20. Kara
Kara
The world stops spinning in a deafening metallic screech.
Everything is upside down, dark, and tight. The scent of hot engine oil, shredded rubber, and crushed copper fills the air. Smoke curls lazily through shattered window frames, illuminated only by the faint, flickering amber strip under the crushed leather floorboards.
My lungs burn, but air comes in and out. The weight pressing down on me isn't steel. It's Leander.
His frame is pinned completely over mine, his arms wrapped like iron bands around my head and chest. He took the entirety of the roof's collapse on his shoulders and upper back.
I can feel the ragged, violent rise and fall of his chest against my cheek, his breath coming in fast rasps against my ear.
"Kara," he growls out. The word is barely human, a low vibration against my skin. "Answer me."
"I'm breathing," I say, my voice steady despite the ringing in my ears. I shift my hands, pressing my palms against his ribs to feel for blood. "I'm fine. What about you?"
"I'm fine," he mutters.
He isn't fine. I feel the sticky, warm fluid soaking through his jacket near his right shoulder blade where glass or sheared sheet metal bit deep. But there's no time to check the depth.
Outside the crushed cabin, the thump of boots on asphalt breaks the quiet.
"Check the cabin!" a harsh voice shouts from fifteen feet away. "Vincenzo said make sure nobody steps out of that car alive!"
Vincenzo again? He never learns, does he?
"Driver's dead," another voice calls out closer. "Partition collapsed into his head. Check the rear passenger doors!"
Leander doesn't hesitate. The panic that usually grips ordinary men in a vehicle rollover doesn't exist in his body. He shifts his weight off me with a smooth, terrifying quiet, sliding his hand down to my leg to pull my body deeper under the shadow of the crushed leather seatback.
"Stay still," he whispers against my temple.
"They're coming from the driver's side," I whisper to him softly, my eyes scanning the cracked windshield frame. "Three on the street, one moving around the trunk."
Leander doesn't answer with words. He reaches into the floorboard where his discarded suit jacket lies, pulling out the brass lighter he kept in his pocket. He jams it between his knuckles, turning his fist into a solid iron weight.
The rear passenger door handle clicks. Sheet metal groans as a stocky man in a tactical vest pulls the crushed door frame open three inches. He raises a short-barreled submachine gun, pointing the flashlight attachment straight into the dark cabin.
"Got movement—" the man starts.
Leander moves before the flash can hit his eyes.
He drives his palm straight through the shattered glass gap, his fingers locking onto the man's throat through his vest collar. With a single, explosive thrust of his body, Leander yanks the two-hundred-pound mercenary straight through the narrow, twisted window frame.
The sound of bones slamming against steel echoes inside the tight cabin.
Leander catches the man's throat with his left hand, driving his brass-knuckled right fist straight into the mercenary's temple. A sharp, wet CRACK cuts through the dark. The man's body goes completely limp before his boots even touch the road inside the cabin.
Leander doesn't drop him. He uses the dead man's collar to drag the body halfway into the window gap, blocking the opening, and yanks the submachine gun from his dead fingers in one fluid, practiced motion.
He slaps the magazine base, checks the bolt, and disengages the safety lever with a single flick of his thumb.
Five seconds, my mind calculates, watching him from the dark floorboards. He disarmed and neutralized an armored shooter in five seconds without firing a single round.
"Hey! Marco! What's happening there?" a voice shouts from near the trunk.
Leander kicks the remaining glass out of the front windshield frame, slides his shoulders through the jagged gap, and steps out into the cool night air like a ghost rising from a wreck.
“Please be careful.” I whisper.
He nods and before he could reply, we hear a shout.
"Fire!" someone roars from the street.
Automatic gunfire erupts immediately. The deafening TAT-TAT-TAT of 9mm rounds chews through the sedan's trunk, sending sharp metal fragments and sparks flying across the concrete wall above my head.
I don't scream. I stay flat under the seatback, my eyes scanning the pavement under the crushed door frame. I see two boots standing three feet away, angled toward the front hood where Leander disappeared.
I reach out, my fingers finding the steel flashlight dropped by the dead mercenary on the floorboards. I slide my hand through the wrist strap and grip the iron casing firmly.
Outside, the gunfire stops abruptly.
A sickening, dull thud echoes through the street, followed instantly by the sound of a jaw shattering under iron. Someone screams, a short, gurgling sound that cuts off abruptly as a throat is crushed against concrete.
"Shoot him! Shoot the bastard!" the third man yells from ten feet out.
A handgun fires twice. BANG. BANG.
