His hands squeeze my arms tightly.
“I’m going to give you two choices,” he announces as he steps back from the chair and lets go of my arms. “Either you join us or you die.”
“Join you?” I ask, raising my brows. Frustration is rising inside of me more and more. The bindings on my wrists rub the skin raw and every wound on my body throbs with my pulse. Especially the bullet still lodged in my leg.
“Help us take down your family, and we won’t kill you. You’d be an excellent addition to our family…if we let you join us. We’re going to win either way; you may as well get a job and your life out of it, don’t you think?” Dante presents me with an offer. An offer that makes me stare at him, wondering how he could possibly have the audacity.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I choke.
Butch steps closer to me and presses his gun to my head. The cold barrel actually feels quite nice against my hot sweaty temple. Every second that passes, I’m distinctly aware of the fact that his finger is inching closer and closer to the trigger.
“No jokes here,” Dante assures me. “Either you help us or Butch here sends a slug straight into your head. Bye-bye forever.”
I look up into Butch’s eyes and then back down into Dante’s.
“I choose death before I’d ever choose to work with you fuckers,” I sneer out at them.
“Death it is.” Dante glowers at me. A look of annoyance in his eyes.
I close my eyes, not wanting his ugly mug to be the last thing I see before I die.
A loud crash sounds up the chairs to the left of the basement. A shot rings out and suddenly an armed guard is tumbling down the stairs, blood gushing from his throat.
“What the f—” Dante starts, but it’s too late. Down the stairs several black-clad men and women rush down and point their guns at every person in the room except me. Dante, Butch, and the three guards in each corner of the room. I recognize two of them as Trish and Jake, from the Rose.
Aleksandr must’ve convinced them to help.
“Back off or we kill him!” Butch shouts, pressing the gun harder to my head.
I feel fuzzy. I’m struggling to keep myself conscious with all of the blood loss and the bullet wound.
The room erupts in gunfire, and I tense up, prepared for the worst, but Butches body goes falling to the ground along with his gun a split second later. Whoever shot him took a risk.
I realize as I look up through blurry vision that it’s my own brother, Carmine. A determined and angry look tugging at his face as he storms through the room and right up to Dante.
Two guards have been shot and are struggling to get up from the ground while the room is filled with Trish, Jake, and Carmine all pointing their guns at Dante.
“You’ll never defeat us,” Dante sneers. Overconfidence laced in his tone.
“We already have,” Carmine insists. “Upstairs, there’s over twenty guns taking out every single member of your family one by one until we get to the last. The best.”
Dante’s face goes white.
“What did you expect, that I would let you kidnap my brother and not come after him?” Carmine shoves his gun in Dante’s face, and the man suddenly doesn’t look so powerful.
Several more guards come running down the stairs, looking at though they are trying to escape something, or someone, but as soon as they see the danger they try to turn back around.
They’re cornered as more of our men come up behind them and shoot them directly in the head.
Gunfire is going off like crazy upstairs, and I hear the screams of the Bianchi family highlighting every sound. It must be a blood bath up there.
My eyes close. I can’t keep them open anymore.
“Tommy,” a familiar voice rings in my ears.
Aleksandr.
“Has anyone bothered to check that he’s okay?” he asks through a growl of irritation. I don’t need to open my eyes to know he’s rushing over to me, and I feel his hands on the sides of my face.
