Using swords and knives was symbolic, especially after what Luca had done to Lothario—almost poetic justice in the most gruesome way possible. It wasn’t only the history between Luca and his brother that played out either, but the actual history of this bridge.
I also knew it had to do with noise and attracting too much attention—swords and knives were quieter, not as loud as guns.
It was hardly believable. Our side was using knives as well, and swords they picked up from dead bodies to use on someone else, refusing to go for a gun if the other side was not using it.
Screams rent the air, and I knew this would be a swift and bloody battle—the men wanting to complete their mission before the police were called out.
Ercole’s son—Manfredi, I’d learned was his name, the man who had come to my window that night Ruby went in attack mode—had come straight for Brando, and they engaged in a knife fight.
Manfredi’s mask had a slice in the face, blood dripping from the wound. Brando had caught a line to the chest. His shirt was torn, flapping with his movements and blasts of wind.
Ercole went straight for Luca, a sword raised in the air, only to come clanking down on the railing of the bridge; Luca was too quick for his strike. Luca turned and jabbed a knife in his back, around his kidney, taking the man down without so much as breaking a sweat.
The rest of our men were tangled in a thick mass of arms and legs. Grunts rang loud, as did the sounds of various weapons. Musk floated heavily in the air, the smell of men intent on fighting for their lives.
The sound of bodies hitting water sprang up from the canal, like huge fish completing their jumps from the depths—some of the men were being thrown over.
Somewhere in the depths of my mind, the thought seemed to form…How the hell did I get on the ground?
Brando. He had pushed me down before Manfredi came charging.
A man, one of them, stepped on my hand, about to dig his heel in, and I lashed out, grabbing his ankle with my other, watching with satisfaction as he fell face first onto the ground.
He turned to drag me by the leg toward him, but I struck first, my heel going straight into his face with a crunch that echoed in bone.
He rolled onto his back, clutching his face, the nasty words spewing from his mouth muffled by his broken nose. Before he could lash out again, my hair was yanked up. The strength of it lifted me from the ground, and tears automatically sprang to my eyes.
“Nemours,” I barely got out.
“Bitch,” he snapped in my ear. “It is time for you to pay for your sins.”
He backed us up to the rail of the bridge, prepared to take us both over. I don’t know what scared me the most, the thought of falling, or the thought of being in the actual water.
Or, my worst fear, his fist connecting with my stomach again, making me lose this baby.
If I called out, Brando would turn, and Manfredi would take the advantage. Brando was close to finishing the fight—Manfredi was tiring, not able to keep up. Then his exhaustion made him make a fatal mistake: he charged Brando in a rage, but his body seemed to have ran out of adrenaline, and he hung on Brando like boxers do when one of them gets too tired to even lift an arm or stand on his own two feet.
Manfredi’s face showed utter shock, mouth hanging open, before the knife fell from his fingers.
Brando stepped back, knife sliding from the man’s body.
Manfredi’s entire body fell over a second later.
Brando turned, hands covered with blood, knife dripping with it. The man was no longer in touch with reality—the beast stared back at me.
In a grim sort of way, my mind registered the droplets of blood, the thick crimson rivers draining from the bridge with the cleansing rain.
What could Brando do? The simple answer. Nothing. Nemours used the battle to his advantage. With his back to the guardrail, one move and we would both be over, but he wasn’t going to make this easy on either of us. He’d do something cruel to me before he drowned us both.
“Lower your knife, beast,” Nemours said in French.
Brando looked at me. I shook my head. If he lowered his weapon, one of the other men would kill him. Nemours counted on it. A few of them were making their way up the line, hungry to kill one of Luca’s sons.
An honor. A trophy.
Nemours went to repeat his words, this time in a language Brando could understand, but I shouted over him, “DON’T! TRUST ME!”
A high-pitched howl seemed to break up the other noises. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard—human, but coming from some crazed part of a man’s mind.
