Chapter 8
SAMUEL
Her blood is mine.
The words eat through the last thread of restraint holding my violence in check. I stare at Edgar and a calm settles over me, cold and absolute. Familiar. I've worn this calm before, right before I do the worst things I'm capable of.
Maybe war is not such a bad idea.
I release Cinder from my side with a gentle push toward the curved staircase.
My hand finds Edgar's throat for the second time tonight and I compress his windpipe until the tendons in his neck cord under my fingers.
He gurgles. His hands claw at my wrist, nails biting into skin, and his face cycles through shades of crimson I've only seen on men who are about to stop breathing.
The foyer shrinks to nothing. The chandelier overhead, the gold-framed mirrors, the glittering hallway stretching behind Edgar…all of it fades to static. My pulse thuds slow and even while Edgar's hammers so fast I can count the beats through his carotid against my thumb.
Muffled voices push at my senses. Oliver is calling my name from somewhere behind me. Bastian's voice joins in, but the words don’t break through the haze of death consuming me. The only sound I'm tracking is the wet rasp of air scraping past the compression of my grip on Edgar's crushed airway.
Small hands wrap around my forearm. Fingers dig into the muscle and pull.
"Samuel."
Cinder's voice cuts through the haze of rage clouding my vision.
I turn my head. She's at my side with both hands locked on my arm, her pale eyes steady on me.
Her expression holds nothing but patience.
Her brow is smooth, her lips pressed flat, and the stillness in her face is so out of place in this blood-soaked foyer it sends a cold finger down my spine.
Blonde hair hangs wild around her face, the swell of her belly pressing against my hip.
"You don't get to kill the man when I had his name at the top of my list first."
My grip falters. The cold calculation behind those pale eyes says she's had Edgar's death planned long before tonight. And the fury hardening her jaw isn't aimed at him. It's aimed at me, for trying to take it from her.
I search her face for one second. Two.
And then chaos erupts.
The entry doors behind Edgar blow inward and the brass handles punch two craters in the plaster wall. Cold air from the front grounds rushes into the foyer, carrying the smell of wet gravel and exhaust from the idling cars outside.
A bodyguard fills the frame. Six and a half feet of furious muscle, heaving shoulders, and veins cording up the sides of his neck. Both fists wrap white-knuckled around the handle of a fire ax, one of those emergency axes bolted behind glass panels in service hallways.
Yeah. Scary shit. This fucker has the juice behind the ax to take heads off with a single swing.
The steel head catches the chandelier light and throws a bright flash across the foyer. He raises the ax above his head, his boot soles grinding against the broken wood of the threshold, and charges with a roar that vibrates through the floor under my feet.
My hand rips free of Edgar's throat. Edgar drops to the floor, gasping and clutching his neck.
“Get back!” I roar and move Cinder behind me as the ax swings down in a vicious arc aimed at splitting my skull.
I pivot left. The blade misses my shoulder by two inches and buries itself in the banister with a deep, splintering crack.
The bodyguard yanks, but the wood grips the ax head. His grip slips on the handle. I drive my elbow into his exposed ribs and the cartilage buckles under the impact. He doubles forward, and I wrench the ax free from the banister in one pull, spinning the handle in my palm until the weight settles.
Behind me, Edgar scrambles to his feet. Blood still drips from his ruined nose and his dislocated jaw hangs at a wrong angle, but his eyes lock onto Cinder with the focus of a predator tracking wounded prey. He lunges for her.
“Wrong move, motherfucker!”
Every chain I've ever put on the darkest parts of me snaps.
The bodyguard reaches for the ax handle.
I reverse my grip and bury the blade in the crown of his skull.
The steel connects with a sound that is part crack, part wet compression, and his legs go out from under him.
He drops straight down, knees hitting the hardwood, and then pitches forward onto his face.
The handle stands upright from his head like a crude marker.
Blood pools fast across the polished floor.
One down. Four to go.
I leave the ax where it is and spin toward Edgar.
