“I’m done here,” I told him. “This is my last job, and then I’m out—permanently.”
His eyes went dark, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t agree, either.
“We’ll discuss that when you return,” he said with a meaningful look.
I leaned in close to Lia.
“We’ll leave as soon as this is done,” I vowed. It was a promise I intended to keep.
She closed her eyes and nodded. We touched our foreheads together, and I leaned a little closer to press my lips softly and briefly to hers before I turned to leave with Jonathan behind me.
“I’m going to need a drink when all this is done,” Jonathan said as we went out into the hallway.
I was about to respond when an explosion rocked the house.
The blast was enough to send both Jonathan and me to the ground. I rolled to the side, Beretta out, and looked back down the hall toward Rinaldo’s office. The door had been blown off completely, and there was debris everywhere.
“Lia!”
I shoved myself up and ran back down the corridor. I could hear Jonathan’s footsteps behind me, but all my focus was on what was up ahead. The window of the den had been blown out completely, the bookshelf was toppled over, and people were coming in from outside.
“Motherfucker!” Rinaldo was screaming. “How dare you come to my house? My house!”
Shots rang out, but I couldn’t pay attention to them because I couldn’t see Lia anywhere. I pushed my way into the room and tried to make out shapes through the dust that clouded the air. I could hear more shouting and recognized the voices, but I was too focused to register whose they were.
“Evan!”
To my right was the toppled bookshelf, and Lia was on the floor next to it. I rushed over to her and knelt down.
“Luisa!” Lia cried as she pointed to the shelf.
I could see one of her legs and part of an arm sticking out from underneath it. Crouching down, I got a good grip on the edge and shoved up with my legs as hard as I could. The shelf only moved a foot, but it was enough for Lia to grab onto Luisa and pull her out from under it.
She was bleeding from a gash in the back of her head, and her arm was obviously broken. I checked her head, but the gash wasn’t deep—just a lot of blood. I pulled off my shirt and held it against her scalp as I pulled her and Lia back behind the upturned couch.
With the Beretta back in my hand, I peered out to the scene in the room.
Rurik Dytalov and Micah Severinov were right at the edge of the window surrounded by three of their goons. Micah was yelling at Milena.
“You never fucking listen to me!” he screamed. “You’ve joined the fucking enemy!”
Nick pushed Milena to the side as Micah fired. She fell amongst fallen books and Rinaldo’s globe-shaped bar as Nick screamed and dropped down beside her.
“Nicholas!” Rinaldo cried.
His gun fired rapidly toward the two Russians, but my attention was drawn to the figure behind them.
Kyle Davies.
His eyes met mine, and everything I was feeling before abruptly resurfaced. It wasn’t just a feeling, either—I could see it. I could see him holding Lia down on the floor of that warehouse and threatening her. I could hear the words she said he spoke, and I could see the terror in her eyes has he forced her to the ground.
“Motherfuckingsonofabitch!” I screamed as I pushed away from the couch and ran forward, gun firing into the dust-filled air.
A flash brightened my peripheral vision,
and a searing pain in my calf caused me to lose my footing in the mess of glass, wood, and brick scattered around the floor. My head slammed hard onto the floor, and my Beretta flew from my hand as bright spots formed in my vision.
Johnson was on me a second later, slamming my shoulders into the ground as I rolled to grab for him through blurry vision. He pulled back to try to aim his weapon in my face, but I grabbed his arm, twisted it, and shoved his head to the floor into a pile of glass. He screamed, and I pulled his head back to slam it down again. One of the pieces of glass embedded in his neck, and blood began to pour onto the floor.