Chapter 12 #2
Gallo starts babbling, his words running together in a panicked stream. “Please, don’t let them kill me. I know Tony’s plans, I know where the money is, please—”
“Shut up,” I snap, checking my magazine.
Five rounds left.
Not enough.
Silence falls as they position themselves, waiting for me to make a mistake. Sweat trickles down my spine, and my shirt sticks to my skin beneath my jacket.
“We just want the accountant,” a man calls, echoing off the metal doors. “If you leave him and walk away, you can still live.”
Lies. If I surrender Gallo, we both die.
I lean out, spot movement, and fire. A grunt tells me I hit someone, but not a kill shot. Four bullets left.
“You stupid shit,” the man says, closer now. “You’re trapped. No backup is coming. Your partner is bleeding out as we speak.”
My chest tightens. Is Caleb alive? Dead? The uncertainty burns worse than any bullet could.
“Maybe we’ll take you back to Tony,” another man adds, cruel amusement lacing the words. “He’s got some friends who’d love to see you again.”
Ice floods my veins. They know who I am, and they want to give me back to the people who held me before. Back to the nightmare.
My hand shakes on the grip of my gun, and I force it steady through sheer will. Breathe. Focus. Remember the training.
Gallo whimpers beside me, cowering on the concrete floor. “They’re going to kill us both.”
I kick him. “I said shut up.”
Footsteps circle closer, closing the net. I scan the aisle of locked doors for any path out, but they’ve cut off every angle. The service door is at least thirty yards away, across an open floor with no cover.
Three bullets left. Three men at minimum. Bad odds.
A bead of sweat trickles into my eye, stinging. I blink it away, shifting position to peer around the support beam. Two of them are advancing from the left, using the crates as cover. The third must be circling around to my right.
“Aaiden,” I whisper into my comm unit, knowing it’s futile. “Hostiles in the storage facility. Need backup.”
Static answers me.
A memory rises of being dragged, fighting, screaming until my voice gave out. I dig my nails into my palm, using the sting to push the images away.
Not like this. I won‘t go back like this.
A bullet whizzes past my ear, so close that the air is displaced. I duck lower, pulling Gallo with me as more shots strike the support beam.
“There’s nowhere to go,” the man calls again, closer now. “Make it easy on yourself.”
Sweat freezes my skin as the warehouse shrinks around me, walls closing in, shadows deepening.
Breathe. Think.
I steady my aim. Three shots left, and too many enemies. But I don’t need to kill them all. I just need to buy time. I lean out, spot a figure moving between crates, and fire. The man falls with a cry, clutching his leg.
Two bullets left.
I fire again at movement to my left, buying precious seconds.
One bullet left.
Gunfire erupts from the right, pinging into the metal door a foot away from me and ricocheting. Gallo screams and covers his head with his arms. Useless.
I calculate angles of fire, escape routes, and odds of survival.
The math doesn’t look good.
“They’re coming from both sides,” Gallo sobs. “We’re going to die.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not. With only one bullet left and at least three hostiles closing in, our chances are thin. Thinner still, with Gallo shaking beside me, useless in a fight, his expensive suit now streaked with dirt and sweat.
Should I have stuck with Caleb? Would backup have arrived on time? Could my added gun have spared Caleb from being wounded? The doubt sinks its claws into my concentration, weakening my resolve when I need it most.
The men advance with slow confidence. They know they have us cornered. More footsteps echo from deeper within the facility, too many to have been part of the original group.
“Guard the south corner,” one calls. “Make sure he doesn’t slip past.”
Footsteps scrape across the concrete. They‘re taking their time, savoring the hunt. My fingers tighten around my weapon as I draw a knife with my free hand and prepare for my final play.
Wait for them to get closer. Make the last bullet count. Create chaos. Find a weapon on one of the fallen. Keep fighting.
“Please,” Gallo begs, grabbing my arm and throwing off my balance. “Tell them we surrender. Tell them—”
“Get off me!” I kick him, and he falls back to the ground, cowering.
Heart pounding, I listen for the gunmen’s location and register a sudden, unnatural silence from the direction where an attacker had been advancing. No footsteps. No one calling out positions. Nothing.
Then a wet sound, like a dropped melon splitting open, and a body hits the floor with a heavy thud.
“Marco?” a man calls out in confusion. “You see something?”
Another pause. Another wet sound, this one sharper. Another body falling.
The remaining men realize something has changed, and the beams of their flashlights bounce around the dark aisleways, searching for a threat they can’t locate.
“Who’s there?” one shouts, fear replacing confidence.
The answer comes as a figure steps into view, walking with measured steps into the open floor space.
Aaiden.
