Chapter 57
CHRISTIAN
T he occupants of the coffee shop start spilling out just as I reach it—not a good sign.
I slam through the front door into a woman trying to flee. Catching her arm as she stumbles back, I shove her behind me and toward the front door.
I can’t see Tony… I can’t see Carmela.
A Russian soldier is putting his shoulder to the door behind the counter that leads out back. His companion is leaning over something on the floor. The other patrons are crouched down behind tables and chairs.
The door frame splinters under the soldier’s shoulder. He pitches through just as the asshole leaning over something lifts his head and looks my way.
I go to draw my gun, but two of the customers decide now is the time to make a break for the door, and I don’t have a clear fucking shot.
The soldier eyeballing me suffers no such reservations; he draws his gun and shoots.
I duck, shoving the nearest customer to the floor. The bullet whistles past my head and shatters the front window of the shop. Tires screech and a horn blares outside.
No chance of keeping a lid on this motherfucker.
The second soldier follows the first through the door leading out back. Screaming ensues as the remaining patrons flee. I vault over the counter to find Tony on the floor, his face beaten and covered in blood.
“She’s out the back,” he wheezes, waving me on. “Go!”
Gun in my hand, I inch open the busted door—I don’t get far. Something heavy is lodged behind it.
A scream rents the air on the other side.
They’ve got her.
I shove harder at the door. Whatever is behind it screeches as its scrapes over the wooden floor.
“Chris!”
My head swings around to find Roman standing in the open coffee shop doorway, gun in hand.
“What the fuck happened? Who’s shooting?”
Fucking hell! My mind is going a mile a minute. Roman hasn’t seen her yet. But I’ve got to get her away from the Russians… and him.
“The Russians fired on me. Help Tony, then circle around the back.”
I get the door open enough to squeeze through. A bullet hits the wood beside my head with a dull thwomp . I crouch behind the filing cabinet they used to block the door.
It offers limited protection. I grit my teeth and pray as several rounds pop and ping against it.
I wait a few seconds and chance a glance.
One soldier is wrestling with Carmela—specifically, the arm connected to his gun that he’s trying to point my way—while the other is busy putting a boot on the locked back door.
They’re too close to her to return fire. I do the only thing I can—charge.
He gets a shot off, but she yanks on his arm, and it goes wide.
Good girl.
The other one has swung around hearing my pounding approach and reaches for his gun. I slam into him. His head smacks against the wood. His elbow smacks into my face. I bring the heel of my boot down on the back of his leg as he’s still reeling.
Crack!
He goes down screaming.
Carmela is still wrestling with the other soldier and his gun hand, which he’s trying to aim at me again. The fucker on the floor is rolling around screaming and it’s very fucking distracting.
I aim high at the one holding her. It’s point-blank range, but it only clips the side of his skull. In the tight confines of the corridor gunshot is deafening. There’s a lot of blood. His hold on her goes slack, and she shoves away. The second shot goes straight through his forehead.
She screams and clamps her hands over her ears.
He folds in slow motion, his gun goes off, and the bullet embeds in the ceiling with a sharp crack.
I shake my head, trying to clear the ringing.
Roman slams through the door to the coffee shop—I’m guessing shit was going down out the front, either that or he decided it was just too fucking far to leg it all the way around.
I put two bullets into the chest of the soldier still screaming on the floor.
Fuck my ears.
Carmela, sobbing and hysterical, flings herself at me.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Roman demands, out of breath.
I peel Carmela off and shove her behind me.
“Is that Mrs. Gallo?”
I guess I was too fucking slow—but also her cap was lost somewhere between her entering the coffee shop and now, and even in the clothes she’s wearing, she’s the kind of woman who stands out in a crowd.
“Did you call it in?”
“I was running around when the cops closed off the street…”
Carmela is still behind me. I can’t let him take her in.
I put my hand on Roman’s shoulder and get right up into his space. “She’s in shock, yeah? Pass me your cell phone, mine got busted.”
Roman is a good one. Under any other circumstances, I’d trust him to have my back. His wife is pregnant, and their baby is due any day.
“Jesus! You killed them both. No way we can keep this quiet. Cops are going to be crawling all over this place within minutes.”
He reaches into his pocket for his cell phone—I punch him in the throat. He makes a weak choking sound, and his eyes go wide with shock as he staggers back. While he’s still gasping for breath, I wrap my arm around his neck and choke him out.
