Page 379 of Romeo

I saw the blood running from his nose and the shake in his arm from the beating I had given him, but the barrel kept coming up until it pointed at my chest.

Then a gunshot exploded through the cabin.

I waited for the impact that never came.

Mac jerked forward. Confusion flashed across his face before his body seemed to give up beneath him. For one strange second, he remained balanced on one knee.

Then he collapsed.

Blood spread beneath him.

I stared at the wound, knowing immediately it wasn’t from anything I had done.

The front doorway stood open behind him.

Angel filled it.

For a second, I couldn’t make the pieces fit. I knew the man holding the gun. Had known him for damn near half my life.

What I didn’t know was why the fuck he was standing in Gator’s cabin.

Then his gaze moved past me.

To Fiona.

The answer hit before I could ask the question.

I looked down at Mac.

He wasn’t breathing.

“You killed him.”

Angel never took his eyes off Fiona. “He pointed a gun at my daughter.”

Fuck.

I wanted to be furious. Mac had been alive. I had stopped myself from finishing him because we needed to know how deep this went, and Angel had just put a bullet through the only man in the room who could tell us.

Then I looked at the gun inches from Mac’s lifeless hand.

If Angel had been a second later, that bullet would have hit me. Fiona would have been standing behind me without a weapon, with Mac still breathing and me bleeding out at her feet.

There wasn’t a damn thing I could say.

Movement sounded from the porch. Gator came through first, Thore behind him, with the rest of the Bourbon Kings spreading around the doorway and outside. His eyes swept across the broken furniture, the blood on the floor, Mac’s body, and finally Angel’s gun.

“Gaw’d Almighty.”

“Not now, cuz.”

“I wasn’t gonna say shit.”

The look he gave Angel suggested that was a lie, but he let it go.

Angel finally lowered his weapon.

Fiona moved behind me.