Chapter 19 #3
Guards surround the property as Kiara seems to race around like the fucking Roadrunner.
Someone is shooting at her while bodies pile up, her blades protruding from bodies all over.
I almost laugh. Nobody can claim that we didn’t earn this particular payday.
Not that she’ll be benefiting from this one, considering she won’t be winning.
Striding into the penthouse, I simply walk by Kiara as the guards attempt to gang up on her, half of them with shaky knees, and too oblivious to even notice me in the room. But not Kiara. Her eagle-eyed stare clocks me immediately.
“Uhhh . . . little help?”
I shrug it off. “Uhhh . . . nah. I think you’ve got it,” I tell her. “Besides, I’m here to see someone about a contract. I just need a minute.”
She groans, and as I stride past her, moving into one of the many open living rooms, I hear a sigh of resignation before six shots sound through the penthouse, each one of them as precise as one of mine.
Every single one of the guards goes down, and I realize she was only playing with them, biding her time for this very moment.
As I glance back to check on her, I find her already flying through the air, barely giving me a moment to brace before she’s on my back, her arm snapping around my throat and pulling tight.
“Oh, not today, muffin,” I laugh, slamming my elbow back and ramming it into her stomach.
She grunts, and I use the moment to reach over my head and grab her, physically flipping her right over top of me.
Her body lands on one of Alistair’s plush, million-dollar rugs.
But she doesn’t skip a beat, grinning as she kicks out and knocks a solid vase off the coffee table.
It lands directly into her hands, and with the strength of a fucking gorilla, she launches it directly at my head.
I barely have a second to skip out of the way. “Oh, Firecracker. Now you’re speaking my language.”
She grins at me from the floor, her muscles tensing, warning me that she’s preparing to strike. Sirens sound in the distance, but I don’t fucking care. All that matters is her. “Come and get me, baby.”
Fuck me. Don’t mind if I do.
I dive for her, but she’s just as fast, springing to her feet like a fucking gazelle, coming right at me. She launches, her legs locking around my waist, her thumbs aiming directly for my eyes as I stupidly try to swat them away.
We wreak havoc over the living room. Knocking over tables, cutting up couches, accidentally smashing through the glass of the gas fireplace and sending flaming embers spreading throughout the penthouse, but despite the way we fight for our fucking lives or the multiple small fires we’ve started, I’ve never seen her eyes shine with so much excitement.
She’s in her element, and I’ve never seen anything so breathtaking, so overwhelmingly beautiful. And I realize that nothing else will ever matter more to me than this.
Our fight moves toward the kitchen, and she smashes a full plate of spaghetti bolognese over my head, and all I can do is gape at her.
“Seriously?” I ask as pasta slops off me, and I slam my hand down on the edge of a kitchen knife on the counter, letting it whip up into the air three times before the handle lands perfectly in my palm. “Quit smashing things over my head.”
“My bad,” she grins, pulling out the final blade from the sheath at her thigh, her eyes sparking like a million diamonds in the night sky as the fire begins to spread. “I thought bolognese would really go with your outfit. I was wrong.”
She strikes just as I spring back, blocking her blow before spinning around and coming back at her with a strike of my own. But she’s too fucking good. She counters, her blade slicing through the side of my shirt and biting into my ribs.
Kiara stops immediately, a soft, horrified gasp on her full lips.
Her eyes widen, and she immediately drops the blade, letting it clatter to the ground as her hands shake, realizing that she’s actually cut me.
“Fuck. I—” Her green stare searches mine, horror deep within them, and as tears begin to well, I reach out for her, pulling her straight into my bolognese-covered chest, holding her hard against me.
“It’s okay, Firecracker. It was an accident,” I soothe, my hand rubbing up and down her back, not giving a shit about the sirens racing toward us. “I’m okay. Just a scratch.”
“But I—”
Something moves in my peripheral, and my gaze snaps toward the home office, finding Alistair staring at us, a gun in his hand, pointed directly at the back of Kiara’s head.
He squeezes the trigger, and I have only just enough time to slam my hand against the back of her head and throw her down, the bullet grazing so close to her that it slices straight through the top of my knuckles and through the edge of my upper arm, before plunging straight into the refrigerator and stove behind us.
“FUCK!” I grunt as he lets off three more rounds.
I barely have time to reach for my gun and start shooting back as I hold Kiara down, but as Alistair takes off, he evades every last one of my bullets, and rage booms through my chest. Not only did he disturb this vulnerable moment with her, but he shot at my girl.
Fuck, if anybody gets to shoot at my girl, it’s gonna be me.
Releasing my hold on Kiara, she gets back to her feet, her sharp gaze instantly clocking the new wound on my arm as smoke billows through the apartment. “Shit. You’re hit.”
“Just a scratch,” I say, no longer caring about the contract or who wins it. All that matters is ending him, because now it’s personal. “Let’s just end this and get the fuck out of here.”
She nods, and we move out of the kitchen as Kiara looks over the three bullet holes in the wall I’d just made. “Sharpshooter, hey?” she grunts, the fire now beginning to rage. “Tell me, did any of these bullets at least graze the fucker?”
I give her a blank stare when the smell hits. Sharp. Metallic. Wrong.
I stop at the same time she does, her brows pulling together as she inhales again. “What’s that—”
The realization lands between us like a grenade. Her eyes flash with horror, and I don’t hesitate, grabbing her hand and racing against the clock.
My boots hammer against the polished floor as I drag her toward the massive window overlooking the darkened Austin skyline.
A low hiss grows into a violent roar as gas pours from what I can only assume are ruptured lines behind the stove, and in the blink of an eye, heat blooms at our backs as the world ignites.
“Jump,” I roar, her hand crushed in mine.
The explosion tears through the room in a wall of blazing fire, the force blowing the windows outward just as we launch ourselves into the night.
Glass shatters around us, glittering like rain as the blast chases us into the open air. Kiara’s scream rips through the night, and for a second, there’s nothing but wind, city lights, and her.
Then gravity takes us, and we plummet to the hard earth below.
I twist in midair, hauling her against me, and wrapping my body around hers as the ground rushes up beneath us, until my back slams against the roof of a parked car, caving beneath the impact, the metal screaming as it buckles.
Pain detonates through me, white and blinding, and just like that, my world ceases to exist.
***