46. Ryuji
RYUJI
“Iwish we could fuck instead of dealing with this shit,” I grumbled.
“We fucked again this morning,” Cas said, smirking while he drove. He’d been on the bottom this time, and it was fucking incredible to make him whimper and unravel beneath me. “Haven’t had enough yet?”
I bit my lip and leaned my head back on the headrest. “It will never be enough, bodyguard.”
He smiled, and I sighed, imagining his mouth around my cock, just like how he’d woken me up this morning. My sensitive little heart fluttered in my chest.
“Sorry we have to work instead.”
“Assassinations used to be simple,” I said. “This war stuff is on a new level.”
“You never had to deal with stuff like this in the Yakuza?” he asked while he drove the car into Russian territory. Smoke billowed in the air. We were getting close.
“Turf war shit, yeah,” I responded. “My oyabun was powerful, though. It wasn’t often that he was challenged.”
“He gave you that scar on your stomach, right?”
I nodded, pressing my hand on the Kevlar and the scar beneath it. We’d both worn the vests tonight. Just in case.
“He shot me when I tried to purchase my freedom.”
Cas’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I wish I could kill him for you.”
I glanced over at him, beaming. “How about you, me, and Leona take a trip to Japan once all this is done? We can kill him together. Plus, bonus, we’ll take a lovely vacation and I’ll show you the beauty of my home country.”
His hand found mine over the center console, and our fingers wrapped together. “I’d like that, Ryu. Really.”
“And we can fuck at every ryokan across the country.”
He laughed, squeezing my hand once before he let it go and pulled the SUV to the side of the street. “That sounds great. Now, pause daydreaming about fucking for now, and let’s kill some bastards.”
“Only if you promise we can fuck again when we get home.”
“Promise.”
I leaned over the console to give him a quick kiss before I did what he said. I let out a deep breath, palmed my new automatic rifle, and slung the strap over my shoulder. Time to fuck shit up.
Felix’s car pulled up behind us, and his men piled out to join us. The entire street was on fire. It licked out of broken glass and crept up the side of brick walls. People loitered on the sidewalks, eyes wide at their apartment buildings going up in flames. Sirens grew closer and closer.
My eyes flicked up and down, looking for enemies. I didn’t have to look long before the telltale crack of gunfire came from down the street.
We took off running.
“Move!” I shouted, waving civilians away so we could sprint down the sidewalk. Screams echoed through the air, everyone ducking and darting around like chickens with their heads cut off. Hopefully, we could get to Kostya before the Camorra pumped him full of lead.
We rounded the block to find a group of twenty men in a gnarly fist-fight in the middle of the street. What the fuck?
“Who is who?” Cas asked, coming to a stop beside me. “I don’t know the Russians.”
“I don’t know the Italians,” I said, eyes wide. My hand tightened on the grip of my rifle. I never paid much attention to Kostya’s men. The men fighting blurred together. I could start shooting at everyone, but Kostya would be pissed if I killed some of his.
“Ryuji!”
I whirled, recognizing the voice. Nikolai, Kostya’s brother. “Kolya!”
Blood peppered his face, and soot covered his clothes. He socked a man in the face and then stabbed him in the side with a huge knife. The man fell to the ground, dead, joining the dozens of bodies already littering the street.
Fuck. The cops would have a fucking field day with this.
“Where’s Kostya?” I yelled. Cas handed me an extra gun, and I tossed it to Kolya. “Tell us who to shoot!”
Kolya caught it and then immediately fired the entire clip into the fighting mob. A dozen men dropped to the ground. The rest of his Russian men dispatched what remained of this group of the Camorra.
Well, at least he knew who his guys were.
“Split up!” he ordered the Russians. “Take out whatever fucking Italians you can find. Then try to put out the fires!”
They started rushing through the streets, helping injured civilians and dashing into burning buildings. Shit, it looked like a bomb had gone off here.
“Ryu, this way!” Kolya shouted. Cas and I followed, along with Felix and his men. Kolya ran down another block. “It’s a fucking bloodbath out here!”
Three men jumped out of a small side street, guns raised. I didn’t hesitate. I shot all three immediately.
Kolya slowed, eyeing the bodies. “You’re lucky those aren’t my guys.”
“Yeah, probably,” I said. “Now, what’s going on?”
“They’ve got Kostya pinned down,” he said.
Our footsteps thundered on the ground. The sound of sirens grew even closer.