He has Cinder by the hair. A fistful of pale blonde strands wrapped around his knuckles, pulling her head back at a sharp angle.
Her spine arches and her feet slide against the blood-slicked floor as he drags her toward the hallway.
A raw sound tears from her throat, fury and pain ground together, and her nails rake across his forearm hard enough to draw four parallel lines of red.
Edgar throws her, but Oliver is there to catch her.
Holding her to him and shielding the two most precious people in my life with his body, he roars, “Get the fucker already and let’s end this.”
Cinder wraps an arm around her belly when I look at her. “I’m okay. I promise.”
My Glock clears the holster before she finishes. The barrel finds the second bodyguard bursting through the hallway behind Edgar, a heavyset enforcer with a pistol drawn and sweeping toward Cinder and Oliver.
I pull the trigger.
The gunshot punches through the foyer and the recoil jolts up my wrist. The round catches the enforcer between his eyes. His head snaps back and the pistol drops from his hand, clattering against the baseboard. He folds in a heap that blocks half the hallway.
Two down.
I cross the foyer in three strides and take Cinder’s face in my hand. Blood that is not hers slicks across her cheek. Her fingers grip my jacket lapel and pull, hauling herself against me. Her pulse races under the skin of her wrist where it presses against my neck.
"Are you hurt?"
"I told you I'm fine." She grinds the words through her teeth and her eyes burn with a fury that tells me she is far from fine, but she and our baby are okay.
I tuck her behind my back while Oliver reloads. My Glock tracks the hallway where two more enforcers are already shoving past the body I dropped.
Behind us, two distinctive clicks punch through the noise. I know those sounds the way I know my own heartbeat.
My other friends join us.
Oliver stays to my left, his weapon drawn, face wiped clean of anything resembling emotion.
Bastian rolls his neck and loosens his tie until the knot hangs midway down his chest. He stubs his cigar out on the banister without looking and the cherry hisses against the wood.
His grin spreads wide and hungry. Valerian plants himself at the base of the staircase, his gun in his right hand, his freshly lit cigar clamped between his teeth.
Smoke curls past the scarred ridges of his jaw and the sheer look of anger on his face sends the butler back into hiding .
Over the past few months, all three have put down the guns and stepped back from violence. I guess love does that to a man. But right now the amount of rage pouring through the four of us is enough to level this city in a night.
They've all watched men abuse their power and kept their mouths shut for the sake of peace. Kingpins don't start wars over principle. Wars cost bodies, and the bodies come from the people they love most.
There are lines, though. Lines that exist whether peace demands they be ignored or not.
I just found mine.
And my friends just stepped over it with me.
"Took you long enough." I chamber a fresh round.
"We were finishing our cigars and it was a bad choice to try and stop you from beating Edgar." Bastian squares up beside Oliver, and the diabolical glint in his eyes says he has been waiting for a reason to hit something all night. “But it would have been nice to be invited. That’s all I’m saying. I could have a few more reasons to punch the man in the face.”
“This gaudy decor for one,” Oliver pipes up.
Enforcers pour through both ends of the hallway.
Six, eight, I stop counting at ten. Edgar has more men on his payroll than I gave him credit for, and every single one of them is armed and funneling into the foyer.
The air turns thick with cologne, sweat, and the oiled metal scent of weapons being drawn from leather.
The butler is brave enough to appear again. This time at the mouth of the corridor behind Cinder. Mid-fifties, stiff posture, white gloves now stained with blood at the fingertips. He grabs Cinder by the arm and hauls her sideways.
"Mr. Silvani wants the girl secured in the west wing."
Cinder's body whips toward him. Her knee drives up between his legs and connects with enough force to lift the man onto his toes.
His mouth opens in a silent scream. His grip on her arm goes slack and he crumples to the floor, both hands cupping his ruined groin, the white gloves pressed against his trousers as his face turns a shade of green that clashes with his livery.
That's my girl.
