Chapter 27 #2
She shrugs, and as I settle my hands onto her hips, she clutches them, testing her weight under her broken and bruised body.
“Yeah, I think so. It’ll suck, but I can manage,” she tells me.
“I don’t think anything is broken. Not like .
. .” Aria pauses, her gaze dropping to my chest and taking in the blood stains on my clothes.
“It looks worse than it is.”
“Liar.”
I grin and lean in, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Come on, we’ve gotta get the fuck out of this goddamn city.”
“Thank God.”
Releasing my hold on her, I move around to where Talon’s lifeless body has been discarded on the ground. I crouch beside him and pat him down, checking to see what other weapons he might have on him before taking the gun and counting how many bullets are left.
Two. Not great. But it’ll help.
I nod toward Collaroy as I find a set of car keys in Talon’s pocket. “Can you check him?” I ask Aria, not wanting her to have to play around with dead bodies if she doesn’t want to, but the sooner we can get out of here, the better.
She nods and inches toward the asshole who first hit her, her face twisted with disgust, before kneeling down and pointedly not looking at the odd angle of his neck. She begins patting him down and checking his pockets while I move on to the other guy.
After getting what we need, I glance back toward the shitty cell and find myself slipping back in through the broken bars and staring down at the Polaroid pictures on the ground. Three down, one to go.
Lux Valen.
Picking up the final Polaroid, I wipe the blood off it, smearing it across the image before slipping it back into my pocket. I could have walked away from all of this and been content with just Aria, but not now. Not after she was attacked for the second time. This ends now.
Two minutes later, we stand at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at the hell we’re about to walk into.
Between the two of us, we’ve got two guns, one with two bullets, the other with four, three blades, including one that’s already sticky with blood, and a plan to get out of here.
Though I can’t lie, it wasn’t a blast yanking the third blade out of Nico’s spine, but it was what I needed to confirm that the motherfucker was dead.
“There was a padlock on the door,” she murmurs as we hover at the bottom, both of us terrified that this might be the last time we ever see each other. “I doubt it’s locked but, you know . . . just in case.”
I nod. A padlock isn’t going to hold me back.
“You ready?” I ask. Having second thoughts, I take the gun back from her, pull the bullets from mine, and put all six into hers.
“Anyone even looks at you wrong, you shoot. Protect yourself. You worry about you. Don’t even think about what I’m doing. Understood?”
“But you—”
“I can handle me, Menace, but unless I know that I can trust you to keep focused, I’ll be too fucking worried about keeping you alive.”
“Okay,” she finally says. “I shoot my way out—”
“And?”
“And if you’re not there in three minutes, I take off.”
“Good,” I say, taking her chin and lifting before brushing my lips over hers in a swift kiss. “I will come for you, Aria. If we ever get separated, I will always come for you.”
She kisses me again before letting out a shaky breath. “I know,” she finally says, “but I’ll be coming for you first.”
A grin tears across my face. “Unlikely.”
She laughs and starts pumping herself up, bouncing her shoulders as though she’s about to step into a ring on fight night, but I see the slight cringe as her movement reminds her just how sore she really is. “Let’s fuck shit up.”
“Okay, Mike Tyson, keep your panties on.”
She scoffs and arches a brow. “I haven’t had any since you tore them off me in the farmhouse, remember?”
“Oh, I more than remember. I think about it constantly,” I laugh, taking her hand and leading her toward the stairs. “Let’s do this. And remember, your ass sticks right on mine until you have a clear shot at the door, and then you run like the devil just clocked in for overtime.”
She lets out quick, shaky breaths, psyching herself up to step right out of her comfort zone and into a war that she should never have been brought into, and as we slowly creep up the stairs, I feel her nerves radiating out of her like static before a lightning strike.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I inch over to the side and gently curl my fingers around the handle before carefully pushing down and releasing the latch.
Pushing it open just an inch, I peer out into the room to find that Aria was right.
It’s definitely an old restaurant that’s seen much better days.
A quick scan tells me there are at least ten men in the main dining hall of the restaurant, but there’s no telling who else could be stashed away in here.
There are bricks of cocaine piled up on the table and an older man with glasses, madly typing into a calculator.
From the sweat coating his forehead and dripping down the side of his face, my guess is that he didn’t come here voluntarily, and from the numbers he’s running, he doesn’t have good news for the Bone Reapers.
I don’t see Lux anywhere, and that pisses me off. This is probably going to be the only shot I have at ending his life, but just because I don’t see him here, doesn’t mean that he’s not about to meet his maker. I need to be alert, need to make sure she gets out, even if it’s the last thing I do.
