“As many times as it takes,” he grins. “And what are you so worried about him for? All he had to do to get Giovanna back was keep laundering Aurelio’s money, and he refused to do it. Now he won’t help us fight the man who took her? Father of the fucking year.”
I shrug. He’s not wrong.
As Matti pulls out a sheet of paper with the codes written on it, a crash from the main showroom echoes down the hallway. Vin looks at me and takes off toward the sound.
Matti shoves Siena into the vault room, but she seems frozen, not knowing what to do.
“Keep it moving, brother,” I say softly.
Matti pulls her into the room with him and immediately begins entering the codes to the vault. There’s a 30 minute timer that will start if he gets it right, and only then will the vault doors open. I don’t wait to see what happens. When I hear footsteps thundering down the hall toward us, I go low and duck out into the hallway. A guard we didn’t see earlier is shooting at me, and I fire back and duck back into the office, slamming the door behind me.
“You two, stay in there and wait for the vault to open. By the time you clean it out, I’ll be back.” I throw the suitcases in with them and shut the door. When it latches shut, Siena shrieks.
I knock once on the door. “I heard that, Siena. Keep quiet. I don’t know if these doors are bulletproof. I’m going to help Vin.”
When I hit the showroom floor, Vin is crouched down behind the counter, firing one of the weapons we took from the guards when we came in. I slide behind the counter with him and reload.
“Aurelio,” Vin grits out, rising up to his knees to take aim over the counter. He empties the guard’s gun and drops back beside me to reload his own gun.
My muscles snap tight as bullets crack around me, glass cases exploding like bombs, flying shards of glass as lethal as the bullets. Fucking Aurelio. So much for getting in and out before anyone knew we were here.
Lorenzo steps out from behind a shattered mahogany and glass case and takes aim. But he’s not pointing the gun at Aurelio. He’s pointing the gun at me. I dive to the side, knocking Vin out of the way. In answer to his puzzled look, I point behind me, and his face contorts into a sneer.
Vin takes aim over my shoulder at Lorenzo, but I knock his arm, sending the bullet directly into one of Aurelio’s men.
“What the fuck, Tommy,” Vin grits out, turning to take aim at the guards who fill his void, running toward us. He lays them out like sitting ducks.
“Just don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s her father if he tries to kill you, you fuck. Thank Christ I’m not as pussy whipped as you two fuckers are. We’d all be dead.”
But Vin isn’t the only one taking aim at Lorenzo. When Lorenzo points his gun at me again, a round clips his shoulder, throwing him back against the wall. I army crawl to him andthrow a broken desk on its side in front of him, forming a barricade.
“Don’t do me any favors, Tommaso,” Lorenzo grunts. His hand shaky, he points his gun at me, and I smack it away. He lunges for it, and a bullet whizzes past me, hitting the wall where his head had been a second earlier.
I take aim over the edge of the broken desk and pick off two more of Aurelio’s guards. There are only three left, and Vin hits another of them as I duck back down. “You need to focus on the real threat. Not turn your daughter and your wife into widows.”
“My daughter isn’t married, asshole. And if that truly is your intention, then you are the only threat I care about.” Blood is pouring out of his shoulder through his fingers, and he is whiter than the crumbling wall behind him.
I frantically survey the items on the shelves below the counter and see jewelry polishing cloths. “Are these clean?”
He’s too far gone to answer, so I grab them and stuff them into the wound. The first one saturates almost immediately, but I pack another one in and then another, layering as many as I can and pressing down as hard as I can.
“Tommaso!”
Aurelio’s thick accent is unmistakable, and I turn to see him making his way toward me slowly, cane in hand, his hips and knees rolling awkwardly under his weight. Vin rises from his position behind the counter and levels his gun at our father. All the guards—ours, Lorenzo’s, Aurelio’s—are all laid out on the floor, bleeding.
Aurelio looks pleased, like he planned the whole thing and he’s enjoying watching the pieces fall into place. “Are you here to kill me? Is this your big moment that you and your brother have been planning?”
Vin cocks his gun. “It’s as good a moment as any.”
Aurelio smirks. “If you don’t value my life, then at least consider the life of your brother. Matti is in the vault, no? It takes 30 minutes to open the safe once the codes have been entered. He will then go down to the parking garage, will he not? My guards are waiting there for him. If I do not call them off, he dies.”
Lorenzo groans beneath my hand, and Vin grinds his teeth, glancing at me before lowering the gun.
“So are you going to kill me now?” I ask, my voice ragged. “Isn’t that what you told Giovanna? That you would kill me if she wasn’t able to end the relationship?”
Surprise flashes over Aurelio’s face. “Is that what she told you? That I would killyou?” He laughs long and loud. “Either she is as stupid as she is young or she is an unfaithful woman who lies so you will let her spread her legs for Antonio Abbiati in peace.”
