“You’re nothing but a useless whore,” a man yelled. “A patheticwoman, a traitorous bitch who’s just a waste of space.”
Blinking slowly, I let the angry slurs percolate into my mind. Slow to move, but snapping back into reality, I lifted my head.
“Fuck you. And get the hell out of here,” Sofia replied.
What in the fuck is going on?
In a zooming reel of memories, it all came back to me.
Going to the club and entering an instant gunfight.
The fury that Roberto Giovanni hadn’t shown up.
Disappointment that I’d come back to Sofia with the lingering threat of her uncle at large.
Then that weird, warm pain in my shoulder.
I’d been shot, and since then, I had been stuck in this sleeping spell.
Turning my head slowly, I saw the dart on a first-aid bag. It waited next to me, the canvas-like fabric spread open with blood coating the surface. Not a bullet, but a fucking dart of some kind. Maybe that was their backup plan. To lure me to their building to “talk” and capture me instead.
“Prepare to rot in hell,” the man growled.
Like fuck, she will.
It looked like one of the Giovanni soldiers had taken it upon himself to be a last-resort option in the fight. The lone man stood near the door, holding up a knife.
Sofia’s back was to me as I stood. With my heart banging wildly in my chest, hyped up on the fear of her within harm’s way, I lunged forward to wrap my arm around her. Hugging her to my side, then urging her to step behind me so I could block her, she flailed her arm out. A thin blade flew out of her grasp. She sucked in a breath, frightened, but I didn’t wait for her to find her balance.
This wasnota time to take it easy.
There would be nothing nice and slow about this.
Following through with the momentum of rising and reaching her out of the way, I lifted my arm and aimed my gun at him.
Once.
Twice.
My finger tapped the trigger, and I sent a pair of bullets into the Giovanni’s head. They barreled into his brain, right between his eyes, and ended his life.
Sofia gasped again, clutching to my side, and I wavered to stay upright.
“Andre—”
“You fucking traitor!”
I turned from watching Sofia and checking her as my vision blurred again. She’d gotten that dart out of me. My blood coated her fingers. But the drug was still affecting me. It had to be, because I could’ve sworn I heard the devil himself.
“Andre.” Sofia didn’t gasp it with worry this time. She spoke clearly, with alarm, as she propped me up and kept me from tripping sideways. The fear of her being hurt had sobered me enough to shoot that Giovanni soldier, but I was woozy on my feet again.
She grabbed my hand. My fingers were still wrapped around the gun. With her cool fingertips over my wrist, she guided me to raise the weapon again.
I swiveled, swinging my gaze toward the door to realize it wasn’t in my imagination. It wasn’t a trick.
Roberto Giovanni stood there, his huge chest heaving as he sneered at Sofia.
“You fucking traitor,” he repeated. “You defy me. You fail to do as I say. And when my best soldier takes the risk to lead me here, you have the audacity to watch him be killed?”
