Chapter 56 Celia #2
There were too many to count, as dozens of men filed through each door with a coordinated precision.
Bulletproof vests on their chests and motorcycle helmets covered their faces as they entered the makeshift ballroom with their automatic weapons in hand.
The image of the skull masked with a bandana over its mouth inked onto their Kevlar armor drew my attention, sinking my heart deep into my stomach.
Los Muertos had come.
Just like they promised.
Have you ever gotten the feeling the Lord Almighty only kept you around because you were the most entertaining show to watch?
Maybe your misery was what pushed him out of a depression, perhaps it gave him the motivation to bless the rich with more wealth and to strike down the poor for the sake of laughs.
I felt like I was on the fifteenth season of Supernatural and we needed to cancel before God really blew this bitch up.
If there was a God, he definitely knew I liked it rough.
But he was taking it a bit too literally.
There was no Misha Collins to bring me back from the dead either, so as far as I knew, you could only kill me once.
As soon as the rapid fire from their bullets began, Mateo’s body was on top of mine, crushing me to the ground.
People around us began to push each other, forcing some to fall down the second-story height before they were ready to leap themselves.
There was no denying that a broken leg was comparably better than a bullet to the head.
“Get her out of here!” Santos echoed Ronan’s earlier plea, screaming at Mateo, his nostrils flaring widely and his tone darker than I’d ever heard. Mateo looked way too close to complying, I could see different scenarios running through his head as he tried to decide on the right thing to do.
“I can help! Give me a gun!” I yelled out through the chaos, and he nodded, kicking over the body of one of their men and pulling a pistol from their holster to give to me.
“Stand behind me,” Mateo shouted back, and I followed.
I looked for Ronan to find him walking straight into the fuckers who wanted us dead, two guns holstered at each of his sides and one in each hand as he shot bullet after bullet, without mercy, at every man who wasn’t ours.
It was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen, he looked like some sort of vengeful superhero, except superheroes didn’t use guns, and they definitely didn’t kill.
The entire floor shook underneath us, and my eyes widened to find Mateo staring right back at me.
“They’re trying to blow the building up!” Someone screamed out, eliciting more panic from the remaining Crows who hadn’t leapt for their lives.
Suddenly, blood began to pool out of Mateo’s mouth, and he began to choke. I looked down to find him clutching his stomach, already too bloody from the bullet that tore through him.
“I got you!” I yelled at him, taking the brunt of his weight as he crashed into me.
I sat him down, leaning his back against the inside of the bar and finding a towel to press into his wound.
“We gotta get you out of here, okay?” I said to him as calmly as possible, not letting him see how badly my hands were trembling.
“Sunsh-” he coughed out more blood, and I tried to silence him, pressing my fingers to his lips, but he swatted me off.
“Sunshine.” He finished the word before spurting out more blood through his lips.
“Get out of here,” he urged me, but there was no way I was leaving without him, without any of them.
I glanced around the corner of the bar again to see most of the Black Crow members had jumped, fallen, or been pushed to safety.
There were a good number of men on the ground bleeding from gunshot wounds, and even more towards the entrance that suffocated from the poison, unable to make it to the windows for fresh air in time.
As I looked, I found that was exactly where Ronan was headed, the cloud of smoke where gunshots rang and bullets fizzed out rapidly, hitting what remained of the bar.
I shouted for Santos, who was providing cover for Ronan, but there didn’t seem to be anyone who could help me, everyone who’d been left behind was either injured or dead.
“Hey, crazy boy, I’m gonna need to roll you out of that window okay?
It’s gonna hurt like a bitch,” I warned him, doing my best to stay focused on keeping him alive so that I wouldn’t crumble into a pile of tears and call it quits right here and now.
He grabbed me by the wrist, his voice so quiet I could barely hear him through the sounds of bullets and shouting.
“Get. the fuck. Out.” He struggled to say before blood began to spray out of his mouth again, but I ignored him, reaching up behind his arms as I dragged him through the floor towards the nearest broken window.
He was heavy as fuck, even though he was nowhere near Ronan’s massive bulky size; I was breathing heavily from moving him just a few feet.
That’s when I felt the blade on my neck.
“Up,” I heard the voice behind me, too close to my ear as his hot breath lingered on me. My blood went cold, and Mateo’s eyes went wide as they fixed behind me. He was turning white from too much blood loss, and I feared we would never make it to a hospital to save him in time.
Before I could turn back to look at the face of the man holding me at knifepoint, a boot came from behind me, kicking Mateo over the shards of glass on the open window. His body fell to the ground with a heavy thud.
I heard the screaming before I realized it was coming from my own mouth, followed by the pained grunt forced from my chest as the stranger behind me threw his elbow into my gut.
“You’ve been a lot of trouble, zorra. You cost me my best hitman,” he said, pressing the knife into my neck with too much force, and I winced from the stinging of the sharp metal cutting into me.
“He was never yours,” I rasped out, knowing exactly who the fuck stood behind me.
“Guillermo let her go,” I heard from behind, and he turned us both around to face the room.
Ronan was being held with a gun against his head by two goons with their heads still shielded by motorcycle helmets.
Santos stood in the middle of the room with his gun pointed at Guillermo while three of his men had theirs pinned on him.
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“I’ve let you play out this little fantasy long enough. Your little vacation’s over. I’m bringing you home primo,” his breath was on my ear as he spoke, the revulsion in my stomach intolerable as he pressed too close to me.
He tilted his chin just slightly as a signal to his men.
The two holding back Ronan as he wrestled against them moved their guns to his stomach and fired shots into him.
My body recoiled from the sound, and I howled out for him as he dropped to the ground and Santos began to shoot at his cousin.
Guillermo pulled me back harder, tightening his hold as I fought to get free.
To run to him.
He laid there on his side, breathing heavily; a scowl formed into his expression as his eyes searched the room for me.
“Enough is enough. Let’s end this and go home,” he said, pulling a syringe out and shooting it into my neck.
I prepared for the worst, but as I screamed and struggled against him, it wasn’t the slow sinking feeling I had almost become accustomed to.
No, it was far worse.
My tongue froze mid-scream, turning into a mumble, and my arms dropped heavily to my side.
Guillermo laughed a dark, sinister sound as my face collided with the floor.
He pulled me back up, my body stiff, paralyzed, but my eyes still open, my lungs still breathing.
Whistling casually, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me across the room on my back, and my eyes darted over as all five men closed in on Santos, throwing fists and feet with all their might.
I choked out a sob as he pulled me out of the room, my heart splintering into a million shards as I took one last look at Ronan’s body lying there, unmoving, in a pool of his own blood.
Had I always been destined to die at the hands of a weaker man?
Didn’t seem like I had much of a choice anymore.