Page 38 of The Mobster’s Nurse

“Then let’s go to war,” I snarl.

We work like a team of trained soldiers. Ten mobsters rushing into the bar with pistols and rifles and bulletproof vests. I drop one the second I kick the door in. A guard with his eyebrows shooting comic-book-high on his forehead.

Rushing into the bar, I take a stiff shot to the vest, stumble back against the wall. Gasping. Hit my head. See stars—then I see her, my woman, ringed in an angel’s halo. That gives me the push I need to duck just in time for a bullet to shred the plaster above my head.

I roll over and over, gunfire all around me. Three men behind the bar, then two as Vito drops one.

I tip over a table, ducking behind it. Aim my gun over the top and fire, taking off a chunk of a man’s head.

Before tonight, they'd had the element of surprise. They'd benefited from us not paying attention. Not anymore.

Now, it's a massacre.

I empty a magazine, reload, then empty another. Vito does the same. My other men fan out, searching the building. I never normally panic during a firefight, and I don’t exactly panic now. But there’s an extra significance, more urgency to make it back alive.

It’s like Ellie’s face is superimposed over everything, urging me to return to her.

Finally, the gunfire stops. I stand from my crouching position, looking around the battle-scarred bar. Lynch's men are strewn everywhere, at least a dozen bodies.

Two of my men have fallen. Vito walks around the room, prodding bodies with his boot, making sure they’re dead. I look at the bodies of my fallen for a moment. Then I reach for the walkie. That's all the time I have to give them right now. It'll have to be enough.

My walkie crackles. “All good on your end, boss?” Georgio's voice, gravel-rough, the sound of a man who's been in more fights than he can count and considers that a good life.

“The job’s done,” I tell him. “And you?”

“Done. Three of our guys took a nap.”

I sigh. “Two over here did too.”

“But we beat the fuckers,” Georgio snarls.

“Beat them back to Hell,” I agree.

“Well, Boston,” he says, laughing gruffly. “Which might as well be the same thing.”

Some would say the same about LA, but I don’t point that out. Pocketing the walkie, I stroll over to Vito.

“We did good,” he grunts, back to his usual morose self.

“Now all we have to do is spend the entire night cleaning up this mess and getting our story straight with the cops.”

“The fun part,” he says drily.

A landline phone rings from the bar area. I follow the noise, curious. The phone is attached to the wall, splattered with blood. I pick it up, but say nothing.

“Hello?” a man says in a deep voice. When I say nothing, he snaps, “Hello? It’s Cormac.”

“There’s nothing here for you, Cormac. Not this bar and not this city.”

“Who the fuck are you? You ain’t one of my guys.”

“Your guys aren’t feeling very talkative right now.”

“Motherfucker,” Cormac snarls. “You don’t know what you’ve done. Do you know who I am?”

“Cormac Lynch, the Lynchpin, two-bit player turned three-bit wannabe boss. Am I missing anything?”

“Add six-seven and deadlier than any Italian fuck to that list, and you might be onto something. Bastard. You think this ends here? With this? You think we’ll just … go away?”