Page 104 of The Masked King

“I have a plan.” I pull the grenades from my pockets.

“You have a plan.” Gio’s lips curve into a small smile. “Welcome to the real world, brother.”

I would reciprocate the smile if there wasn’t a noisy fucking clock ticking away inside my head, reminding me that I still don’t know who took the bullet back in the utility room before our sister came to my rescue.

“One of us goes up through the ceiling and drops these babies on the other side of the house.”

Gio considers the proposal for a split second. “I’ll go.”

“No, I’ll go,” Miguel suggests as I hoped he would.

Without further ado, he takes the grenades, shoves them inside the deep pockets of his cargo pants, and stands directly beneath the hole in the ceiling.

Gio and I form footholds with our hands on either side of him, and he barely puts his weight on us before he’s hauling himself through the gap to the bedroom above our heads, his legs and feet trailing behind him.

Once through, he gives us a thumbs-up and disappears.

Then Gio and I wait for the carnage to begin.

26

DEMI

The explosion rocks the house like an earthquake.

Malevsky barely reacts, his eyes sliding to me first, ensuring that I have no crazy ideas about trying to escape during the distraction, before staring at the door which remains firmly shut.

“Lover boy found a way out.” He removes a knife from his pocket, strokes the flat side of the blade, and approaches me as if he thinks I’ll be interested in testing the sharpness. “I thought he might’ve attempted something a little classier than a fucking bomb.”

Bits of house are crumbling around us, the utility room walls are still trembling, and the Russian’s mind is still firmly in the game.

A gun goes off somewhere in the building, and I force a smile. “It isn’t over till the fat lady sings.” I don’t recall where I heard the saying; a TV show maybe, or it’s a quote my grandpa liked to roll out when he was playing cribbage with my uncles.

Malevsky cups his ear with his hand. “I don’t hear any singing, so I guess it isn’t over yet. How long do you give him? A minute? Two? Longer?”

“The game is only just getting started,” I grind out with my jaw clenched against the pain of the bullet wound in my right arm.

The tourniquet I made from Malevsky’s handkerchief is bright red. Blood trickles down my arm and soaks through my sweatshirt as I’m trying to keep it elevated by holding onto the edge of the counter above my head.

He uses the tip of the blade under my chin to tilt my head backwards and peers into my eyes. “On your feet.” He nicks my skin, and I feel warm blood welling from the tiny hole and trailing down my neck to my collarbone.

I rise slowly, careful to lean away from the blade, using the cabinet behind me to slide myself upwards as Malevsky moves with me.

“This way.” He beckons with his fingers for me to move closer to the hatch that leads down to the basement. “Closer, come on, Demi, we don’t have all day.”

He raises his hand to halt me when the toes of my sneakers are touching the edge.

Then, he produces a rope from a metal shelf attached to the wall, loops it around my neck like a noose, throws the other end over an exposed pipe beneath the ceiling, and secures it around his waist.

“Did you ever see the movie Titanic?” Before I can even begin to convince myself that he’s the kind of man who would sit through a three-hour-long movie that made me bawl through the entire second half, he continues, “You jump, I jump. Or in this case—” he fixes me with his dark gaze “—I jump, you fall.”

He raises the hatch and gives the rope a short sharp tug.

I teeter over the edge, arms swiping at nothing to keep my balance, my toes curling over the rim of the opening, thigh muscles straining against the momentum.

Panting, I grind out, “I fall, you fall with me.”

He examines the blade in his hand. “I would demonstrate how easily this will slice through the rope, but I don’t want to spoil the fun.”