and crawled over to them.
With a trembling hand, I pulled on Jace’s shoulder, rocking him a little before getting a better grip and pulling harder. He was so heavy, but he unceremoniously rolled off the man below him on to his back.
I saw his chest rising and falling as a red patch, similar to what the other man had come through the door with, spread over his shirt. He was alive, and the other guy was dead. I almost fainted in relief.