One Antonov dropped behind a forklift, out of sight. Maybe I hit him. Maybe he only fell. It didn’t matter. More of them were coming.
“Alex!” someone shouted from across the loading bay—Marco, another Butera man who’d been loyal, dedicated to our family for years. “We’re pinned in, man! We need to fall back!”
I motioned for Nico to move, and we sprinted low across the pier, weaving between cargo pallets. Bullets sparked off metal around us, the impacts reverberating through my ears, my skull.
I should have been used to this. I’d lived my whole life knowing gunfire the same way people knew thunderstorms.
But tonight, every shot felt personal, aimed at cutting the thread that still tethered me to Frankie, and I felt the returning chill of fear I’d long since suppressed.
I slid behind a piece of heavy machinery, breath clouding in the cold night air. “We can’t keep this position,” I muttered.
“No kidding,” Marco replied dryly from the opposite side.
Then another sharp crack. A strangled noise followed.
I turned in time to see Nico stagger, clutching his chest. His gun slipped from his hand as his knees hit the ground.
I reached him before he fully collapsed, catching his shoulders and lowering him down with less force than gravity would have. His eyes were wild at first, searching the dark, then locking onto mine.
“Alex.” His voice was barely a rasp.
“You’re okay,” I lied, pressing my hand over the spreading warmth on his shirt. Too much. Too fast. “Stay with me.”
His breathing hitched. His fingers dug weakly into my arm. And then—I saw it. The moment the light inside him dimmed, flickering out. Extinguished forever.
Christ, he was so young.
I’d seen death before. Delivered it, even. But something about Nico fading in my hands knocked the air from my chest. Maybe because he’d trusted me.
Maybe because Frankie had made me remember what it felt like to value another human being’s life. But then a shout ripped me back to the present—my own, ordering the men around me to fall into line. “Move!”
The Antonovs were pushing forward.
I lowered Nico gently to the ground, left him there despite everything in me yelling not to. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure who I was apologizing to.
“We’re abandoning the cargo,” I barked to the others. “Now. We get the fuck out, or we die here.”
Marco didn’t argue. Another soldier fell in behind us as we moved, firing cover shots toward the encroaching shadows.The Antonovs advanced, relentless as ever. Just the way they’d trained me to be.
We sprinted toward the line of dark cars waiting along the far end of the pier.
A bullet grazed my side—the heat and sting hitting a split second later. It knocked a grunt out of me, but I kept going.
Not dying here. Not before seeing Frankie again.
The three of us dove behind a stack of pallets as another barrage cut through the air. “Cars are thirty yards out,” Marco called. “You good, Alex?”
I pressed a hand to my side. Warmth seeped between my fingers. “Fine.” Not quite a lie. The wound burned, but I could breathe. I could move.
“On my mark,” I said, peering over the pallet. The Antonovs were regrouping for another push. If we didn’t go now, we’d never go at all.
I thought of Frankie one more time—her soft eyes that told me without words that I wasn’t as cold as I pretended to be. The way her lips had felt when she kissed away every instinct I’d ever had to pull back.
I wanted more of that. Needed more of her.
“Now!” I shouted.
We bolted.
