Above us, a sudden cacophony of noise snagged his attention.
Praying help had shown up, I used his distraction and stuck my thumb in the gaping wound on his cheek with one hand and yanked on his ear with the other while I shouted for all I was worth: “STAN!”
FIVE
STAN
Playlist recommendation:
The Line - Arcane, Twenty One Pilots
A bullet whistled past my ear, right as our battering ram breached the Albanian front’s door.
My brain froze and my heart planted itself somewhere in my digestive tract—convincing me that I’d been shot.
That death was in the cards.
That I’d never get to Kitty.
For a millisecond, the prospect of defeat suffocated me.
Then, I kept on breathing.
My heart carried on pumping.
And my brain defrosted as the bullet implanted into the drywall behind me, sending shards of plaster into a cascade that had me choking on dust.
Senses on high alert, adrenaline fully engaged, I felt like Neo inThe Matrix.
Time slowed down but I sped up.
The proximity to the end,to failing Kitty,was a death knell to whoever dared get in my way.
I would NOT let her down. I would NOT be late. Not a-goddamn-gain.
I broke two necks without blinking, lodged my knife into the eye of another Albanian cunt, then stole his gun and shot two more.
“Where the fuck is Chad?!” Luciu snarled into the melee.
“Don’t even mention that cunt’s name to me!” Dead To Me screeched.
Around us, the maelstrom was frenzied enough that my mind blanked, switching onto that space filled with white noise as I focused on the enemy up ahead.
Men ran free from back rooms, making me wonder if this was either a Monty Python sketch or the Crazy 88 scene inKill Billand no one had warned me because no room could house that many of these fuckers, surely?
Luc and Dead To Me had my flank, the former proving that being the Don hadn’t softened him any, and the latter showing that getting blown up hadn’t slowed her down.
Our foot soldiers ran into the breaches, picking up where we failed, killing while we were otherwise occupied, saving our asses when we faltered.
A Sicilian army forged on blood, loyalty, and brotherhood. Not fear, but respect.
A labyrinthine corridor heralded a wave of sound. Sounds that registered as men orgasming, but something strange underlaid them—weakgrunts.Sorrowfulmoans and cries that sounded more like keening whimpers than a fake orgasm.
Obviously, we’d made it into a brothel.
But Dead To Me’s hesitation to explain what these fuckers traded had all my instincts on red alert.
As I approached the crossroads, uncertain which route to take, Luciu growled at Dead To Me, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me they were Favaros?”
