I pulled my knife out of my back pocket and flipped open the blade. “Hold still.”
Her eyes widened. “Wh-wh-wh—what are you doing?”
“Freeing you.”
“What?”
I slid the blade beneath the rope that bound her wrists to her ankles. With a flick of my wrist, the rope gave way to the sharpness of the metal. I grasped, and her arms fell free. She groaned and her head lobbed itself against my chest. She struggled to catch her breath as I stroked her hair with one hand and managed to pop open the restraints around her ankles with the other.
Then, I shrugged my coat off and wrapped it around her.
“Stay put,” I said as I laid her down.
She quickly grabbed my wrist. “Where are you going!?”
“We could really use your help out here, Axe!” Mav bellowed.
I smoothed her hair away from her forehead. “Whatever you do, don’t leave this van.”
“But Axe. I—”
“Promise me.”
She nodded quickly. “I promise.”
“Good girl. I’ll be back.”
I planted my hands into the cold, hard, metallic van floor and shoved myself out in one fell swoop. My feet touched the ground before I whipped around, slamming the doors closed with my hands. Bullets whizzed by my ears. Men cried out for their mothers as they fell to the ground, bleeding from orifices I never thought blood could reach. Everything moved in slow motion. Everything smelled like blood, death, and gunpowder.
Until I saw that bitch running.
“Dante!” I roared as I pulled both guns off my hips.
“I see her!” he exclaimed.
“Come here, you stupid fuck!”
I turned toward the sound of the voice and didn’t hesitate to tear two bullets through that nasty-colored navy-blue leather jacket. Leather had no business being any other color than what it was supposed to be, in my opinion. I mean, who the fuck was so pretentious that they dyed their fucking leather?
“Pussies,” I murmured as their dead bodies hit the ground.
A bullet clinked off the side of the van and Brielle’s shriek pulled me out of my hate-fueled trance. I whipped around, aiming both of my guns outward before Mav came up behind the motherfucker. I watched that bullet escape from between his eyeballs. Blood and brain matter splattered to the ground as the man dropped to his knees. No matter how many lives I took, that dead stare would never leave my mind. And as I watched the man look over at me with that blank stare, I aimed my gun at his chest.
Before putting a bullet in it just for good measure.
“You good?!” Mav called out.
Something glinted out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t stop until all of those fuckers are dead.”
He grinned wildly. “My pleasure.”
He turned on his heels and headed for the first man he saw, and I got the sincere pleasure of watching him tackle that man to the ground. But the glinting out of the corner of my eye didn’t stop. Even with chaos raining down, I managed to find the time to look down into the dirt. There was a phone sitting there. Just beneath the shade of a tree we had parked beneath. And even with my men barking out orders to those around them, it didn’t stop me from scooping the damned thing up.
Before I realized what I was looking at.
“Oh, hell yeah,” I said as a wicked smirk crossed my cheek.
One touch of the screen, and I realized the phone hadn’t locked itself yet. The interface was black with neon blue letters, and the green checkmark beside a six-million-dollar transfer made my fucking mouth water. It couldn’t be. There was no fucking way she’d be that stupid.
