Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
I lie there, panting hard.
Adrienne staggers back. Her eyes are wide and she’s shaking, and she leans against the wall for support. I push myself up to my knees and throw up on the floor, puking out bile and this Russian asshole’s blood. When I’m done, I pry the gun from his grip and get to my feet.
I’m drenched in his gore. It’s all over my mouth, my face, my clothes. It’s sticky under my feet and sopping into the carpet. Adrienne’s pale and watching me with pure horror.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, refusing to let myself succumb to the sudden terror I feel rolling down my spine.
More screams erupt from upstairs and gunfire roars like hell is here and it wants all our souls.
We rush into the hallway. Adrienne stays close to me and I keep the gun ready. I know how to shoot from when I was younger, but it’s been a really long time and I’m not sure I’ll hit anything, but at this point I don’t care.
I just killed a man with my bare hands, bit him like a beast, and watched the life drain from his eyes.
I can shoot one of these bastards in the face if I have to.
We reach the steps and start to climb. The door ahead was left ajar and there are more shouts and more gunfire. It’s getting closer, louder, and I creep up until we’re at the very top landing. I nudge the door open and it creaks loudly as I poke my head out—
Four Russian guards are standing nearby, at the end of the hallway.
One looks back. He says something in Russian and the others stare at me, but none of them move in our direction.
I drop to my knees and raise my gun. They raise theirs.
I’m outmatched and outnumbered four to one. Even if I hit one of then, I’m finished.
“Adrienne,” I say and it’s my last word.
We’re dead. I’m dead. Maybe Adrienne can survive this, hide downstairs, and sneak away in the chaos. Maybe she can get away. I really hope so—she deserves to go free.
But that’s not happening for me.
I think about Luca, his hands on my body, his mouth against mine. I think of him fucking me in his bed, of treating me like his wife, and I smile. Those weeks with him were the best weeks of my life and giving them up was a mistake. He treated me like I was an important part of his world, like I was worth keeping around. Nobody ever treated me like that, and I never should’ve left him, not when he needed me and I needed him.
At least I won’t die a virgin.
The gunfire is so loud I think the world’s ending.
Chapter 28
Luca
It’s an ugly, bloody fight as we shoot our way through halls, heading toward the center of the building. The Russians don’t stick around long and aren’t trying to keep us pinned in any single hallway. They hit us with a burst of bullets before retreating again, easily giving up ground.
We pause in a side room to regroup. “Where are they keeping the girls?” I growl in the ear of a captive guard. He’s gutshot and bleeding to death slowly.
“Basement,” he groans. “Two hallways down. Please, let me go. Let me get help.”
I put a bullet in his head. There is no help for the poor bastard and a quick death is better than suffering for hours in a hospital.
“We’re close,” Niccolo says, shooting into the hallway. “What’s the plan?”
“Keep going. Find the girls.” I roll out low and come up shooting like a monster, spraying bullets down the hall, killing one and wounding two more as the guards retreat again. Why the fuck do they keep running? It makes no sense, but I’m too driven and hopped up on adrenaline and dex to stop and think about it right now. Tony and Niccolo hustle past me, following up on my attack, taking more space, claiming another hallway.
I watch our back as we move like that, hallway to hallway. I don’t know this place at all and I have no clue if we’re going in the right direction, and there’s no telling who might appear through some doorway in our wake. The design of this place is labyrinthine, which is working in our favor by making it hard for the guards to mount an effective, concerted resistance with all their numbers at once, but also making it impossible for me to keep track of where we’re going.
We take another corner and it’s quiet for a second. “We’ve got minutes at best,” Tony says, leaning in close to speak quietly. “Once the surprise wears off, there’s no way they’ll let us get out of here alive. They’ll come up and around or find some way to pin us down, and then it’ll only be a matter of tossing in some flashbangs or grenades to finish us off.”