He threw one of the shotguns in my direction and I caught it, giving it a single practiced pump.
The urge to post up in this room and defend it was strong, but I knew that would just potentially draw attention to Cini’s hiding place. So, instead we headed back into the living room, shutting all of the doors on our way.
Once we made it back, one of the bodyguards was starting to move with a groan.
“What do we do about him?” Ranieri asked as he closed the blinds and pushed the couch in front of the door.
Holding out my pistol, I let off a round, cutting the man off mid-moan.
When my eyes met Ranieri’s and found an odd emotion in them. It had been years since truly operated like the mafiosos that we had been when Alesso was alive, so it wasn’t a surprise that the one who had wanted out of this life the most had feelings about killing someone.
“He would have done the same to us given the chance,” I told him with a shrug. “And we’re going to be killing a whole hell of a lot more of these bastards before the night is over. So you may want to come to peace with it now.”
“Sorry,” Ranieri apologized, chastened by my words. “It’s just… it’s easy to forget that you were raised by the butchers.”
I flinched at the old nickname my fathers were famous for, but quickly shook off the feeling. While the other guys had been raised by regular, albeit cold, members of the Amante family, I had been raised by the darker underbelly.
I didn’t have parents. They brought me in to learn the ropes—and because I was just happy to have a place to call my own—I was moldable and eager to please.
But Travis, Howard, and Dale did dote on me in their own way by teaching me how to protect myself and the people I loved. That was better than anything I could have asked for.
“Go lock the kitchen door and close the blinds,” I told him with a sigh.
It was going to be a long night and I wasn’t completely certain whether we would come out of it alive.
Hours later, I stood amongst the wreckage of what used to be our beach house.
They had come in droves, dressed like members of a SWAT team. Ten, fifteen, nearly twenty of them. They knew the layout of the house and had focused their energies on trying to get back into the primary bedroom.
It was like they knew everything about us—well, almost everything—it seemed that they hadn’t taken whatever report they had read about the four of us seriously enough because they all went down easily enough.
“Do you think that’s the last of them?” Nico gasped as he wiped a blood-soaked sleeve across his brow and reloaded his empty pistol.
He and Elio had pulled up in the SUV minutes after we finished fortifying the house and they had been right about their being tailed. Moments after they got into the house several other dark vans pulled onto the gravel drive in front of the house.
What ensued after that was hours of back and forth gunfire until they breached the property.
The walls were littered with bullet holes and there was more than one dead body inside of the kitchen and living room.
“I don’t know,” Elio said as he pulled guns from the last guy and dropped them in one of the extra duffel bags. “But I’m not going to wait to find out. Come on, let’s get Cini and get the hell out of here.”
“Where are we going to go? This obviously wasn’t just Mr. R’s plan. They knew the house too well for that,” Ranieri pointed out as he pressed a piece of ice to the cut across his cheek that he’d gotten thanks to a stray piece of glass when the intruders shot out one of the windows.
“Nico, do you remember which boat you used yesterday?” Elio asked as we headed as a group to the primary bedroom.
I wasn’t sure what state Cini would be in after waiting for so long, but I just hoped she wasn’t as scared as she had been earlier.
“Yeah—but they’d be able to trace a purchase like that,” Nico replied with a frown.
“That’s why we aren’t going to pay for it. There’s not a chance in hell that we’re going to be able to get on a plane without Amante or Mr. R figuring out where we’re going so we’re going to have to sail back to the states.”
Nico gawked at him. “We can’t juststeala boat, El. That’s crazy.”
Ranieri scoffed at our fellow pack mate. “You do realize we just spent the past few hours killing a bunch of wannabe G.I. Joes, right? And yet somehow, stealing a boat is where you draw the line?”
“We need to get a move on gentlemen,” I reminded them impatiently, my instincts telling us that this relative peace would be short-lived if we stuck around here for too long.
I entered the room ahead of them and got down on my hands and knees, pulling away the cases to get to Cini.
