Seeing him brings me back from the blackout enough to remember…
Leave one alive.
I step atop and over the bodies on the floor as I slip the second sidearm from its holster on my right side. We're runningout of options. There's one outside the door, shouting orders at two others. Eli is finished with the couple by the window and Atty is done turning that face into a crater behind me, then it's these three left.
And the one with the white band on his sleeve is the clear leader of this team.
"White armband," I say through my teeth. "Leave that one for me."
"I've got it," he snarls, dragging a blood-covered hand across his mouth, streaking it with red as he shoulders past me and cocks his weapon against his thigh.
And I'm actually content to watch and listen to Atty's music as he dispenses the few men outside and drags the one with the white armband into the villa by the back of his jacket and throws him at my feet.
Atty must have rang his bell pretty good, because his eyes are all googly and shit. He'll need a sec.
There's one final gunshot that silences a plea behind me, and I stomp down on the leader's chest to pin him to the ground. "You good, E?"
He holsters his weapon and wipes the blood from his eyes as he comes to join us, gesturing forcefully. "Get him up."
I do as Elijah says, bending to jerk the half-conscious bastard to a seated position in time for Eli to ram the business end of his weapon against his junk. That wakes him up quick.
"No, no," he protests, staring down in horror at his soon-to-be obliviated manhood. He struggles in my grip, but I hold him firm for my brother. "Por favor, no."
I have no idea what Eli is saying as he interrogates the man in Spanish, pushing harder and harder against his cock and balls until he's singing like a canary.
"Lo llaman Casa Mi…" he sputters. "Casa Mirabella."
Atticus nods. He knows which one it is. That's all we needed.
I stand and shoot the fucker in the head.
"Let's go."
We take the remains of our arsenal and steal one of their armed vehicles.
The hour drive is like nails on a chalkboard, scraping and scraping over and over again until I'm convinced there will be no end to this drive.
And maybe we died in the villa, and this is hell.
Trapped on these fucking roads in this fucking country, driving and driving but getting nowhere.
I haven't spoken since we left the villa. Atticus has almost killed us twice on these winding roads, pushing the vehicle to its maximum limits in a reckless way I didn't think him capable of.
I can't tell him to go any faster when I know damn well he is going as fast as humanly possible while still keeping us all intact.
"This is it," Elijah says suddenly from the back, tapping on the tablet Atticus gave him to zoom in. "It should be right there."
He points out the window to the left, where the sea is somewhere beyond the trees.
"Did we pass a road?" Elijah asks, still trying to make sense of the map. "There has to be a road somewhere, but it's not on here."
Atticus's hard stare finds mine.
"Do it," I tell him, and he cuts the wheel at the first break in the trees he can find, the vehicle lurching from smooth pavement onto uneven, rocky ground as he carries us through the trees.
"Eyes open," he growls.
I scan the jarring, blurring landscape, and I know he sees the road down to the right at the same time I say, "Road. Ten o'clock."
