“Now!” she barked.
I waited as Tamryn and Punk dragged Merrick off, keeping my gun trained on the door frame, and when they were gone I called out. “Just you and me.”
“So I heard,” Milli replied. “That was quite the moving sentiment. It seems you think this is a summer camp.”
“Nope.” I set my hand against the wall separating me from Milli and started to smooth it along. “This is the home of the most notorious crime family in all of New York City. Records as long as the constitution, multiple murders under their belts--trust me, I know very well what I’ve walked into.”
“You lost your friend, didn’t you?” he said. “She’s not interested in being friends with a Raines.” I could only assume that Milli had bugs all over the house. That was how he always knew what was going on even before anyone told him.
“People grow apart,” I said, focusing my energy on my hand. “She may come around someday, but I’ll respect her wishes if she doesn’t.”
“You’re starting to sound like a mobster,” Milli replied.
“Maybe I’m just sick of having everyone assume I’m weak and helpless,” I said. “Thank you for volunteering to be the way I can prove that I’m not.”
He let out a deep laughter. “You think you’re going to kill me? You think you’re even remotely capable of something like that?”
“Do you remember what you taught me in the woods about being stealthy?” I said. “About sneaking around and staying hidden.”
“Hm, you must not have been listening all that well.”
“No, I was,” I said. “Stealth is about being able to stay quiet and stay hidden, but there’s really one thing that is most important with being stealthy. The ability to listen.”
“You don’t have to repeat my own words to me. I’m the one that said them,” Milli said. My hand stopped moving, because I’d finally found the point I was looking for. “Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s entirely useful to you here.”
“You don’t think so?” I said. “I think it’s incredibly useful, because you’ve given something to listen to that is quite helpful.”
“Oh, have I? What’s that?”
“Your favorite thing to listen to,” I replied, smiling. “The sound of your own voice.”
“What does that--”
I set my gun against the point on the wall and started to fire. I shot one time, two times, three times, four times, and then stopped. Silence filled the air around me apart from a single, dull thud from inside the bedroom. I crept towards the door keeping my gun held out in front of me just in case, but there was no need to be worried. When I rounded the corner I saw the fruits of my labor.
Milli’s head was unrecognizable and splattered across the room in front of him.
Suddenly, Tamryn came bolting back down the hallway looking manic, but when she saw me she let out a sigh of relief. She walked around the corner and let out a dull whistle.
“You shot through the wall.”
“I’ve learned one thing about Milli since I’ve met him, he’s a man who loves to talk. All I had to do was find where the bass of his voice was strongest.”
Tamryn scoffed with surprise. “Because it’d be coming out his mouth, which is attached to his head.” She looked at me with wide-eyes. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“Let’s go,” she said, grabbing my arm. “Things have been quiet downstairs for about two minutes, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
58
GIO
The amount of gunfire I was hearing on the floor above was making me sick with worry. I hadn’t seen Punk, Tamryn, Merrick or Avion, and I was certain that Milli had gone after them. We were halfway down the stairs to the second floor when I heard Vincent call out and knew he was in the house. Kelly and I continued downward after hearing a cacophony of gunshots and ended up coming face to face with the brothers themselves.
With neither pair being able to get the upper hand, we were stuck, which meant I had no way to get to Avion and the rest of my family and see if they were okay. Part of me wanted to turn around and just go try and find them, but if things were already bad up there, if I let the Narzand brothers get any further into my home, things were only going to get worse.
My entire front foyer was already a mess of bodies of my poor, unsuspecting men. My oversight had cost more than a few people their lives and that was something I was going to have to answer for until the end of time.