“He’s protecting the business where we’ve stored our artwork for the black market.
The front is a coffee shop. There’s almost five million dollars of merchandise in that building. ”
Cas frowned. “How did they know about it?”
Kolya let out a breath and wiped some blood from his forehead.
“We don’t know. They hit the entire perimeter of our territory almost simultaneously.
I took a group of our men to fight, and then they started torching buildings.
When the fires spread, we tried to help our people, and everything fractured.
My men and I had just encountered a group of them, but they’re prowling the streets like real fucking gangsters with Molotov cocktails and shit.
We don’t do this shit anymore. It’s bonkers.
It’s going to be all over the news, and the police are going to want to arrest every single man they can find. ”
We slowed when we approached a coffee shop.
Kostya crouched, raising his weapon. Our fifteen men behind him did the same. “Kostya is in the back. He’s with three of our guys. They’re surrounded.”
Gunfire cracked through the air. I nudged Cas, signaling that I’d go to the other side of the entrance to the coffee shop.
“Take out anyone who you can see, and then we’ll breach the entrance and sweep through the building.” I kept my voice low. “Felix, you and your men back us up.”
“Understood,” Felix responded before relaying the command to the rest of his men. They were armed to the fucking teeth. For a moment, I felt relieved by his loyalty to Leona. We needed as many men as we could get.
“I’ll go first,” I said to Kolya. “You follow me up.”
He nodded.
Quickly, I did a front roll across the pavement, staying underneath the glass windows of the coffee shop. When I reached the other side, I peeked above the glass and spotted five Camorra men. I signaled the number and then lined up my shots. Cas did the same on the other side.
He counted down.
3…2…1…
We both laid a wave of gunfire across the shop. All the men collapsed with screams of pain. A few quick follow-up shots silenced them.
We didn’t wait. With Cas, Kolya, and me leading the charge, we rushed the shop.
Felix and his men followed closely behind.
Cas and I knew each other well enough now to be in total sync with our movements.
He watched my blind spot, and I watched his.
We were in tune as we took out another group of Camorra men in the back room of the shop.
It was chaos.
Everything was trashed. Blood splattered the walls. Kolya stepped over bodies, grimacing when he recognized them. It was like the Russians had tried to withhold a siege, but they’d been pushed back room by room.
“Where is he?” I whispered to Kolya.
Before he answered, a bullet whizzed past my face. Decades’ worth of training made my body move on instinct, lunging to the side before a hail of gunfire shot up the floor tiles where I’d just stood.
Cas returned fire. He and Kolya mowed down seven more Camorra soldiers, hiding behind storage shelves and inside a walk-in refrigerator. Three heartbeats later, and all was quiet.
I let out a tense breath. Cas reached down a hand to pull me up. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I gusted a breath. “Are we almost fucking there or what, Kolya? Fuck.”
A barking laugh drew our attention to the left. Konstantin Makarov, Head of the Russian Bratva, stuck his stupid head of curly blond hair out of a storage closet.
“Holy shit,” he breathed, face split by a wide grin. “I thought we were done for.”
Kolya slammed against him, giving him the largest hug and most physical affection I’d ever seen the two brothers exchange. “I should have let you die so I could run the Bratva.”
Kostya ruffled Kolya’s bloody hair. “You’d never manage it, little brother.”
I rested my elbow on Cas’s shoulder. “You’re welcome!”
Kostya’s head snapped toward me. “Bastard,” Kostya said, even though the relief on his face was clear. “You sure took your sweet fucking time.”
“I was making out with Leona,” I replied. “I could be balls deep in her right now if it weren’t for you, so you owe us. Big time.”
Cas rolled his eyes, but he smiled. “Happy to help, Makarov. This is Anton Felix, an ally of ours, and his men.”
The two men exchanged handshakes, but a slight movement caught the corner of my eye. One body by the walk-in refrigerator moved. A twitch? A nervous system’s last movements as it died?
My eyes narrowed.
“What…” I murmured.
Suddenly, the body leapt to its feet, a gleaming knife in his hand. He lunged at Cas.
“Cas!” I choked out. The knife flew from my fingertips and landed in the Italian’s neck right before he could stab my boyfriend in the fucking back.
Cas whirled, punched the guy in the stomach, and he crumbled.
I fired three bullets into the fucker’s skull.
His face exploded onto the tile floor, brain matter scrambled and destroyed.
Cas let out a breath. “Thanks for watching my back.”
