“Who are you talking to, Allie?” Ellie asked.
“My husband.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute, you’re serious? You really married someone you just met? You can’t do that.”
“Why not? How long did you know Johnny Pornstash, a month?”
“It’s Porciello, and I didn’t marry him, so you’ve already slid down that slippery slope of matrimony, my little black teapot twinsie.”
I opened my mouth to bitch her out but got interrupted.
“Would you look at that?”
“What?” I asked Ellie.
“I can see you. You’re on a terrace with a couple of bruisers walking around the edges, and holy shit, is that It’s-a-me-Mar-ee-oh?”
“You can see me?” I stood up and started to walk to the edge, but Mario jumped out of his seat and got in front of me.”
Then the damnedest thing happened. Or should I say, a bunch of damned things happened.
“Ringo, what the hell?” Ellie’s voice rang in my ear as the ceramic pot near my head splintered and the crack of a bullet ricocheted off the pot into the tiled floor at our feet. Mario pushed me down and dragged me under the table.
Loppa and Firenze sprung into motion, Loppa landing on top of Mario, who was on top of me, and Firenze drawing a weapon to shoot at whoever was shooting at us.
I still had the phone in hand, and could hear my sister bitching up a storm at Ringo. “Who in the fuck are you shooting at?”
“He’s shooting at us,” I relayed to Mario. Another volley of shots peppered against the roof. One smacked into the wall near us and a chunk of masonry broke away at high speed. It hit Loppa in the shoulder and a piece of it cut his cheekbone too close to his eyes for me to do anything but scream.
Mario rolled off me, a gun in hand, his eyes trained on the hillside.
Before I could blink, he’d sprinted to the wall, braced a shoulder on it and sent two rapid-fire shots up the slope.
Another shot echoed against the hills and I reached out to Mario, hoping it wasn’t too late to hold him, or touch his skin, or perhaps even simply tell him how damn much he’d begun to mean to me.
But the rifle sound that answered came from almost directly equal with our terrace on the hillside.
“Allie?” Ellie screamed into the phone.
“I’m okay.”
“He shot him. I don’t believe it. He shot him!” My sister was rapidly becoming hysterical.
“Who did he shoot?” Mario and a bleeding Loppa peered over the wall. Firenze had already sprinted off to climb the terraces upward.
“I don’t know, but he shot him.” Ellie was sobbing now.
A man’s voice sounded harsh in my ear. “Is Valentine near you?”
“What?”
“Valentine. Tell him to get his head down.”
I didn’t know what to do, or who this man was. Was it Ringo?
“Allie? Your husband is a sitting fucking duck where he is. Give him the fucking phone right now. Or better yet, tell him this: ‘That’s two.’”
Mario was about to move. “Mario?”