Cinder shakes her arm free and steps over his curled body without a second look. Her chin is up, her shoulders squared, and the fire in her pale eyes dares anyone else in this room to put their hands on her.
The foyer erupts into violence and we move in unison to protect Cinder.
The first enforcer through the east corridor fires wide.
The round punches through the mirror behind the staircase and glass rains down in a sheet of silver shards.
Bastian returns fire and the enforcer slams back against the wall, his weapon spinning across the floor.
Oliver drops the second man through the doorway with two controlled shots, center mass.
The body drops at the threshold and the enforcer behind him trips over the legs, pitching forward with his gun hand out.
Valerian's boot catches that one in the jaw. The crack of bone carries over the gunfire. The enforcer's head rotates on impact and he collapses in a limp pile at the base of the stairs.
Cigar smoke hangs in a blue-gray cloud around Valerian's head as he steps over the unconscious body without breaking stride.
The stench of gunpowder floods the foyer, sharp and acrid, layered over the copper sweetness of fresh blood. Brass casings ping against the hardwood and roll into the cracks between the planks. My ears ring from the concussive blasts bouncing off the high ceiling.
I grab Cinder around the middle and pin her to my side, my left arm banding across her ribs, my right hand swinging the Glock toward the hallway.
I put my body between her and the corridor where Edgar's reinforcements are still coming.
Her back presses against my chest and I can count every rapid breath she draws by the expansion of her ribs against my forearm.
Every protective instinct I've buried under decades of cold calculation roars to the surface.
An enforcer rounds the corner of the west hallway and I drop him with a single round before he can raise his weapon.
Bastian moves through the east side of the foyer clearing, the space.
His shots are precise, his footwork controlled.
Oliver covers the main entry, his back against the wall beside the shattered front door, picking off anyone stupid enough to step through.
Valerian hasn't moved from the staircase. He doesn't need to. Every enforcer who tries to come down the steps meets the scarred wall of his body and the muzzle of his gun. He fires once, twice, and two men tumble down the remaining stairs in a tangle of limbs and dropped weapons.
Edgar is gone. Somewhere in the chaos, he crawled or stumbled into the hallway. Leaving his men to die in a fight he started. I file that for later. He will surface again. Men like Edgar always do.
Glass crunches under my boots as I move us toward what's left of the front door. The gilded fixtures along the hallway throw fractured light over the carnage, splitting the shadows into jagged patterns across fallen bodies.
The last of Edgar's enforcers still standing ducks behind the overturned chest of drawers in the entryway.
He pops up and squeezes off two rounds that zip past my ear close enough to disturb the air against my skin.
I fire back and the round catches the edge of the furniture, spraying splinters.
Bastian comes in from the left, flanking, and puts the man down with a clean shot.
Silence falls fast and heavy. My ears adjust and the high-pitched ringing fades enough for the smaller sounds to filter back in.
Smoke hangs in the air.
"Time to go, men."
Oliver pulls away from the wall and checks his magazine.
Bastian cracks his neck and rolls his sleeves down, tucking his weapon into the back of his waistband.
Valerian takes one final drag of his cigar, exhales a long stream of smoke through his nose, and crushes the remains under his heel on the bottom step.
They move toward the front entry without waiting for further instruction. They've done this before. All of them. We clear the scene and disappear before someone makes a phone call that brings a different kind of problem to the door.
I turn us toward the shattered entry and Cinder plants her boots against the floor. Her body goes rigid under my arm and her heels dig into the floor with a stubbornness I should have anticipated.
"Wait. Edgar is still alive." Her fingers wrap around my wrist and she pulls against my grip. "What the fuck are you doing? We have to go hunt him down."
Bullets punch through the plaster above the entry. A final enforcer firing blind from somewhere deep in the hallway. The rounds scatter dust and chunks of wall across our shoulders.
I tighten my hold on her waist and lower my mouth to her ear.
"No, we don’t. I have to get you to safety. So, suck it up, princess, I'm stealing you."