27. Francesca #2
I reloaded my gun quicker than I ever had and stepped out, felling the man closest to the door before ducking back in and grabbing my pistol from the back of my jeans.
I knew they wouldn’t expect it, so I came around the corner and shot one and then the other, both head shots.
I ducked back around and pulled out my knife, squatting down by the door while I waited. There was one more out there.
He stepped into the doorway then fired his automatic and sprayed the room.
“Don’t shoot, idiot!” Leo yelled.
I dropped on my side and then stabbed my knife right through his Achilles just like Wolfe taught me, and he screamed and dropped down to the floor before I got my knife in his neck. He choked on his own blood and then died a second later.
I took his gun off his body and dropped the strap over my shoulder. “Is that all you got?”
“Now I understand why your father put her in charge,” Warren said with a chuckle. “But I’m tired of this. Take her by whatever means necessary.”
I heard a lot more feet in the hallway and knew I was greatly outnumbered.
It was probably twelve to one. I shut the door, locked it, and started to barricade it like I had before.
I didn’t actually expect to win this, but I just needed to drain the clock until Wolfe could get here and kill all these motherfuckers.
I moved one dresser in front of the door and tried to push the four-poster bed over, but it was too heavy for me to move. I grabbed one of the nightstands and started to drag it across the hardwood floor when they sprayed the door with bullets, piercing everything with their automatic weapons.
All I could do was cower and cover my ears until it was finished.
Wolfe, where are you?
The gunfire stopped, and the door and furniture were destroyed, so they shoved it aside and entered the room.
I had my knife ready when they pushed through the debris and made it inside.
My back was to the wall, and I gripped the hilt of the blade in preparation to slice mouths off faces.
One pointed the pistol at my head while the group of men converged on me.
It was a short-lived fight, and I only managed to slice one of them before my hands were forced behind my back and the knife was taken away.
I was manhandled out of the room and down the hallway.
It felt like the longest walk of my life, dragging my feet all the way there, seeing my father on his knees, a gun pointed to his head…and my brother beside Warren.
He couldn’t hold my stare for long, his eyes shifting to the floor when my ferocity became too much.
They forced me in front of Warren, but I didn’t look at him, my rage reserved for my brother.
“Look. At. Me.”
Warren must have been entertained by the exchange because he allowed it to continue.
“I said, look at me.”
My brother fought the order, eyes on the floor at my feet and then at the side of my head, like he could fool me into thinking our eyes were locked.
“Come on, you fucking coward.”
He still avoided me.
“You turned your back on your family, but you don’t have the balls to look me in the eye as you do it?”
He worked his jaw like he was ashamed and mad at the same time. The cords in his neck were taut like a tightrope. He released a strangled breath before he finally looked me in the eye.
The second we looked at each other, I spat on his face. “Figgh’i buttana.”
He closed his eyes when the spit hit him in the face, and he just stood there while it dripped down his cheek.
The man holding me tightened his grip on my hands like I might try to kill my brother.
And he was absolutely right.
“So, it was either you or nobody?” I asked. “You would rather destroy your family legacy?”
“I didn’t destroy it,” he said quietly. “I took it.”
My father had been silent through this whole exchange, but he finally spoke, his eyes down the hallway like he refused to look at his son. “You really are an idiot.”
I turned to my father.
Leo did too.
“You think Warren helped you do this for a partnership?” My father worked his jaw before he turned and looked at Leo, and the expression on his face…
was as hot as the lava inside Mount Etna.
“No. He used you like a puppet, and now he’ll kill me and your sister, and probably you, and take this business for himself. ”
Leo shook his head once. “This business is mine, and it should have been mine in the first place—”
“He’s right, kid,” Warren said. “Not about everything, but he gets the gist.”
The shock was immediate on my brother’s face as he looked at Warren.
He was really that na?ve?
Then Warren pulled out the pistol from his back pocket and pointed it at my father’s temple.
My father didn’t react, eyes hard on my brother’s face.
“No,” Leo said. “You said you wouldn’t kill him—”
Boom.
Blood…everywhere.
I screamed and jerked back. My shoes slipped on the blood that now coated the floor.
My ears started to ring again.