He moves as if he’s entering a boardroom rather than a firefight, his posture straight, his steps unhurried. The gun in his hand acts as an extension of his arm, raised and fired in one fluid motion that drops another man with a clean shot through the forehead.
Two more attackers emerge from behind crates, firing wildly. Bullets ping off metal and thunk into wood, but none find their mark. Aaiden pivots, two muffled shots sound, and two more bodies fall.
I watch, frozen in place, as he eliminates every threat in the warehouse. There’s no hesitation in his actions, no wasted motion, no hint of emotion.
A man charges from behind a forklift, screaming as he raises his weapon. Aaiden turns, fires, and continues walking without breaking stride as the body crumples behind him.
The scene unfolds with surreal clarity, like watching death personified move through the space. I’ve seen Aaiden kill before, but never with this cold efficiency bordering on artistry.
“Stay down,” I whisper to Gallo, though the command is unnecessary.
The accountant presses himself flat to the concrete, hands over his head, whimpering prayers to a god who sent Aaiden instead of angels.
The last attacker breaks cover, sprinting toward the exit. Aaiden tracks him with his arm extended, waits a beat, then fires. The man falls mid-stride, sliding across the concrete floor before coming to rest in a heap.
Silence fills the warehouse, broken only by the ringing in my ears from the gunfire.
Aaiden lowers his weapon and turns toward us. His burning green eyes find mine across the distance, pinning me in place. Blood spatters his pristine white shirt, a stark contrast to the composed set of his shoulders.
He strides toward us, stepping over bodies. When he reaches the support beam, he crouches beside me, close enough for me to catch the scent of gunpowder and expensive cologne coming from him, along with his pheromones.
He checks me for obvious injuries. “Are you hit?”
I shake my head.
He glares at the scrape on my cheek from the brick fragments, and a growl rises from his throat before he masks his anger.
A moan rises from one of the men Aaiden shot, still alive, crawling toward where his gun landed. Without hesitation, Aaiden stands, crosses the space in three long strides, and brings his heel down on the man’s wrist with a sickening crack.
The wounded man screams as Aaiden points his gun at the back of the man’s skull and fires. The body goes limp.
Aaiden turns back to me, his eyes still burning with that strange intensity. He steps closer, looming over where I kneel with Gallo.
“If anyone else touches you from now on,” he states, his quiet words carrying through the silence, “I will end them.”
Before I can respond, the warehouse fills with the sound of boots on concrete and commands being issued as the cleanup crew arrives. Damien appears at the main entrance, leading a team of Rockford security. He signals to his men, who fan out through the space to secure the perimeter.
“Extraction ready,” Damien reports, scanning the carnage without reaction. “We’ve got the area locked down.”
Two men approach, lifting Gallo from the floor. The accountant flinches at their touch but offers no resistance as they lead him away, still babbling about money and Tony and mercy.
I push myself to my feet, my legs unsteady beneath me. Aaiden stands back, his hand twitching at his side as if resisting the desire to help me up.
“Jade.”
The call comes from behind me, rough with pain but unmistakable. I turn to find Caleb leaning on the stack of boxes, his shoulder bandaged, blood seeping through the white gauze.
His complexion is pale beneath his tan, but he’s alert. “Thought I told you to get to extraction.”
“Extraction was compromised.”
Caleb’s eyes shift from Aaiden back to me with a look that says we’ll talk later, when we’re alone.
“Get him to the car,” Aaiden orders one of the security team, who moves to help Caleb. He turns to Damien. “Find out what happened to the driver posted at this location. If he betrayed us, deal with him.”
As the team disperses to carry out their tasks, I remain rooted in place, watching Aaiden direct the operation with the same calm authority he brings to everything.
If anyone else touches you from now on, I will end them.
The words echo in my head, stirring a dark hunger inside me. They leave me feeling wanted. Claimed. Protected in the most primal way possible.
My pulse quickens as Aaiden finishes giving orders and turns back to me.
“You’re bleeding.” His fingers reach toward my wounded cheek but stop short of contact.
I close the distance he left, leaning into his hand, reveling in the warmth of his palm against my skin. His thumb traces the abrasion wound, a gentleness in stark contrast to the violence of moments before.
“I’ll live,” I reply, steadier now.
“Yes, you will.”
A simple statement, but the command beneath it steals my breath. This is what he’s been holding back. Not only desire, but the capacity for absolute destruction of anything that threatens what’s his.
And I want it. All of it. Not just the gentle touches and careful restraint, but the darkness, too. The violence. The possessive willingness to burn the world to keep me safe.
For the first time since my capture, since the nightmare that broke something fundamental inside me, I’m not only protected. I’m coveted. It’s a heady sensation, one that should be frightening.
Instead, I finally feel as if I’ve come home.