He stumbles backward and then falls limp to the floor.
I reach down and work quickly to undo the ropes around my ankles as I hear gunfire going off all around me.
“Damian!” Alessio’s voice calls out to me.
I look up and see across the building the man I was doing all this for.
I only get to look at him for a split second before several guards are standing in front of me, trying to keep me from leaving. I shoot at them quickly, hitting one of their knees, the other in the arm. It’s enough to get them down before they’re able to shoot at me in return.
I stand up as quickly as I can, adrenalin rushing through me.
Blood is everywhere. It doesn’t matter whose it is.
I dart behind a barrel and look over to the other side, trying desperately to find Alessio and whoever else he’s brought with him.
Just as I’m about to get up and rush toward the side with the doors, someone is on top of me. It’s the female guard that I shot in the arm. She’s got her gun to my head and is baring her teeth.
“You’re not getting away so easily!”
I point my gun at her chest, knowing that even the bulletproof vest she’s wearing won’t help her from such a close distance.
“I go out, you go out,” I growl at her.
Before she can say or do anything else there’s a gun to the back of her head. Her blood splatters across my face and chest inan instant. A hole bored into her skull with a bullet that may as well always have been meant for her.
I look up to see the hand that holds the gun belongs to Rosalie.
“You just gonna lay there or get up and fight?” she asks me.
I push the now-dead guard to the side, and the body slumps over into a pool of its own blood.
Rosalie extends a hand to me and I grab it, letting her help pull me up from the floor. I’m surprised at her strength, but I brush that off. She’s clearly more qualified than I was led to believe.
“They got you good,” she comments, looking over me, but then quickly darts to the side. Several bullets meant for me just barely miss as I pull out to the opposite side and aim in the direction they came from.
It’s an all-out gun fight.
I know it’s dangerous to be trying to find Alessio in this mess, but there’s two guards left and I can’t risk them hurting him.
I see one of the guards nearby crouching behind a couple of barrels of which contents I’m uncertain, but he’s pulling out his radio, most likely to call for backup.
I can’t let him do that.
I decide that whatever’s in the barrels might help me in this situation and I shoot directly for them, once, twice, and a third time.
An explosion rings out in my ears and the guard on his radio is propelled forward as the barrel lights on fire and causes the ones next to it to go up in shrapnel and flame as well.
He’s on the floor, his skin seared and peeling, blood dripping down his face and clothing singed.
My own skin is red from the heat of the fire, but I step closer anyway. I can tell he’s still breathing, and I know what I need to do.
There’s no space for mercy when I know that he would kill me if he had the chance.
I send a bullet through the back of his head just as he’s trying to get up from the floor and he goes limp.
My head whips around just in time to watch the last guard staring directly at me, gun pointed in my direction. I don’t have time to lift my gun, not before he’ll shoot me. It doesn’t matter, I’ve done my job. I look over and see Alessio and three guards on our side still alive. Their guns pointed at the final guard in the warehouse.
He’s done for. Even if he shoots me, he’ll be dead as soon as he’s pulled the trigger.
