I watch through the leaves as one of them breaks formation, moving closer to investigate the hedge. He’s being cautious but not cautious enough. He passes within three feet of my hiding spot.
I wait until he’s committed to the step, weight forward, gun pointed the wrong direction.
Then I move.
The shovel catches him across the temple before he can turn. The crack of metal on bone is sickeningly loud. He drops like a puppet with cut strings, his gun clattering to the grass.
I’m on him before his body stops twitching. One hand grabs the gun while the other raises the shovel and brings it down on his skull again. Making sure. I can’t afford to leave anyone alive behind me.
Bullets tear through the hedge where I was standing a second ago, leaves and branches exploding in a shower of green. I roll behind the tree trunk, pressing my back against the rough bark, the dead man’s gun heavy in my grip.
That’s when I see her.
Mina.
Standing in the open kitchen doorway, one hand braced against the frame, her face pale as death.
She stares at the corpse, and then at me with a gun in one hand, blood splattered across my shirt.
No.
No, no, no. She can’t be here. She needs to go inside where it’s safe. She needs to take Leon and lock themselves in his room and not come out until this is over.
But she’s frozen. Shock has locked her in place.
A man with a baseball bat is moving toward my position from the left, using the fountain for cover. Another has spotted Mina and changed direction. He’s got a knife in his hand, and he’s closing the distance between them with quick, purposeful strides.
Time stretches and slows.
I can shoot the man with the bat. The one who’s almost on top of me. The one who’ll cave my skull in if I don’t stop him right now.
Or I can save Mina.
There’s no choice at all.
I raise the gun and fire.
The shot echoes across the garden like thunder. The man advancing on Mina jerks backward, a hole blooming red in the back of his head. The knife falls from his hand as he crumples.
The bat connects with my ribs before I can turn.
Pain explodes through my abdomen. White-hot and all-consuming. I feel something tear deep inside, feel warmth spreading under my shirt even before my knees hit the grass. The gun falls from my grip.
Mina screams. The sound cuts through everything.
I look up through a haze of pain and see the man with the bat raising it again, his face twisted with rage and satisfaction. He’s going to bring it down on my head. Going to finish this.
“PAULO!” I roar with what little breath I have left. “NICO! GET HER INSIDE. DON’T LET THEM TOUCH HER.”
There are running footsteps from within the house. My men appear behind Mina, guns drawn.
“Protect them!” I’m on my knees, one hand pressed to the wet heat spreading across my side, trying to hold myself together. “GET HER INSIDE. AT ALL COSTS.”
Paulo reaches Mina first. She fights him. God, she fights like a wild thing, trying to get to me, her hands reaching out, my name breaking from her throat over and over.
“Cristiano! No! Let me go! CRISTIANO.”
But Paulo is twice her size, and he knows what I’m asking him to do. He lifts her body off her feet while she screams and claws at his arms.