Reaching back, I curl my hand around Aria’s wrist, grasping her tight. “Ready, baby?”
“No, but it’s now or never.”
“That’s the fucking spirit,” I tell her, and with that, I silently push the door open before springing into the room, pulling Aria along with me and keeping her at my back as I angle us toward the door.
Heads snap up, searching for the threat, but I’m already on them, releasing Aria and grabbing the head of the man sitting directly in front of me.
I snap it with ease as the asshole next to him reacts a second too late, giving me the chance to grasp the back of his head and slam it down against the table, knocking him out cold.
The others in the room barely have a clue what’s going on, and that proves these morons are nothing more than shitty drug runners. They’re barely kids, probably recruited fresh out of high school, and they have absolutely no business being in a place like this.
Some start to run while others freeze, gawking as they hesitate to reach for a weapon, and unless they try to step to me, I’ll leave them alone, but the ones who dare stop me from getting Aria out of here will more than meet their maker.
Men are running everywhere, and as they approach me, I quickly take them out one by one.
Someone shoots from across the room, and I instinctively shove my hand on the top of Aria’s head and push her down to the floor.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE,” I yell over the sound of the gunshots as bullets whiz past me, distantly noticing that the sweaty accountant has also dropped to the ground.
Only he doesn’t need to be told to get out. He moves on his own accord.
Aria crawls across the filthy floor, but as the bullets keep coming and one lodges right into my shoulder, throwing me back a few steps, Aria stops.
Her eyes go wide, realizing I’ve been shot, and a ferociousness comes over her as she throws herself onto her back, aims her gun, and shoots like a fucking mad woman on a mission.
She’s un-fucking-stoppable as she takes out the shooter, and for good measure, she takes another two out while she’s at it. And fuck, if I weren’t in so much pain, I’d be rock-fucking-hard for her right now.
“Fuck,” I grunt as the burning pain pulses through my shoulder, rendering me almost useless, but I keep fighting, keep pushing through the pain, because nothing else matters.
“Menace, go,” I have to remind her, only the little she-devil appears at my side, her gun aimed directly at the asshole swiping at me with his blade.
“I bet I could pull this trigger faster than you could even piss your pants,” she growls, her tone filled with venom, but it’s enough to bring him pause, and as he really looks around, he realizes none of the other men are still standing. He’s on his own.
His hands go up, not ready to die for this shit, and the second he steps back and drops the blade to the floor, Aria wraps her arm around my ribs and starts pulling me away.
“We need to go,” she hisses as my gaze searches the restaurant one last time, making sure none of these assholes are about to jump out at us the second our backs are turned, or hell, making sure Lux isn’t hiding out like a little bitch, letting his men take the fall for him.
Aria leads me away, and I hate how much weight I have to put on her as my body starts giving up on me. I keep my back to the door, not willing to take my eyes off the threat for even a second, and as Aria pulls us away, I take the gun from her hand, ready to use it at a moment’s notice.
Every second of our retreat is filled with tension, and the second we step out the door, I whip around, taking the lead as I grab Aria by the arm and take off like a fucking bullet, getting us away from the restaurant.
She presses the key fob for Talon’s car, searching for where it’s parked. “There,” she calls out, pointing a little further down the road.
Seeing our road to freedom, heavy relief pulses through my veins, and as I take another step, the exhaustion quickly starts weighing me down. “Menace,” I murmur, putting more and more weight onto her.
“Come on,” she groans, shoving her hand against my chest, trying to keep me up.
“Baby, I—”
I drop to the ground, my knees slamming into the sidewalk as the blood pours from my shoulder, darkness dancing in my vision.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Aria seethes, the richest panic in her tone. “I swear, we didn’t get this far just for you to die on the sidewalk. Keep going, Stone. I just need you to make it to the car. Please. Get up. Get the fuck up.”
My head lolls, and as I fall forward, I catch myself on my hands, but Aria’s not having it as she grabs at my arm, pulling me back up. “One foot up,” she begs, needing my help to make this happen, unable to bear my weight on her own.
Taking a strangled breath, I force my knee up, my foot planted firmly against the concrete as blood pools beneath me. “Come on,” she cries, pulling hard. “Push your giant ass up.”
I give it my all, pushing upright with every last ounce of energy that pulses through my veins, and the moment I’m back on two feet, Aria bears my weight on her shoulder, the two of us in absolute agony as we make our way across the street. Freedom is only a breath away.