AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Before he can finish, another round of bullets come whizzing past our heads. Immediately, I’m dropped to the dusty floor.
But I don’t get a chance to revel in the freedom. Hitting the hard ground with a thud knocks the wind out of me, and I wheeze in pain as chaos unfolds all around me.
“They’re inside!” one of the goons shouts.
Somehow, I’m able to roll onto my side just enough to see what he means.
But the sight doesn’t help me catch my breath. Instead, it feels like the air is sucked out of my lungs all over again.
We must be forty feet in the air, and I’m on the cliffs edge. But I can’t move. My limbs are still tied and no one seems to care that if I roll a little further, I might fall to my death.
We’re on a platform perched high above a gutted factory floor. The ground shakes, and my body rolls a little further towards the edge.
“Help!” I hear myself rasp, but I can still hardly breathe, let alone get the word out.
The only thing that keeps me from tumbling over the side is a rickety guardrail, half rusted away.
Below, a violent battle has broken out. Already, I can see that the corpses are piling up. And a flurry of gunfire is quickly creating more.
“Pick her back up you coward!” I barely hear Retsos yell. His orders are being overwhelmed by the echoing thunder of a thousand gunshots.
“Boss… I’ve been shot…”
“Fucking useless.”
A sharp pain rips through my already aching skull as I feel a greasy hand bunch up my hair and rip me back onto my feet. I try to scream, but I can still hardly breathe.
“Let… me… go…” I demand, each word agony. Everything on me burns. But most of all, my heart is on fire.
Please be here, Leo. Please.
“Fuck, you’re heavy, you fat bitch,” Retsos hisses as he tries to throw me over his shoulder. But he’s not strong enough, and I fall back to the hard floor with a thud.
“Drop the girl!”
The unexpected voice comes from just below, much closer than the ground is.
I can only assume there’s another platform just under our feet. But I don’t recognize the voice.
“You drop your fucking gun!” Retsos booms. Leaning down, he digs his hands under my arms and picks me up so that I cover his body entirely.
“Drop. The. Girl!”
Desperately, I try to search the voice for any trace of familiarity—or at least an accent. Is this one of Leo’s men, or one of mine?
But nothing about his voice tips me off. There’s no tinge of Russian. No undercurrent of Greek.
… Wait, could he be Irish?
“You heard the man.” A new voice suddenly appears to our right.
“Fuck,” Retsos curses, picking me up so that my bloody head covers his head now too.
I want to struggle. I want to help whoever is trying to save me, but my I’m still tied up and my body hurts so bad it all threatens to go numb.
Still, none of that compares to the pain in my heart.
I don’t recognize this new voice either. But I can hear the Russian accent in it.
