Chapter Icon Cartier
ICON CARTIER
I had taken Livia far north on purpose, all the way out to a quiet upscale suburb where nobody tied to the Crown should have expected us to be. The restaurant sat tucked off a polished little strip with expensive boutiques, valet out front, and white people walking up and down the street.
I had taken her out, trying to give her something normal, since our movement had been limited the past few weeks because of the Crown.
We came out of the restaurant a little after ten with three of my men spaced around us; one ahead, another off my left, and the other behind, watching the angles.
Livia was talking as we walked. I don’t even remember what she was saying now. I think it was something about how good the bread pudding had been. Her hand was hooked in the bend of my arm, and I was thinking about how good it felt to have her close and out the house.
Then the first shot cracked through the air. My lead guard took it and dropped before I could wrap my head around what was happening.
The second shot hit almost at the same time. The man off my left jerked and folded straight down.
Then the one behind us hit the pavement hard and Livia finally found her voice and screamed.
Everyone on the street started to scream and take cover.
It happened so fast it felt unreal. Three of my men were down in seconds, and there was no visible shooter. I grabbed Livia and threw her behind me while my other hand yanked my piece from under my coat. “Get down.”
She was already crying out, trying to make sense of the bodies hitting the ground around us.
More shots rang out. Glass exploded from a parked car to my right. Something sparked off the curb. Whoever was shooting had an angle on us, but not a clear enough one to finish us.
I was trying to find the direction of the fire when a man burst out of the bushes lining the walkway to the lot.
He came fast, grabbed Livia around the waist, and dragged her back against him before I could close the distance.
His arm locked around her upper chest, and the knife in his hand went up to her throat.
“Icon!” she screamed.
I had my gun up instantly, but every inch of him stayed tucked behind her.
He started backing toward a dark van parked farther down the row. “Drop it.”
“Let her go!”
Every time I stepped closer, he pressed the blade in harder.
A thin line of blood started at her neck.
That made me black out.
Livia cried out and clutched at his arm. “Shoot him! Shoot him, Icon!”
I wanted to, but he had her so tight against him that one wrong angle would put a bullet straight through the love of my life. My hand stayed steady because it had to, but everything in me was going mad wanting a clean shot that wouldn’t take her life.
“Stop fucking walking!” I roared.
He smiled just enough to let me know he thought he had me right where he wanted me. He kept dragging her backward. Livia’s heels scraped the pavement. Tears were all over her face now, and I couldn’t stomach it.
So, I took the shot. Livia screamed as he used her as a shield. I held my breath until I realized the bullet missed. I felt the failure, but I was also relieved it missed because if it had drifted even a little in the wrong direction, I could have put that round in her.
He responded with a ragged laugh and kept dragging her. “You almost killed your wife.”
The van’s side door rolled open from the inside, and I caught the shape of a driver at the wheel and another shadow deeper in the back.
The man with the knife pulled Livia closer and shouted, “If you shoot again, your wife is dead.”
Livia was crying outright by then. “Icon…”
Everything in me focused on that knife and her blood trickling down her neck, and the distance I still hadn’t closed between me and my wife.
Then a shot cracked from somewhere behind the bushes.
The bullet hit the man holding Livia in the head from so close that it snapped him sideways before the sound finished bouncing around the lot.
Blood sprayed across Livia’s face and coat.
She froze for half a second, too shocked to even scream right away.
The dead weight of him dropped off her as I lit the van up.
So did my security who had come out of the landscaping lining the walkway.
I didn’t even know which of my team it was because all I could see was muzzle flashes and red.
I emptied toward the open side door and then the windshield.
Glass shattered inward. The driver slumped.
Another figure in the back took rounds before he could even lift his weapon.
The gunfire finally stopped. For one second, all I heard was Livia crying.
I ran towards her on the ground in a mess of blood and glass, shaking, breathing too fast with one hand at her throat. I dropped down beside her and grabbed her face first, then her shoulders, checking her everywhere my eyes could get to.
“Look at me. Look at me,” I frantically panted.
Her eyes found mine, wide and broken open with fear.
“I’m here,” I told her. “I got you. You’re okay.”
“I thought he was taking me,” she cried.
“He didn’t.”
My hands ran over her again. The blood on her was mostly his. The cut at her throat was shallow but enough to enrage me all over again.
The guard who made the shot came up on us breathing hard. It was Winston.
I peeped the blood on his sleeve. “You hit?”
“Grazed,” he answered. “I’m good.”
I nodded once and got back to Livia. “Can you stand?”
She nodded, then shook her head and cried harder. I gathered her up anyway, pulling her against me while two of the remaining men checked the van.
One of them leaned in through the driver’s side and called out, “Driver’s dead.”
The other checked the body inside the sliding door. “This one too.”
Winston spoke into his radio, then looked back at me. “Me and the rest of security already checked the rooftops along the strip. Nobody’s there.”
“Then where the fuck were the shots coming from?”
“Probably inside one of the buildings across the lot,” he answered. “They’re gone now.”
Livia still had both hands clutching my coat.
I kissed the top of her head. “We gotta go. C’mon, baby.”
I walked Livia towards my ride with one arm around her and my gun still in my other hand, feeling like a failure.
I didn’t care that every man on my crew knew the risks that came with this life, that they signed up for danger, wore guns, and understood that protecting men like me could get them buried.
As a leader, none of my men should have been left on that pavement.
That part left me with a lot of guilt, because no matter how much sense death made in this profession, I still took it personal when it happened under my watch.
I had already wanted the Crown dead for touching my family, business, and city.
But putting a knife to my wife’s throat changed the temperature.
This was no longer about answering an attack the right way or making a strategic example out of the right men.
The gloves were off. Everybody tied to them had to suffer.
Not just the shooters. Not just whoever gave the order.
Everybody who ate off that name, hid behind that structure, or felt protected by that organization had to feel what it cost to come for mine.