Night air rushed in. The cold hit my face and snapped my scattered focus back together. I crouched behind the wall, scanning the abandoned building through a gap in the top. The moonlight was faint, but enough to make out the window positions. The second-floor left window showed slight movement. The third-floor right one had gone quiet. They were adjusting positions.
I took a deep breath, then leaned out from the left side of the wall and fired two shots at the third-floor right window. Not to hit anyone—to suppress. Immediately, I bent low and moved fast, running a dozen meters along the wall before setting up in a new firing position at another gap.
Their return fire came. Bullets struck the wall, spraying stone chips. One grazed my ear. Close. But they'd exposed the ground-floor shooter's position. He was behind a blown-out window frame to the left of the main entrance.
I waited two seconds, waited for him to change mags, then aimed at that frame. One shot.
After a muffled thud, that position went quiet.
One down. At least two left.
The gunshot wound on my shoulder that hadn't fully healed started throbbing. My left arm had no strength. My abdomen felt swollen and tight. But I couldn't worry about that. I could only pray the adrenaline would hold out a while longer.
I continued moving along the wall, trying to circle around to the building's side. If I could reach a side entrance, I could clear them floor by floor from inside. But I'd barely moved twenty meters.
Chloe screamed from the car.
My heart contracted into a fist. All the blood in my body rushed to my head in that single second.
A fourth shooter! I'd miscalculated. He wasn't in the building. He'dbeen mobile the whole time, flanking through the darkness to the other side of the vehicle.
I abandoned cover.
It was a stupid decision. Leaving the wall meant exposing myself completely to the two remaining shooters in the building. But my brain wasn't calculating anymore. My brain only registered Chloe's scream.
I ran straight toward the car.
A bullet hit my shoulder.
The round punched into the back left side. The impact was so hard my entire upper body lurched forward. I nearly went face-first into the pavement. Pain exploded from my shoulder and burned down my arm to my fingertips. My left hand went dead.
But my legs kept moving. I ground my teeth and kept running. The old wound and new wound in my left arm layered together. The whole limb didn't feel like mine anymore—heavy, numb, burning. But right now, compared to those two in the car, nothing else mattered.
I spun and fired two shots in the direction of the gunman. No idea if I hit anything, but the shots bought me a few seconds of suppression. Enough to reach the car.
I got to the vehicle and saw the man in black. He'd circled from the right side to the rear door, one hand gripping Chloe's collar, dragging her out of the car, the other hand jamming a gun against her temple. Chloe still clutched Emily tight. The child's cries pierced through every other sound.
"Drop the gun." The man's voice was ice cold. His accent carried a Sicilian flavor—old soldier out of Palermo. "You die, they walk."
I stopped at the front of the car, about five meters away. The gun was still in my hand, muzzle pointed at the ground. I could see Chloe's face. Pale. Streaked with tears. Eyes locked on me. Her lips moved, saying something, but Emily's cries drowned her out.
I read her lips. She was saying "don't."
I looked at her. Then the gun pressed to her temple.
Then I dropped my weapon. The metal hit the asphalt with a sharp clatter in the night.
"Enzo, don't!" Chloe's voice finally cut through Emily's crying, sharp and torn. "What are you doing! Pick up the gun!"
"Let them go. Your target is me. They have nothing to do with this. Let them go, and you can do whatever you want with me."
The man stared at me for two seconds. In those two seconds, he was assessing whether I had any other weapons hidden on me. I let him look. I raised my uninjured hand high and waved the other one to show him the gunshot wound.
Then he moved the gun away from Chloe's temple and turned it toward me.
"Walk out. To the middle of the clearing."
I took a step forward.