“Sorry,” I say as I lower him to the floor.
Tony staggers through the busted doorway to the coffee shop holding a bloody rag in his hand. His eyes go from where I’m crouching over Roman, onto the two dead Russians, and finally to Carmela.
“Did he tell the boss?”
“I don’t know,” Tony says. “I don’t think so.”
“I need to get her out of here somewhere safe.” Fuck, I need to ditch these guns.
“Hand me that towel.” He offers me the bloody one in his hand.
“Not that one, the one hanging out your apron.” He hands it over.
I take Roman’s gun and quickly wipe it over…
and mine, then slip them into my pocket, along with the towel. “We’ve been compromised.”
“Okay.” Tony’s worried eyes shift from Carmela clinging to the back of my jacket to Roman on the floor. “If you go out the back and right, you’ll see the delivery bay for the supermarket. You should be able to cut through and out onto the street… What about Roman?”
“If he doesn’t wake up, tell the cops he’s a regular customer.
Three men speaking with heavy Russian accents came in and started kicking off.
I’ve got his cell and his gun. Nothing to point to him beyond a good citizen who tried to help you and got caught in the fray.
Say the third guy shot his companions, choked Roman, and ran out the back. ”
He nods.
Taking her hand in mine, I shove through the busted back door, and head into the alley.
CARMELA
He just choked Roman out, right before my eyes. The adrenaline drop leaves me shaking and mentally numb… But I’m pretty sure what he did to Roman, he did for me.
With a tight clasp on my hand he marches me out back of the coffee shop and into the alleyway.
I can see flashing lights at the end where cop cars are pulling up, sirens blazing, along with a discordant clamor that might be entirely in my head—the shots went off close to me and my ears are still ringing.
He doesn’t stop or speak, just hustles me down the dusty alleyway toward the drone of running engines—the supermarket goods entrance that Tony just mentioned. He pulls one cell out and powers it down, then he switches to the other and does the same without stopping or slowing.
The big, roller doors are open, and a truck is backed up to the bay. There’s a small forklift unloading goods from the back.
He takes the two guns out of his pocket, wrapped in the towel Tony gave him, and lobs them into a dumpster.
My legs are like jelly. He’s half holding me up as he walks past the workers and into the delivery bay.
“Hey, you can’t come back here!”
Christian ignores the call. With a tight grip on my arm, he continues past the startled staff until we push through a swing door into the back of the shop. The lights feel bright as we head down the nearest aisle and the queues at the checkout.
Feeling eyes on me, I glance down.
“Oh God, there’s blood on me.”
“Not now, Carmela.”
We exit the supermarket and cross the road.
“Take your jumper off,” he says.
I fumble to pull it over my head. He takes it from me and drops it into a trash can as we pass before grasping my arm again and making an abrupt left into a Starbucks coffee shop.
He buys two bottles of water at the counter and directs me straight to the back of the room, where he sits me in a chair. He unscrews one of the bottles and hands it over to me.
I drink half of it before I come up for air.
He just killed two men. And then he choked Roman out…
“Carmela, look at me.”
It’s a reasonable request, but I can’t yet meet his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” He changes tack. “Why were you here alone? Did somebody take you from Dante’s apartment?”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I take another swig of water and then fumble to screw the cap back and put it on the table.
“Carmela, look at me right now.”
My eyes snap up. He’s got a thick lip, and his nose is red and slightly swollen, but otherwise he looks remarkably whole given what went down.
It hits me then and there just how stupid my idea was. What would have happened if he hadn’t been there… Why was he there?
“I was going back to Ettore,” I whisper. “And I let myself out of Dante’s apartment. No one took me.”
He doesn’t blink for the longest time. “Why?”
I scrub a hand down my face. I can feel a faint crusting in places, and I have a bad feeling it’s going to be blood.
My ears are still ringing, and it leaves me faintly disconnected from the world.
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“No, you’re not. Deep breaths. Deep breaths and look at me.”
He sounds calm. A laugh wants to bubble up because it reminds me of the last time he committed violence against a man out the back of Le Petit Café, and how afterward, I reflected that he was surprisingly calm under pressure.
At least the urge to vomit passes.
“I was going to kill him.”
“Him? Ettore?”
I nod.