Chapter 22
Dario “Dash” Mangiacavallo
We were bounding down the stairs, Tyler, me, then Vincent.
The Governor in his dominant hand and a Sig tucked in the waist of his jeans, his expression was set to determination, showing none of the apprehension he tried to hide whenever he held a weapon.
Hobbling to the side, his bad leg buckled when his bare feet hit the brick floor of the foyer.
Crumbling, he hit so hard, his teeth clanked.
Throwing his head back, he hissed through them and shouted, “Ah, fuck!”
My pulse racing far too quickly to not be dangerous, I was fueled by pure adrenaline, already grieving the loss of Jackyl. Now was not the time for him to punk out or be weak. “Bitch, get the fuck up, what’s wrong with you?”
“Man, fuck you,” he sneered, his voice cracking. “You did this. This is your fault, remember?”
I clucked my teeth, that haunting shame rising to the surface. Hurrying over, I tucked an arm under his and across his back, tugging him to my chest to help him stand. “Shit. C’mon, man. Just focus. We gotta stay focused right now. Later, when this is over, you get a free swing at me, promise.”
The corner of his mouth curling, he snorted, “I’m gonna hold you to that.”
I forced a smile and patted the back of his shoulder, wanting to keep him as calm and steady as possible for someone who didn’t live the Serpent life.
This man had never held a gun at all until recently and now he was forced to use it to protect him and his woman.
He must be freaking out internally. “Good, now let’s go. We ain’t got no room to fuck up.”
He quickly limped down the hallway to the master suite and barricaded himself inside while I lunged to the side, cutting through the kitchen and down the couple steps to the lower section.
As I was hopping onto the raised, brick hearth, the bedroom door where the kids had been staying slammed behind Vincent and the house went silent except for the cartoons.
Violetta in the hidden cubby in the closet where my dad’s safe used to be, we were all at our posts, ready for the attack.
Hopefully, Jackyl wouldn’t get past me to get anywhere near the others.
If I did my job properly, this would be over in a few seconds, and they’d be safe.
Drenched in sweat, my back pressed against the corner, the coolness from the bricks soothed my skin.
Breathing through my nose, my head was resting on the wall, my sight down and to the side, looking for movement at the back door.
My Glock lifted by my shoulder, my finger gently rested on the trigger, waiting… anticipating.
For a split second, a trace of guilt shot through me. We were about to take down one of my oldest friends. A man I’d trusted my life with for well over a decade. We’d been through highs and lows, good times and bad, deaths and close calls with prison, always having one another’s backs.
He’d crossed the line, though. What he did with Violetta was heinous and unforgivable.
I wasn’t exactly a saint when it came to women.
I’d made mistakes, I’d fucked up, I’d been a bastard.
She had been a child, just a little girl.
Crimes against kids in my eyes never had an expiration date.
He had orchestrated her life, planted himself in it, made her dependent upon him, and then twisted her frame of mind to think she was in love with him.
A child, a sixteen-year-old little girl.
My cousin was fifteen. If a man did the things to her Jackyl had done to Violetta, I would cut him into pieces. It was irredeemable!
And the things he did after they got together?
No, hell no. He wasn’t safe. He wasn’t trustworthy, at all.
Besides, I made my choice and sided with her, which meant I changed alliances to Tyler Warren.
At this point, it wasn’t even all about what he’d done in the past, but survival.
If we didn’t get rid of him, me, her, Tyler, Vincent, and probably the kids would all be hunted down and slaughtered.
A creak on the deck had me flinching, my eyelids briefly closing. I didn’t want to do this! I wanted to rewind time and pretend like none of this happened. I would rather be blind to the truths than to take down my own brother.
“Shit,” I muttered, bowing my chin to pinch the bridge of my nose. As long as Violetta was around, Jackyl would always be a loose cannon willing to manipulate people to get his way, at all costs. He was obsessed with her. No one was safe.
“Tiny!” his deep, baritone voice bellowed from the other side of the wall.
I sucked in a breath and held it, tensing my muscles, readying to fire.
“Honey, I’m home,” he mocked. “Where the fuck is my kiss, you rotten, used whore?”
My eyelashes lifting, I craned my neck, trying to see something, anything. Where was he out there? What was he waiting for? I was so ready to just be done with this.
The knob jiggled and my pulse skipped a beat.