I swallowed, my heart in my fucking throat, before I let out a light laugh. I’d just gotten him to open up to me. I would not lose him now. “Always. Let’s make sure there aren’t any more of these fuckers. I’d rather you not get stabbed.”
Felix barked an order, and the rest of his men spread through the building, double-checking we’d taken care of the rest of them. Kolya walked to the front of the shop, hands on his gun.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said to Kostya. “The entire block is on fire. The cops are going to be swarming.”
Kolya returned. “Yeah, bad news about that. There are three squad cars out front and at least a dozen cops outside. They’re surrounding the building as we speak.”
“Shit,” Kostya said. “How do we feel about going out there guns blazing?”
I exchanged a glance with Cas. “We have too much heat on us already. The feds have been breathing down our backs.”
“And you think they aren’t breathing down ours, too?” Kostya responded. He braced his hands on his hips. “Can we bolt? Split up to escape?”
“If the building is surrounded, they’re going to pick us all up,” Kolya said. “They’ve already got five or six men out there in handcuffs in front of their cars. They’re going to take as many of us into custody as they can for that fucking carnage outside.”
“They’ve got your men?” Cas asked. “Or Camorra.”
“They look Camorra,” Kolya replied. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I snapped a picture. Here.”
Cas and I both stared at the image. “Three guys are Greco’s capos,” Cas said.
We still needed to get out of here, but at least the cops had arrested some of the capos already. “Text me that photo,” I said quickly while I zoomed in on the image. After he did, I looked around for anything we could use. “What about a distraction?”
“Got any brilliant ideas?” Kostya asked.
“Some of us go out the front and distract them, so the rest of us can escape out of the back,” I said, eyeing the back exit. “I’m not seeing a lot of other options.”
Kolya and Kostya exchanged a glance, but Kolya spoke first. “I’ll take some of my men and do it. I don’t mind sitting in jail for a while.”
Felix spoke to a few of his men before he spoke. “Some of my guys will go, too. That will let the rest of us get out the back.”
“I don’t love the idea of my brother and my men getting arrested with the Italians,” Kostya said through gritted teeth.
“We can hold our own,” Kolya said. “Right, boys?”
His men and Felix’s grumbled their agreement.
“We don’t have time to debate, Kostya,” Kolya said. “We’ll be fine. Get out of here while you can. Just make sure that Greco can’t bail out his men and leave us rotting in there by ourselves.”
Kostya gave him a quick, hard hug. “I’ll do my best. I have some detectives and a few higher-ups on my payroll. I can put pressure on them to not let this get swept under the rug. Just stay safe in there.”
“We’ll do what we can, too,” I added. Between Obi, Samuel, and Ciel, we would not let the Italians weasel their way out of this. Not this time. But for now, the distraction would let the rest of us escape.
“All right,” Kostya grumbled. “Let’s not tug dicks and waste time. Go before I change my mind.”
We split up—half of us heading for the front of the shop for the distraction, while the other half of us crept out the back. Thankfully, the small street was dark and quiet. When shouts erupted at the front of the building, we used the cover of smoke and other chaos to get away.
Kostya split away from us two blocks later, saying he was heading to one of his safe houses.
Cas, Felix and his men, and I doubled back around until we got to our cars.
Cas looked up and down the street, making sure we weren’t followed. “Are you guys heading back to our headquarters?”
“Don’t worry about us,” Felix said. “We’ll stay low and stay safe. We’ll connect with you later.”
I extended a hand. “Thanks, Felix. You guys were a huge help tonight.”
The corner of his mouth pulled up, but he didn’t respond. Without another word, he and his men melted into the night.
Cas and I got back into our SUV, but this time I hopped into the driver’s seat.
I doubted New York City had seen a battle on the literal streets like that in decades, if ever.
The news would be all over it. The media coverage alone would hopefully be enough to keep those men behind bars, but just in case, I’d tell Ciel and Obi to leak the names of all the men who got arrested.
If there were enough public outcry, it would look terrible for Greco to intervene.
As carefully as possible, I started navigating our car through city traffic.
I couldn’t wait to scald my skin in a hot shower.
We were both covered in blood. But as soon as I started heading south, I caught sight of a suspicious-looking car following us.
It didn’t stop even as I made random turns around the borough.
Fuck. Now I wouldn’t get my shower.
When he saw me glance at the rearview for the millionth time, Cas’s tone went sharp. “What’s wrong?”
“We have a tail.”