Antonio glances at Adrian with narrowed eyes, questioning.
“Whose debts?” Antonio demands.
“Ricardo Mendelez, of course. Who the fuck else? We took his eyes. And his fingers. But it didn’t give me any of my money back. That mother fucker got too many chances to pay me back and failed at every single one of them. Then I find out, get this, no for real, get this… I find out that he has his sticky, fat fingers in my warehouse storeroom, stealing my products!” Rodion is furious.
My father was stealing from him, too. So that’s what got him killed. Even after Adrian warned him to change, he wouldn’t do it. How could he be so stupid! All he had to do was ask for help, but instead, he kept choosing the wrong things.
“Whatever her father did has nothing to do with her.”
“I’m not fucking stupid. I know she isn’t the one who stole from me or gambled like a lunatic. But blood is blood, and she will be payment enough to satisfy his debts and make me happy,” Rodion says.
“It’s not happening, Rodion,” Adrian says, almost tiring of repeating himself.
“Well... then what about another negotiation?” Rodion smiles. I notice that one of his front teeth is black.
Antonio sighs loudly. “Just leave, Rodion. And take your Rat brother with you,” he snaps.
“Give me a portion of the Kozlov contracts. We can call this whole thing settled. Forty percent. It’s not even the bigger share,” he says as though he’s being incredibly diplomatic.
“Het the fuck out of my territory,” Adrian shouts, over this game of cat and mouse.
“Give me the fucking girl!” Rodion screams back at him. I can feel the air becoming sharper as their tempers escalate.
“You arenotgetting the girl,” Adrian snarls, letting his anger show.
“Then I willtakethe girl,” Rodion snaps, just as angry.
He lifts his gun and cocks his head to the side to gesture to his men, “Kill everyone else. She’s the only one I need alive.”
His words run through me like ice.
And in an instant, the chaos erupts.
“Crates!” Antonio shouts, stepping in front of Adrian as they move in unison toward the crates, dragging me along with them. Both men are shooting, providing cover fire. I scream, high-pitched and terrified as bullets smack into the cement at my feet.
Behind me, bullets fly from his men, screaming through the air in a spiral of death.
Adrian shoves me hard, and I stumble, tripping over my own feet and falling onto piles of soft sacks behind a wall of crates. “Stay down!” he yells at me.
A man runs straight toward him, but Antonio moves quickly, firing two shots straight into the guy’s skull. Blood erupts like a mist behind him, and he falls flat on his face.
One of Adrian’s men collapses dead, right next to the crates I’m hiding behind, and I scream again, terrified and unsure what to do.
“Reinforcements are here in three minutes!” Antonio shouts over the explosive sounds of gunfire.
“We can hold them off!” Adrian shouts back.
I don’t want to watch. I want to bury my face in my hands and keep my eyes covered, but I’m terrified that if I look away, something will happen to him. So, I see it all. I see death and blood. I see bones snapping as bullets shatter arms and legs. I see men collapsing to the ground with dark pools spilling out around them.
And at some point, my body shifts from panicked to numb. My instincts override the fear, and I’m so calm I don’t even feel like I’m inside my own body. The only thing that matters to me right now is that Adrian gets out of this alive.
I can’t lose him. I’ve only just got him back.
In the calm, I can see things more clearly. That is when I notice that Adrian’s forces are so much more organized than Rodion’s. They have more structure and are moving methodically, pushing forward, taking his men down one at a time.
We’re winning, slowly but surely.
But I know that anything can happen at any time, and the urgency I feel for his safety is still coursing through me.
