Page 11 of King of War

I blink at him. “He wasn’t going anywhere, dipshit.”

He shrugs, blows on the end of his pistol like he’s in some kind of spaghetti Western shoot-out. I take a deep breath, not because Vinny is a useless prick who’s irritating the hell out of me, but to focus. The hardest part of any fight isn’t pulling the trigger, it’s preventing the world from shrinking. Most men develop tunnel vision in these situations, only seeing the threat directly in front of them. Then someone they never noticed puts a bullet in their head.

“There are two men unaccounted for,” I say.

“Maybe they’re not here,” he suggests.

“They’re here.” I spin around, face the doorway. “One of them probably went for a piss.”

Confirming my theory, Leo Bertelli comes stumbling through the door, clearly having partaken in far too much of the Scotch he imports by the state of him. He blinks, taking in the bloodbath before him. And then the fucker runs. Fast. Fear gives people energy. Not enough, but some. I follow at a steady pace. He bursts into a small office, and I follow him seconds later. The room is small and he has nowhere left to go. He stands behind a desk with a gun in his shaking hand, pointed right at me. His breathing is labored, his stance unsteady.

One quick squeeze of a trigger and it’s over. He slumps onto the desk face-first. There’s still one Bertelli left though. Joseph. The one I hate more than any of the others.

And then I hear a noise, coming from the end of the hallway, behind a closed door.

A woman’s shriek.

So Joseph has company. Not unusual, but a complication I could do without. I kick the door in anyway and find Joseph cowering behind her, using her as a human shield. His beady eyes peek out behind the curtain of her dark hair, and I’m so focused on him, on the job, that it takes me a full three seconds to register her face.

And when I do, the world drops out from under me. Six years of hate and grief slam into me so hard I stagger back a step, gun still raised and pointed in their direction. My brain refuses to make sense of what my eyes are seeing. This can’t be real. She can’t be here. Not with him.

Every emotion I’ve spent the past six years trying to run from claws its way back to the surface. Rage, fierce enough to burn through bone. Resentment, as bitter as the acid in the back of my throat. And beneath it all, betrayal—the kind that settles into your marrow and makes a home there. The same kind that wakes you every morning with a fresh gaping hole in your chest and reminds you that there are some things even death would be kinder than surviving.

Vinny bursts into the room behind me, with all the finesse of a pig having a seizure. I throw him a quick glance before directing all of my attention back to Joseph, and her. My limbs are frozen, feet stuck to the floor and arm suspended in midair—still pointing a gun. My finger is steady on the trigger. My aim is perfect.

I squeeze.

She shrieks. Joseph’s lifeless body drops to the ground, a perfect bullet hole in his temple.

Now it’s just me and her, our eyes locked together across the space between us. For six years, I’ve thought about what time must have done to her. I imagined it would have sharpened her edges, carved the softness out of her, left some visible mark of all the bitterness I convinced myself she deserved to carry. I wanted her to look changed.

But she doesn’t.

She’s still Rayne. Still all fierce eyes and fury, with that dangerous shimmer of nerves beneath the steel. Still so beautiful that it makes every old instinct in me bare its teeth. Soft enough to make me remember things I have no business remembering, and strong enough to make me hate her for surviving me.

She looks the same.

Not ruined or broken. Definitely not haunted enough to satisfy the cruelest part of me.

“What are you waiting for? Get it the fuck over with,” Vinny snarls, reminding me we’re not alone. His teeth bared like a feral dog as he snaps me from the bittersweet memories of her. Yeah, I really fucking hate this guy.

My eyes flick over the room, quick and automatic, landing on Joseph’s body, then Vinny, then her. Always back to her. It takes only seconds to catalogue every detail, and I hate myself for how easily my mind does it. The boots. Tight black jeans. The tank top clinging to curves I know better than my own hands. Her shoulders are squared, chin lifted, fists clenched at her sides like she’s one breath away from striking.

She’s all fire and fury, just like I remember. But her knees betray her. It’s a faint tremor, barely there, but enough to tell me she’s scared. Enough to make something ugly and satisfying twist beneath my ribs.

Because she should be scared. She should be fucking terrified with Joseph dead at her feet and a gun still in my hand. But she doesn’t break. Doesn’t look away.

Brave even now in the face of certain danger. Even in the face of me.

“Do it, you stupid fuck!” Vinny screeches, sounding like a toddler having a tantrum.

I think quickly. “What if she’s nothing to do with them? Maybe she’s just a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.” I know she’s not, but he doesn’t. He obviously doesn’t recognize her, which makes sense; he was still a pimply teenager when she disappeared.

He scoffs. “Like I give a shit. My father said no witnesses. That means no fucking witnesses. So get your head out of your ass, grow a pair of goddamn balls, and put a fucking bullet in the dumb bitch.”

She’s breathing heavier now. I can hear each labored breath she takes while she thinks about how to escape. Maybe she’ll say my name? Try to appeal to my better nature. Or maybe she’s thinking about the last words I ever spoke to her. I fucking hate you!

What I do know, is that if Vinny has his way, her only escape will be to meet the same end as the rest of the men here, the ones she was just doing fuck knows what with.