Chapter 6 Isabella
Isabella
Lorenzo had a plan to get out of here. Of course, he did. He would have never walked in here without one. But his cold demeanor made my chest feel tight. What if his plan didn’t include me?
The blade pressing against my belly bit into my flesh even more as I tried to get away from Artem’s lips on my cheek. I was bleeding, but I wasn’t sure how deep the wound was. I couldn’t look down enough to see it.
“Let Isabella go,” Lorenzo said, “and no one else will be hurt.” He glanced down at his watch. “Your daughter’s ballet class runs so late during recital season. It would be a shame if a bullet went flying through that big picture window at her studio.”
The knife sank deeper, and the fear that gripped me was even greater than the pain.
I couldn’t—I wouldn’t—wait. Fortunately, my head was still fuzzy from whatever they used to subdue me earlier, so when I brought my head back and smashed it into Artem’s nose, I barely felt it, but my vision did go gray for a moment.
Artem yelped, and he let me go just as the world exploded around us. I fell to the ground, clapping my hand over the gash in my side, and I kept my head down as gunshots rang out above me. The desk that I had collapsed next to started to fragment into pieces as bullets struck it.
Shaking my head slightly, I groaned as my vision grayed out again.
I couldn’t just lie here; I needed to move.
I tried crawling around the desk, but my movements were clunky and slow.
The world was pulsing and hazy; it felt like I was floating just outside of my body, and it took everything in me to get my limbs to move the way that I wanted them to.
The knife didn’t go that deep, I assured myself, and I kept hold of it as an anchor. But my heart was beating in my ears, and stress was so bad for a developing fetus. Something heavy landed between my shoulder blades and pressed me down into the floor, and my panic reached a fever pitch.
I couldn’t breathe, and the more I struggled, the more force was applied to my back. Just as I was blacking out, the weight lifted, and someone flipped me over. “Breathe, piccola,” Elio demanded gently. “You can’t pass out on us now. Not when we all deserve to be yelled at.”
So, Lorenzo told him about what I found.
I forced myself to focus on the big man above me. “Fuck. You.”
Elio grinned. “Save one of those for Lorenzo, yeah?” He gave me a self-deprecating look. “Give Amalia a break, though? She’s still in the hospital.”
I took another breath. The pain in my head was starting to be a real issue; my stomach was twisting around itself, and I had a very real fear that I was going to throw up. “We’ll. See.” It was as magnanimous as I could be, given the circumstances.
Elio’s arms went under my legs and around my shoulders, and I whined softly as he jostled me. “Hold on, piccola.”
LORENZO
Elio and I had gone for Santino the second he stepped on Isabella’s back, but my cousin had gotten to him first. He threw the man off, but instead of tackling him to the ground, he dipped down to check on Isabella.
Damian and I focused on Artem, who was shooting at us from behind the desk. Samuel was covering us, taking on the guards who had come running as soon as shots were fired.
Every time Artem came into view, I could see the blood coming from his nose. It and his eyes were swelling: Isabella must have crushed the bones in his face with that headbutt. A fierce pride took hold of me, grappling with my anger toward her.
I didn’t have time to see who would win. I wanted Artem dead, and then I could drag Santino to his fucking end, but Elio called to me, “She’s not in good shape, cugino.”
I took my eyes off Artem. Isabella had gone pasty; her eyes kept rolling back in her head. God fucking damnit. “Give her to me,” I demanded, trusting Damian to cover me as I crossed the space to them.
Elio gently passed her into my arms. “Dolcezza,” I murmured, touching her face softly. “Stay awake.”
Her hazel eyes landed on me, but she couldn’t focus. “Lorenzo,” she breathed out.
I nodded. “I’m here,” I told her. “I’m with you.”
That seemed to be the permission she needed to let go entirely. She fainted in my arms. “Take her out,” Elio said. “We’ve got you.”
Unsurprisingly, Santino had slipped out of the room the second our attention had been diverted. “Find that Rossi fucker. I want him.”
“We know,” my cousin said. “Go.”
Damian fired once more toward Artem, and we heard a pained grunt. “Finish that, Damian,” I commanded as I carefully carried Isabella from the room.
The hallway smelled like blood and gunpowder. There were bodies on the ground, and Samuel reloaded his weapon. “I’ll get you out,” Samuel said.
Once we got to the door that we’d come in through, Samuel went back to help Elio and Damian clean up.
Renaldo was waiting at the SUV, and when he saw me, he climbed behind the wheel, while I got into the backseat with Isabella. “How many came out of the building?” I asked as I cradled her to me.
“I put down a dozen,” Renaldo said. “No one that looked particularly important; they all had Volkov’s mark.”
A dozen dead Russians, plus however many didn’t run. I was going to have a hell of a time cleaning this up. “I’ll need to call the Russian Syndicate.”
“You need to sleep,” Renaldo harrumphed. “You’ve lived four different lives in the last six hours.”
He wasn’t wrong, but the chastisement made me grit my teeth. “Mind your fucking business, all right?”
Renaldo scoffed, but he nodded, nonetheless. “Of course, Don Vitali.”