I hear a sharp grunt from Leander, followed by the sound of a human body being slammed flat onto the hood of a car. Metal buckles violently under the impact.
The boots standing near my window shift sharply. The fourth shooter, a tall guy in a leather jacket raises his handgun, stepping around the sedan's trunk to get a clear angle on Leander's back.
"I got him!" the fourth man shouts, raising the barrel.
I don't wait for him to pull the trigger.
I roll onto my side, extend my arm through the broken door gap, and drive the heavy iron flashlight straight into the back of his knee joint with all the force in my body.
The man lets out a breathless yell as his knee gives way, his joint buckling backward. He stumbles to his hands and knees right in front of the door frame, dropping his loaded 9mm pistol onto the wet asphalt.
Before he can reach for the gun, Leander appears above him like a shadow.
Leander catches the man by the hair, dragging his head up, and drives his boot straight into the side of his neck.
The impact sounds like a dry branch snapping in half. The tall man falls flat on his chest, motionless.
Silence descends on the street as fast as the violence started.
The ambient hum of distant city traffic fills the quiet air, mixed with the hiss of steam escaping the flatbed truck's crushed radiator thirty feet away. Four mercenaries lie broken across the pavement, three dead, one gasping wetly through a shattered sternum near the front bumper.
Leander stands in the middle of the street, illuminated by the amber floodlights of a nearby commercial warehouse.
His shirt is torn open at the shoulder, soaked in a mixture of his own blood and the men he just dismantled. His face is smeared with soot and red, his dark hair messy, his eyes carrying the cold, terrifying stillness of a man who has completely surrendered to his instincts.
He holds the 9mm pistol in his right hand, his finger resting flat along the trigger guard, his chest rising and falling in slow, heavy cycles.
I crawl out through the shattered windshield frame, stepping carefully over the broken glass.
I stand up on the damp pavement, smoothing down the front of my torn dress. My left shoulder aches from the impact, but my hands are steady.
Leander turns his head slowly toward me. The wild, lethal intensity in his gaze doesn't vanish immediately, it hovers on the surface, searching my face for injuries, checking my hands, my neck, my posture.
"Are you hit?" he asks. His raspy voice is low, rough, and stripped of all composure.
"I'm fine," I say, stepping toward him. "A bruised shoulder and a few scrapes. What about you?"
Leander looks down at his right arm. A bullet graze runs along his forearm, bleeding steadily onto his wrist, but he doesn't even blink.
"It's shallow," he mutters, flipping the safety on the 9mm and shoving the weapon into his waistband.
He steps up to the mercenary lying near the radiator, the one gasping for air with a crushed chest. Leander kneels beside him, grabs the man by his vest collar, and pulls his head up off the concrete.
"How much did he pay you?" Leander asks.
The man coughs up blood, his eyes wide with pure, unadulterated terror as he looks up into Leander's face. "Vincenzo..." he wheezes, tears mixing with sweat on his face. "Vincenzo... paid fifty grand... for both of you..."
Leander stares at him for two seconds, his expression completely unreadable.
"Thank you," Leander says quietly.
He reaches down, catches the man's chin with one hand, and executes a swift, brutal twist.
CRACK.
The mercenary goes limp, his head dropping back onto the asphalt.
Leander stands up, pulling a clean handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe the blood from his fingers. He turns around and looks at me, waiting to see if I flinch, waiting to see if the cold violence he just displayed makes me step back.
I don't step back. I take three paces forward until I am standing two inches from his broad chest.
I reach up, my hand resting firmly against the side of his neck, my thumb brushing lightly across his rough jawline. I can feel his pulse thumping fast under my palm from the lingering adrenaline of the fight.
"Vincenzo really is persistent, and foolish."
Leander looks down into my face, his hand coming up to wrap gently over mine on his neck. His touch is remarkably careful, completely stripping away the brutal force he used ten seconds ago.
"He has used up his last card,” Leander whispers, his raspy voice carrying a heavy weight.
Leander lets out a slow breath through his nose, his forehead coming down to rest gently against mine.
"We need to get out of here before the municipal police respond to the crash," I say softly, my mind already calculating our next move. "Call Julian.”
Leander nods once, pulling his phone from his pocket. "Julian. We need a pickup on Commerce Street."
He ends the call, slipping the phone back into his pocket, his arm wrapping tight around my waist, pulling my side flush against his chest as we walk away from the burning wreckage toward the dark intersection ahead.
Standing in the quiet street with Leander Sartori holding me close, I look back at the broken trucks and the silent bodies behind us.