How did she return? Did Franco disobey me?
He steps out of the car too while I scramble to my feet. Franco runs to her side as Lucio marches at her, knife at the ready. Franco shields her, but Lucio knifes him down, hitting him directly in the stomach.
“Franco, no!” I yelp.
Stella aims and shoots.
BANG!
The bullet grazes Lucio’s shoulder. She tries to fire again, but she’s all out of rounds, and he easily grabs her.
Fuck.
“Get your hands off my wife!” I growl as I bolt toward them, but he’s already thrown her over his shoulder and marches right back to his car.
One of Lucio’s men pulls out a new gun from the trunk, and the bullet ricochets off the ground beneath my feet. I hide behind one of the car doors and wait until he’s all out of bullets before chasing them again, and I snatch a gun off a corpse and fire it at him, missing every shot.
Lucio rounds up his men, and they all run back to their cars.
“Face me, you coward,” I yell at him.
He got what he came here for. Goddammit.
“Go, go, go!” I shout at my leftover men, and they all jump into action, throwing their knives at whoever they can target. But the cars drive off again, haphazardly racing over my terrain until they’re out of sight.
And my wife is gone.
“FUCK!” I yell out loud, falling to my knees in horror as Lucio stole my wife right underneath my nose.
Why didn’t she fucking stay away when I told her to?
Why would she come back for me?
I rush toward my own car, where Franco lies motionless on the muddy ground in a pool of his own blood. I go to my knees and rip up my own shirt, so I can wrap it around him and stop the bleeding.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry.”
He hiccups blood and spits it out.
He keeps saying it over and over again like it’s going to help.
“Don’t waste your breath on apologizing.”
“She stole my gun,” he says.
My brows draw together. “What, why?”
“She didn’t want to leave, not without you. She was afraid you’d die. And I swear she would have killed me if I didn’t do what she asked. I’m sorry,” he says.
I swallow and tighten the knot to secure the fabric around his wound. “We gotta get you to a hospital, fast.”
One of my men runs up to me. “There’s a ton of dead. What do we do, sir?”
“Call the clinic, and have them bring their off-site personnel to take care of our wounded. I don’t care about the cost, just make it happen,” I respond. “Then gather everyone and empty the gun vault. Arm everyone. We’re taking whatever cars we’ve got left.”
“Yes, sir, he says, and he runs off again, pulling out his phone to make some calls, while I focus on Franco.
“I tried to protect her, sir,” he says. “But I didn’t want to die. And I’m pretty sure she would have shot me if I didn’t listen to her.”
