AllFreeNovel
Share Us
There’s an emergency exit at the end of the hall. I could glide down and escape through it, walk a few blocks away, and call Royal for backup. He’d come and help me, and in the end, he’d take me home.
Instead, I take a deep breath and turn into the larger room. It’s a room within a room, with booths lining four low walls to form a smaller square with a dark corridor around the perimeter for waitresses to scurry back and forth. At the back wall, a group of men sit along one long table. Cigar smoke hangs heavy in the air, even though it’s still morning.
“He’s late. The fuck,” someone, probably Stephanos, is muttering. “Bruno, go call him.”
A giant with a shaved head—Bruno—rises obediently. A minute earlier, Bruno would be sitting, blinking sleepily into his tiny white espresso cup. A few minutes later, he’d be out of the room, and I’d have had a clear shot.
Instead, his big, shaven head snaps up, eyes fastening on me. Instead of a call girl, he sees what I actually am: a threat. Years of instinct kick in. “Oi!” he shouts.
I let my coat fall open, and for a blissful second, every man’s eyes freeze on my naked breasts long enough for me to draw the gun in my pocket and crack off a shot.
I aim for the man who gave Bruno the order. The only clear photos of my nemesis are from a few years ago. But this has to be Stephanos, mean-eyed, squat, and ugly, with a few thin gray hairs clinging to his balding scalp.
My first shot clips his shoulder. He bellows, and I’m already aiming for his heart. But it doesn’t matter because Bruno flips the table.
Cups and saucers go flying, men bellow, and wood splinters around me. I duck into one of the booths and return fire.
Bullets whizz around me. The two men who were supposed to be guarding the door run in, guns drawn to eliminate the threat, and get mowed down in the crossfire. One does a grisly dance in front of me, blasted on both sides by my Sig and friendly fire.
Bodies slump between us. More men are running, fleeing to save their own skin. It doesn’t matter.
Somewhere behind the shield of a heavy restaurant table, Stephanos is on the floor, groaning. This is my chance to end him, and it’s slipping away from me.
I grab a chair to cover me and dart to a closer booth.
Bruno rises, howling, with a gun in either hand. I cringe away from the double barrels. He fires, and I dive behind one of the low walls. Something bites my thigh. Pain blasts up my leg and recedes to nothing, numbed by adrenaline.
Smoke fills the dingy restaurant. The gunfire cracks, so close and loud I might as well be deaf.
Through the screen of gray air and muffled sounds, I return fire until the Sig is out. I should’ve asked the diner ladies for an assault rifle. Ears ringing, I grab my backup out of its holster, but in the time it takes to do so, Bruno grabs his boss and drags him off the floor. They’re gone, disappearing behind the opposite wall. I could chase them all the way to the front of the restaurant, but Bruno will take his last stand there, and I’ll probably have to shoot my way through his rallied troops while Stephanos jumps into a getaway car and makes his cowardly escape.
The smoke is clearing. The floor is littered with black mounds of dead mobsters in dark suits. One of them gurgles, and the stench of blood and shit stains the air.
I rise and dash past the far wall. No one shoots. No one stops me. But I’m sobbing as I hit the emergency door and emerge into the bright day, trying not to think of how, for the second time in twenty-four hours, my plan for vengeance is bleeding out on the floor.
CHAPTER 6
lula
Three months later…
As far as safe houses go, a three-story house on the river isn’t bad. Here, I do my work on a secure server, mostly contracts for businesses or land deals that Royal makes with one of the other families that rule Metropolis. Rebuilding what our idiot fathers gambled away.
An hour after my shootout with Bruno, Royal picked me up and brought me to his home. He sent men to the restaurant, but the place was cleared out, with only a few bodies left on the floor. We had a shouting fight that he won, and then he brought me straight here under the cover of night.
Rumor on the street is that Stephanos is still alive, suffering minor injuries from a bullet to the shoulder. He’s convalescing the same way he’s survived the past few decades, by burrowing deep into Metropolis’ underworld like a rat. He’s spent a lifetime avoiding the four main crime Families, carving out a living on the edges of our territory, scavenging for scraps, and he’s good at it.
My mother’s death is still unavenged. But I’m alive and hidden from retaliation in a safe house Royal insisted on. I have a desk and a row machine on the deck facing the water. It’s boring in a Zen way.
Today, the heat is a heavy blanket in the air, making the afternoon hours stretch long and lazy. It’s perfect for naps but less perfect for trying to focus on contract law. Alas, contract law is what pays the bills.
My phone rings, and I reach for it, only to realize it’s not my cell. It’s another phone I keep tucked away like a dirty secret—the burner I took from Victor after our night together. I don’t know why I held on to it, much less kept it charged and close by. It sits in its own bottom drawer, and now it’s buzzing angrily, waiting for me to make a decision. I snatch it up and answer it, but keep quiet as I hold it to my ear.
The moment is charged with electricity. There’s a twinge in my thigh right where I was wounded in the shootout.
There’s silence on the other end of the line. I bite my lip to keep from shrieking. Who is this? Who called me? As far as I know, only Victor used this phone and only to contact Stephanos. It’s standard protocol for a professional hitman—buy a burner phone, use it for a single job, then toss it. I never tried using the phone to lock onto Stephanos. I didn’t think it would work. Could he be calling now?
I’m about to say something when I hear a slight sound. A sigh, a heavy gust of labored breathing, and then one word.
