Once again, I had to fight away my true desire to ask more questions in order to climb in the car as I was instructed. Milli climbed into the driver’s seat at the same time that I climbed into the passenger’s seat, and it was only then that I was able to see the pool of blood in a spot on Milli’s left hip.
“You’re hurt!” I yelped.
“It’s okay. It didn’t hit anything vital. It’s just a scratch.” He pointed at the glovebox. “There’s gauze in there. Grab it for me.”
While I went fishing for the gauze, Milli popped down the sunglasses holder from the ceiling and pulled a key out.
My hands were shaking as I sifted through the glove box for the gauze, but I tried to bring my anxiety down. If I was ever going to be able to stay with Gio -- to work for him -- I was going to need to handle these situations better. The gauze was in a ziplock bag that I opened and pulled out all of the contents and held them out for Milli just as he started the car.
“Here,” I said, holding them out. He took the entire roll from me, but then unraveled a fair amount and handed it back. “What?”
“You’re hurt too. Prop it between you and the seat to apply pressure. You don’t wanna lose too much blood.”
“Me?” I looked down at where I’d been hurt originally and my shirt had a huge, blood spot. I didn’t dare lift my shirt to analyze the spot, so I settled for placing the gauze over my shirt and then leaning back against the seat to apply pressure as Milli said. I let out a whine of pain, managing to get out an, “I’m okay,” when Milli gave me a concerned look.
“Just hang in there. Dr. Aurora can help us both out back at Gio’s,” he said.
He pulled out of the parking spot and started whipping the car through the parking lot until he reached a long, dark tunnel. “Are you sure Gio and Merrick will be okay?” I asked.
“Trust me. They’ve gotten out of tighter pinches. Merrick’s place is made for quick getaways.” I watched the side of his face long enough that he growled out, “What?”
“You got shot for me,” I murmured. “You saved my life.”
He smiled then. “Yeah, well don’t tell anyone, but I kinda like you, kid.”
Something about being accepted by Milli made me feel inexplicably cool. “I kinda like you too.” Then I sighed and pushed back in the seat even more. “I wish there was something I could do to stop all of this.”
“Maybe you can.” He glanced sideways at me. “How much pull does Lorie have over the police? She got a whole SWAT team to take you from Gio’s compound. Do you think she can call these guys off?”
Shakily, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Let’s find out.”
42
GIO
The door to the closet came closer and closer to being taken down with each hit from the battering ram. My eyes were still burning from the smoke bomb, but that was a relatively small problem compared to Merrick totally unconscious and bleeding out in my arms, or the fact that I’d lost my mom. When shit hit the fan, on impulse I dropped to the ground and started entering the code to open the hatch under the bed, but it was difficult to see, and in the chaos of cops storming into the room and with the smoke bomb complicating things, we quickly got disoriented.
Worse than that, I lost sight of Avion almost immediately.
My dad’s men were armed and waiting, so apart from that first cop that got the jump on us, Merrick Family grunts rapidly descended on the scene, devolving the attempted quick snatch and grab into a full-blown gun battle. I wanted to get my dad down into the hatch, but the electronic mechanism that pushed the bed aside was already moving slowly when one of the cops realized what was happening and jammed his baton down into the pathway of the bed, stopping its movement and preventing access.
“Giovanni! Get your dad out of here!” my mom screamed as she did her best to fight amidst the smoke and back any cops out of the room.
It was a large bedroom, thankfully because it was now crammed with people, but the cop that had noticed me because of Tamryn’s screams was making his way over. One more shot to my dad, even minor, and that’d be it for him. I couldn’t fight, we had to run.
So I grabbed my dad and pulled him off the bed, dragging him in a blind panic towards the nearest door to me. Every single door in my dad’s show house led either up or down to the more secured floors of his home.
Except for the walk-in closet I dragged him into.
With his final breaths of consciousness he was able to alert me to the latch above the door that would lock it from the inside, but also that there was nowhere for us to go. We were stuck until the battle ended, regardless of whether that was with my mom and Milli successfully killing every cop that had swarmed my dad’s place, or the more likely scenario, arresting or killing all of us.
Merrick had been careful to make sure all the walls and doors in his home were made of reinforced wood that could be destroyed, but not easily. With the latch, we had a few seconds to breathe, but not an infinite amount of time. Even if I figured out a way to get out of the closet, it was only going to be to come face-to-face with police officers who would either arrest us quickly or I’d have to kill my way past them, and I hated putting cop deaths under my belt.
If police hunted crime syndicates enough for the typical reasons, killing a cop made them pull the very tar out of the streets looking for you. It was a pain in the ass to shake, and could turn any ten- or twenty-year sentence into a life sentence if worse came to worst. My dad already had one cop death under his belt, and Milli had two. I’d managed to avoid any in my career and I didn’t want that to change.
Certainly not with the Narzand brothers’ power and access.
“Shit, dad. I could really use your help,” I huffed.
