The gun jams harder into my temple. “Don’t play dumb, Cain,” the one beside me snaps. “This is bigger than you. So I suggest you start talking.”
He knows who I am. Casper could’ve told him, but something in his tone, it’s familiarity.
He didn’t just learn it. He knew it.
“You have a gun to my head, and I don’t even fucking know you.”
The guy from the closet steps closer, smirking like he’s been waiting for this moment. “Henry. And that’s Pike.” He gestures to the one holding the gun. “Now open that pretty mouth and tell us what we want to know.”
From behind me, Casper stammers, “Val, just tell them. It’s not worth the hassle.”
I stare at the man I trusted and called a friend and defended against Maksim’s accusations. “You sorry son of a bitch. You sold me out and lured me here. I thought we were friends.”
“I’m sorry. What was I supposed to do?”
I shake my head, the betrayal bitter on my tongue. “You coward…he was right.”
The man steadies the gun and barks, “Talk.”
A shot cracks before the words even finish. The first man folds, blood spreading across his shirt. Instinct snaps me around to find AJ, gun in hand, diving as rounds from the second gunman punch through the wall. She fires again from outside, precise and ruthless. I drop low behind Casper’s desk and find him curled into himself like the pussy he is.
He starts to stammer useless apologies, but I end him with one clean right hook. He goes slack on the floor, out before his mouth can move. “Asshole.”
“Val! He’s hit—come on!” AJ’s voice is frantic. I make a run for her, and we sprint for the back door and scramble onto my bike.
“Go, go, go!” she shouts.
For a split second I think we’ve bought ourselves a clean getaway. But just a breath later, the second gunman explodes through the garage and tackles her to the pavement. She hits hard and my heart clenches. I have no idea which gun is in play, but there’s no time to think. That’s my baby sister. She takes a blow to the face before I can reach her, but keeps fighting, exactly as she’s been trained to do.
I toss the bike, yank the knife from the strap on my ankle, and sprint into the fray, aiming for his carotid. The man pivots as AJ drives a throat punch into him, and my blade bites into his shoulder instead, spinning him down in a spray of cursing and red.
“Alessandra, run!”
Of course she doesn’t listen. She plants her heel, snaps open the blade hidden in the tip of her shoe, and slashes across his throat with a calm, practiced brutality. He falls to his knees, choking, and she goes in for another blow.
That’s when I see her, a silhouette framed behind splintered glass. I dive for Alessandra as bullets tear the air above us, hurling us flat against the brick.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Val, my gun,” she pants. I snatch the Glock and thumb the mag. A handful of rounds, enough to take this bitch out.
“Stay down,” I order, shoving her face into the dirt.
The woman starts to reload, and I push off, hurling myself upright and pouring lead into the gaping hole of the building. She stumbles back, blood staining the front of her shirt. I clamber inside, boots crunching glass, and stand over her and pull the trigger, but the gun jams. I curse through my teeth.
“You shot at my baby sister.”
She gurgles blood and spits in my face.
I wrench the weapon and lash her with it until she’s choking on a cocktail of blood and teeth.
When she raises a trembling hand, begging without words, I catch sight of her ring…and my stomach drops.
A familiar signet.
Ares.
The garage falls into an eerie silence except for AJ’s quick steps behind me and my own ragged breaths.
