Page 139 of The Savage

Silencers cough from the dark. Seriously, silencers? Fucking cowards. What’s the point of fighting if you don’t want it heard?

Must be Vittore’s style, cheap men pretending at professionalism.

I keep myself between the gun fight and the door of the passenger seat where Giada is crouched.

And for the next ten minutes I try to do the impossible and see in the fucking dark.

Ten minutes of hell, where I concede that maybe these bunch of assholes are marginally better than the last jokers Vittore sent.

I hear a curse and see Sandro go down.

Fuck.

Concrete erupts. Muzzle flashes strobe the alley. My men fire in disciplined bursts, covering angles, dragging wounded back, advancing inch by bloody inch.

We’ll be sitting ducks if we don’t move.

‘Cover me. We move back, now!’

Enzo immediately slams his Mack truck body in front of me. Tito joins him in a second without missing a single beat.

I yank open the bullet-proof door and jump onto the seat, slamming it behind me. ‘We’re going out the other side, angel. Be a good girl and don’t scare the shit out of me. You stay where I put you, no questions asked, do you understand?’

Her mouth tightens, fear flashing bright, but she nods once.

I suck in a swift breath, snatch her around the waist and step out, trusting my men to cover me.

I hear a groan from the side – fuck, it’s Marco – just as a shape breaks from the dark ahead, too eager but not fast enough, stepping into the spill of a streetlight like he wants to be seen. Big mistake.

My gun comes up without thought. One clean shot. Dead between the eyes and he drops where he stands.

Giada gasps, a sharp, broken sound, and her fingers claw into my jacket, clinging as I drag her with me.

I shove her behind a concrete pillar, my body folding over hers, blocking every possible angle. Bullets spark off stone nearby, angry and blind.

‘Stay down,’ I snarl, planting myself between her and the dark.

She nods faster this time, her beautiful eyes huge, trusting me with everything she has left.

That trust turns me feral.

I step out into gunfire and become something unholy.

Two shots – throat, eye. Another man drops screaming as Luca takes his knee out from fifty metres. Enzo cracks a skull with his rifle butt. Tito goes hand-to-hand, knife flashing, red spraying the wall like a fresco of violence.

A round grazes my shoulder, hot and familiar. I welcome it, using the rage as fucking fuel.

A man rushes me. I shoot him in the crotch as I snatch at his wrist, breaking it clean while taking his gun. Then I shoot him dead with it. Bruno laughs once, dark and pleased, as he drags another bastard into the open and finishes him.

Smoke thickens as time stretches.

They thought we’d be sloppy. Thought catching us happy made us weak.

Idiots.

These things always feel like forever and not fast enough. I know it’s been less than ten minutes when the night howls with louder noises.

Engines. Then pounding footsteps.