CHAPTER 24 #4
Three men dressed in heavy, black tactical gear suddenly burst aggressively through the final line of trees, their high-powered assault rifles instantly raised and leveled.
They freeze, their heavy boots skidding to a dead halt in the dirt.
They are completely stunned by the visual.
The untouchable Silvestri princess, absolutely drenched in gore, her expensive dress in tatters, standing aggressively, fiercely protective over the exact man they were dispatched to execute.
The heavy tension in the air is deafening.
The standoff hangs for a violent heartbeat.
One of the men screams at me to move, his finger visibly tightening on the sensitive trigger of his rifle.
They are hesitating, scared of hitting the boss's sister, but their orders to sanitize the scene are absolute.
I don't flinch. I spread my arms wide open, deliberately making my body a complete, physical shield over Angelo’s bleeding form on the ground.
I want them to look me directly in the eyes.
I want them to see exactly what my face looks like when I leave this family behind.
"Fiorella! Get out of the way!" the lead enforcer bellows, his voice cracking with panic.
"Tell Alessio I said 'Fuck you'!" I scream back, my voice tearing through the canyon.
"Fire! Fire now!" the enforcer yells to his men.
Angelo doesn't wait for them to process the command. He fires directly from his back on the ground, his arm extended. He dumps his last three bullets in a rapid, deafening pop-pop-pop straight toward the blinding lights of their rifles. The bright, explosive muzzle flashes briefly illuminate his terrifying, blood-stained face in the dark. The sharp, metallic scent of fresh cordite instantly overpowers the smell of the damp earth. One of the enforcers goes down hard with a scream, clutching his shattered shoulder. The other two instantly dive violently behind a cluster of large boulders for cover. The empty brass casings bounce off the white limestone around Angelo’s head with a musical, hollow tink.
It is the exact three-second window of chaos I needed.
"NOW! GO!" Angelo roars at me, dropping the empty gun entirely.
"Bastardos!" one of the enforcers screams from behind the rocks.
"Hang on, Angelo!"
I dig the heels of my bare feet violently into the blood-slicked rock.
I lock my arms and haul backward with everything I have.
Every single muscle in my back and legs screams in total agony as I physically drag his dead weight backward toward the absolute precipice.
The ground instantly begins to crumble violently beneath my heels.
The solid limestone is giving way to the empty void.
A jagged piece of my torn silk dress gets caught sharply on a rock, ripping further up my thigh with a sickening tearing sound as I pull him.
I am fighting gravity, entirely exhausted, but I absolutely refuse to stop pulling.
"I've got you... I've got you..." I chant wildly, my voice vibrating with the insane physical strain.
"Don't... let... go..." he grinds out, sliding backward over the rough stone.
"Never."
The two uninjured enforcers rapidly step back out from behind the boulders, their rifles leveled aggressively directly at my chest. They see me standing right on the crumbling edge, my heels literally hanging off the back of the cliff.
The lead man yells at me in sheer panic to stop, but I just look him dead in the eye, gather the spit and blood pooling in my mouth, and violently spit a thick glob of it directly at his heavy combat boots.
I am completely unrecognizable. I am a wild, feral creature born of this mountain and this violence.
I kick a loose, jagged stone straight at the lead enforcer’s shin, a final, utterly petty act of absolute rebellion.
"Stop! You’ll fall!" the man screams, lowering his gun an inch.
"That's the point, Stronzo," I sneer, the cold wind already whipping violently against my back.
"Fiorella, don't—!"
With a final, desperate, full-body heave, I step entirely backward into the absolute nothingness of the void.
For one completely silent, terrifying heartbeat, there is zero weight.
There is only the sudden, violent rush of freezing air roaring past my ears.
The ground vanishes entirely from beneath me.
Then, Angelo’s massive, uninjured arm violently wraps tight around my waist like a heavy band of industrial iron, snatching me flush against his hard, bleeding chest.
"Hold on!" he shouts into my ear as the world completely drops away.
"I have you!"
"Into the dark..."
My hair whips violently upward, completely blinding my eyes as we plummet straight down into the black garbage chute of the ravine.
Gravity immediately takes absolute control.
The wind roars, violently stripping the breath straight from my lungs, and the only actual, solid thing I know for sure in the entire universe right now is that the aggressive, desperate grip of his arm is severely bruising my ribs. Typical.