I saw everything that happened, saw the brains splatter and the blood explode like a geyser, but my mind blocked it out the second I saw it. My knees gave out, and I slid to the floor as the sobs cracked my chest instantaneously. I could hear my brother screaming in the echoes of the background.
“You said you wouldn’t kill him!”
Against my better judgment, I looked at my father, who was dead on the floor, a huge puddle of blood already underneath him, his eyes lidless and open, his hand soaked in his own blood.
“Dad…” I started to crawl toward him, wanting him to be alive when I knew without a doubt he was beyond saving.
“Dad…” I gripped his hand, my clothes getting soaked in the red blood that was everywhere. “No…”
“Take her,” Warren ordered. “Let’s go.”
“You said you would let her go!” Leo yelled.
“Well, I changed my mind. She’ll be my little pet. We can play hide-and-seek in my mansion. It’ll be fun.”
All the fight left me. All the hope died in my heart. I was too devastated to care about anything. My eyes remained on my father, and then suddenly and violently, I vomited all over the floor, my insides mixing with the blood spreading there.
It splashed on Warren’s boots, and he kicked off the debris. “I said, let’s go.”
The guy who held me dragged me to my feet and forced me upright.
My legs weren’t cooperative at first, shaky and weak, and my shoes slipped in the blood and the vomit, and I almost fell. “Wolfe…where are you?” I suddenly sobbed again, grieving the violent death of my father that he should have stopped.
Leo continued to argue with Warren. “This wasn’t the deal we made, and you know it.”
“Oh, I know.” Warren nodded toward his cronies to take me down the stairs. Then he clapped Leo’s cheek a couple times. “With a little more experience, you’ll catch on.”
The man started to escort me to the stairs, and when my shoes hit the rug, they began to dry and lose their slipperiness.
I sobbed as I moved down the stairs, tempted to throw myself down and crack my head open.
I’d lost my father to a bullet and my brother to betrayal, and the man that I needed most wasn’t there.
I hoped he hadn’t been killed…then I really would throw myself down these stairs.
They got me to the ground floor and escorted me out of the house, and I saw all the men who worked for my father still being held at gunpoint, forced to surrender because they were outnumbered and surrounded.
They didn’t move their heads, but their eyes followed me as I was escorted to one of the cars.
They could probably deduce what had happened by the way I sobbed as I was shoved toward the car.
“Frankie.”
I recognized my brother’s voice, and I hated him so much I would actually rather get in the car than look at his fucking face. The guy handling me pressed my chest into the side of the car and secured a rope around my wrists.
I didn’t fight it. There was no fight left in me.
“Hold on,” Leo said.
I was turned around and pushed toward the open SUV door so I could get inside.
“Frankie.”
I spat on his face again. “You’re dead to me. Dead and buried and gone a hundred years.”
“I’m sorry—”
“How dare you say that to me? Look at Dad and say it to his lifeless eyes.” I spat on him again.
“If I had a gun, I’d shoot you right between the fucking eyes.
” I felt smoke rising out of my ears as I stared at my little brother, the man I’d defended from people who were unkind to him.
We didn’t always agree on everything and we didn’t always get along, but I’d trusted him with my life. And now, I felt so fucking foolish.
He grabbed me by both arms. “Frankie—”
“Don’t you fucking touch me.” I jerked my body to get him off me. “I’d rather go wherever the hell they’re taking me—”
Leo somehow slipped and crashed into me, and in that quick instant, a knife was forced into my hand at my back, hidden, as I was forced into the car under his weight.
“I didn’t know this would happen. I swear to you.
” When he righted himself, his eyes were soaked with tears. “I would never want this—”
“Fuck. Off.” I played it off like nothing had happened and got into the car while he continued to block me. I sat with my back to the seat, the knife hidden underneath my body. I stared straight ahead and ignored my brother.
The door shut. No one helped me put on a safety belt.
I could see Leo in my periphery out the window, but I refused to look at him. I didn’t care that he’d given me a knife to cut myself free. I wouldn’t be in this position if he weren’t the biggest moron alive.
If I made it out of this, I would hunt him down and kill him myself.
Two guys got into the car, sitting in the driver’s and passenger’s seats, and then we slowly rolled forward and approached the busted gate.
I gripped the knife tightly but didn’t move otherwise, knowing I should wait until we were a safe distance away before I tried anything.