Page 12 of King of War

She’s staring at me. Unblinking. Pleading. It would take seconds to put an end to her misery. To mine. To put a stop to Vinny foaming at the mouth and then finish the job Carmine ordered me to do. Finish the job I swore I’d do myself six long years ago.

My heart thumps loudly, like a battering ram to my ribcage. Or maybe it’s her heartbeat I can hear.

“For fuck’s sake!” Vinny grunts. Useless, fat sack of shit.

My eyes remain on her face. On the sparkling amber of her eyes and the faintest tremble of her plump lower lip. In my peripheral vision, I catch the flash of metal. The barrel of Vinny’s gun—the one he’s barely had the balls to use—aimed at her.

“I guess if you won’t then I will, King,” he sneers my name.

It happens between one heartbeat and the next. My left hand drops. The Ruger clears my waistband. Vinny’s barrel swings toward her, and everything inside me goes silent. I raise my arm and fire. One crack of a gunshot. Deafening and final. His head snaps back, and the wall behind him blooms red. Vinny was always too slow and cumbersome for a job like this. Blood sprays hot across my suit, and her face.

She lets out a disgusted-sounding shriek.

My eyes are dragged back to her. She’s still staring at me, blinking now, though, as she wipes his fetid bodily fluid from her cheek with the back of her hand.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I just took out the don’s son. A useless prick with shit for brains, but still a Falcone. And for what? To save a lying, scheming bitch I once used to fuck. One who’s probably going to rat me out to Carmine the second she gets a chance to.

Which means I can’t give her a chance to.

My tongue drags over my teeth and tastes blood. I must have bitten through my cheek when I pulled the trigger.

Fuck!

“Enzo?” Her voice cuts through the deafening silence.

So many memories, painful and humiliating, swim into my consciousness, dragging themselves up from the dark mire where I buried them. They’re enough to have blistering rage simmering beneath my skin. “Don’t fucking speak to me.”

I need time to think, and I need it without her annoyingly soft lilting voice inside my head. It’s like nails on a fucking chalkboard.

“W-what happens now? Can I go?” she asks, ignoring my command. Of course she fucking does.

“No, you can’t fucking go. You just watched me shoot Vinny Falcone.”

She blinks, confused. “So?”

“So, he’s the don’s fucking son, Rayne.” Saying her name for the first time hits harder than it should. One word, and every buried memory claws its way up from the dark. Her skin. Her mouth. Her touch. The way she used to look at me like I was everything. I press my knuckles to my forehead and force air into my lungs. Focus. Think. Fucking think.

“Again. So? Just let me go and I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

And now a little of that rage pours out. “You really expect me to believe that? Soon as I let you out of here I’m fucked.”

“Why the hell would I tell anyone? You just saved my life.”

I snarl. “Yeah, and if you weren’t a lying, conniving bitch, that might count for something. But you are.” I twist my neck from side to side. “So…”

“Oh, go to hell, Enzo!”

“Already there, sweetheart. And don’t fucking call me Enzo.”

“It’s your name.”

“My name is King.”

She snorts a laugh. “I am not calling you King.”

“Yeah, well you lost the right to call me by my family name the day you fucking betrayed me.”

She has the audacity to roll her eyes, like I’m the unreasonable one here—the guy whose heart she tore out, shredded to pieces and then set on goddamn fire. The same one who just saved her life, and in doing so has royally fucked up his own.