Licking my lips and gulping, my arm extended, following parallel to the length of the wall, aiming in the direction of the door.
Cocking the gun, my finger added just a tiny bit of pressure…
waiting. He had to be inside before anyone took a shot at him. Inside.
Suddenly, a series of bullets started tearing up the entire length of the rear of the home. Glass shattered, wood splintering. Pain seared through my gut and I cried out, hunching over. Another bullet hit my shoulder, flinging me back into the wall.
“Fuck!” I shouted, the worst kind of agony riddling my body. Another hit sent me into a state of shock, and I fell to my knees. Blood pouring out of my mouth, my sight grew blurry and dark. My eyes rolling back, I crumbled to the hearth, my arm with the gun falling to the floor.
Vincent da Silva
Bristling, a cold wave washed over my system, prickling every nerve in my body. A fucking semi-automatic? Where the fuck did he get one of those? Me and Dash knew his stash, we knew every type of gun he had. When had he gotten that and why had he been hiding it from us?
It was all the more proof that Jackyl couldn’t be trusted and we were doing the right thing.
A man didn’t hide a goddamn semi-automatic from his so-called best friends unless he thought they were a threat.
Until Tyler Warren came back into town, none of the Serpents had ever given him a reason to doubt our loyalty, but somewhere in his brain, he must have thought otherwise.
“Ah, fuck!”
My stomach sank, a heavy sense of dread hitting like a steel fist to the gut. That was Dash. Did he get shot? Oh, shit.
My first instinct to run to him, I forced my feet to skid to a halt. Looking around the room, I shoved open the closet door and hid inside, just in case he brought that goddamn gun into the house.
The shooting stopped and silence rang through the air. Sweat coating my body, I blinked it away from my eyes, holding my pistol, ready to fire. Nearly a full minute passed, but there was no sound. When chaos erupted again, it sent bile shooting up my throat, my knees nearly giving out.
A second rapid series of shots went off, and Violetta started screaming at the top of her lungs, not in fear, but in pain.
A burst of adrenaline hit so hard, I grew dizzy, my body refusing to move at first. The spell breaking, I barged through the closet door and ran from the room, crossing the hallway to the master suite.
The walls were littered with bullet holes, the door hanging off the hinge with a dirty footprint in the center.
Stumbling into the room, my sister was curled on her side just outside the closet, blood pooling on the floor, staining the carpet red.
The entire world stopped and my heart quit beating. Dropping to my knees, I no longer gave a damn what Jackyl did. If my sister was dead, he could kill me, too.
Edoardo Jackson “Jackyl” Bianchi
My sight was zeroed in on the main enemy, a sense of satisfaction lifting my foul mood.
Tyler was on the floor, writhing in agony, bullet holes scattered about his body.
Staring at the ceiling, his elbows bent, his hands were on his stomach, his spine arching with pain.
Sweat seeping through his shirt, one leg was straight with two red stains, the lame leg lifted at the knee.
He was attempting to push himself away from me, but kept coughing, his head rolling side to side.
For a second, his eyes rolled to whites, and I thought he was dead, but he coughed and gagged, blood sputtering down his chin and across his cheeks.
I snickered and swiftly kicked him in the ribs. He oofed and curled onto his side, his face in the carpet, smearing blood everywhere.
“You stupid, son of a bitch. I fucking warned you, didn’t I? I told you to stay away from Tiny.”
His arms wrapped over his gut, but it wasn’t slowing the bleeding. This bastard was a dead man, it just depended on my mood. Did I want to drag this out and torture him a bit, or was I ready to just be done with this shit for good?
“Hurt, don’t it?”
He groaned, his hips lifting in the air a bit before he crumbled to the floor. “Fuck.”
I laughed, extending my arm to nudge him with the barrel of my rifle.
Shoving him to his back, I pointed it at the center of his forehead.
“You fucked with the wrong man, motherfucker. She was mine. I made her mine!” I shouted, shaking with rage.
“You was just a puny little fucking kid. I was the goddamn man who made her a woman. That was mine!”
He glared at me, his lips curling around his blood stained teeth. “She ain’t a piece of property, asshole,” he wheezed, his body jerking and convulsing uncontrollably. “She’s a human being, and she loves me.”
“Shut up!” I bellowed, pressing the tip to his skull. “She don’t love you, she loves me. She loves me because I told her to, goddammit! I made her mine!”