I can’t do this.She buried her face in her hands, which reopened the cut there, and released a gasp at the blood on her fingertips. When the men turned to her, she averted her gaze to the tips of her shoes clumped with dirt.The circle opened to let Emory through.
Towering over her, he evaluated her for a moment then freed a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket and flung it into her lap. Amelia dabbed her cheek with it and didn’t care that her blood splotched the cloth. He’d made a mess of her life. She’d make a mess of his.
Back in the circle, his boots thumped a bellicose beat as he paced in front of Damon.
“I said quick and clean, and what did you do? Ice the kid, leave him there, and bring her to me a bloody mess. Now, we’re left cleaning up after your sloppy shit show. Everything I told you not to do, you did.”
Damon scrambled to his feet. “I want my money!”
Emory seized him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. “You’re a fucking lunatic.”
Legs thrashing, Damon clawed at Emory’s wrists and, with what must’ve been his last full breath, spit in his face. Without hesitation, Emory dropped Damon to the floor, aimed his gun, and fired. Damon’s right knee exploded with a spray of blood.
Amelia squeezed her eyes shut. With another deafening pop, Damon expelled a blood-curdling scream. She opened her eyes to a gory sight.
Damon squirmed on the floor, blood pooling beneath the pulpy ruin of his knees. The other men watched with grim satisfaction as he cried for help. It was nothing to them. Damon was crazed, no doubt, but was also bleeding out and howling in pain. Emory looked on without remorse, and the other men venerated him because of it.
He turned to the two men perched against the wall. “Shut him up.”
One man removed his shirt and gagged Damon with it. The other dragged him across the room to the door at the back. A dark smear of blood followed. Emory ripped the stained handkerchief from Amelia before trailing after Damon and the other two men.
A hand rested gently on her shoulder. Amelia craned her neck to Liam standing next to her. He was shorter than she expected, and his pale grey eyes betrayed fraught weariness.
“You’ve seen enough,” he said and frowned at the bloodstains on the floor.
In the alcove, Liam motioned for her to sit. Amelia eyed him as he sunk into his armchair and retrieved a half-smoked cigar.
“I don’t have the stomach for that shit anymore,” he said. “I’d rather sit on my ass and talk to a lovely woman like you.”
Amelia stared at the dirt and dried blood beneath her fingernails. Everything—back, limbs, head—throbbed with pain, and she struggled for something to say.
“Thank you. That’s kind.”
Was it kind? Or simply a lesser shade of awful? She fumbled with the sleeves of Brian’s sweater scratchy against her skin. Liam exhaled wisps of smoke and studied her as if passively gleaning what he could.
“I have no reason not to be kind to you.”
“I can think of a few.”
Charmed, Liam chuckled, but the amusement quickly fled. “Careful now. That shit won’t get you far with Emory.”
As if on cue, a single gunshot fired from somewhere beyond the lounge. Not long after, Emory tore into the alcove. Amelia’s back peeled from the chair as he tossed his gun to the coffee table andresumed his spot across from her. Jack followed him in, and they exchanged a few hushed words.
Amelia’s eyes drifted to his gun. She’d never fired one before. How hard could it be? Aim and shoot. He was engrossed, distracted. She slipped to the edge of her seat. Liam stirred as well. When she glanced at him, he shook his head.
“The clip’s empty, and you’re not that brave,” Emory warned with an icy stare from beneath his dark brows. “Go get Mirabelle,” he said to Jack, who cantered off as music resumed in the lounge.
The prodding beat didn’t preclude conversation and yet there they were without words. Amelia took the opportunity to study Emory up close, and he did the same.
She searched his face for vestiges of regret. His jaw—sharp and well-defined—set firm in a scowl, and the weight of his gaze had changed, but Amelia couldn’t define the delta. Curiosity, maybe; questions that sizzled on the tongue but expired there too.
With blood-stained fingers, he scratched at the dark stubble peppering his chin.
“Amelia Havick,” he said with false reverie that mocked her outright. “I’m sure Cal is proud; his baby girl following in his footsteps all the way to Harvard.”
The irony deserved laughter Amelia couldn’t manage. She found some nerve and held her head high when it mattered most.
“That information isn’t hard to find,” she said, but a tremor ran through the declaration that popped like a sad balloon.
