Dad’s blood dripped down my face, stuck in my eyelashes. I screamed again, when his dead body slumped over and into my side.
Oh my God.
My thoughts arrested in my head, suspended in shock. This couldn’t be happening. Numb and reeling, I watched with blind eyes as Javier handed the gun to one of his lackeys then turned to smile blandly at me, grab my bloodied face in his hands and press a gentle kiss to my duct-taped mouth.
“I won’t see you again, zorra, as I promised these gentlemen they could kill you for sport, but I hope you know that I enjoyed our time together immensely. You were a worthy player.”
I blinked at him because all I had left was minimal body functions.
My mind was on lockdown.
There was no dead Dad pressed to my shoulder.
None of his blood dripping from my chin to my shoulder.
No more death.
No more anything.
I blinked and I breathed and I did not think.
Javier spoke with Ace and Blackjack then left with his lackeys.
Ace ranted some more about retribution, but Blackjack was surprisingly quiet, doing a few lines of coke off the windowsill then retreating to the corner. There were other bikers from the Nightstalkers in the house. They came into the room sometimes to check in with Ace, knives in their boots and guns tucked into pockets and waistbands.
The sun sank so low in the sky that long shadows shaped like ghouls floated through the room.
I didn’t know what they were waiting for, why they’d even taken me, and obviously, Ace was growing impatient because at one point, he came to kneel before me and poked at my forehead.
“You said she was pretty,” Ace accused as he kept poking me. “She looks like a dumb Barbie to me. Look, no life in her at all. Probably lies there while Garro plows ’er and pretends she likes it.”
“She’s a class act,” Blackjack said quietly from his corner, his head tipped back against the wall. “And she’s a real beaut under all that blood, trust me. Stops a man in his tracks, she does.”
“Huh,” Ace said, bringing up the gun he kept in his hand to scratch at his stubble with it. “Should I fuck ’er, you think, before he gets here?”
Blackjack straightened from the wall. “Fuck off, Dad. He’ll be here soon and we can get this shit rollin’. We’re after Zeus, not his fuckin’ woman.”
Ace turned his head to stare at him as he sucked his teeth. “You like ’er, that it?”
“Fuck off.”
“That’s why you don’t want to kill ’er—you like the slut! What, did she give you a piece of her sweet cherry pie?”
Blackjack was off the wall and in front of his father in a second. “I said, fuck off, old man. I’m in this for Garro just like you are. He fucked with the club, he killed your fuckin’ best friend and he’s taken all the fuckin’ glory from me. Won’t promote me to fuckin’ shit in the club, won’t tell me nothin’ of his plans. He gets the kids, he gets the shit hot wife and he deserves fuckin’ none of it.”
I watched detached as Blackjack flipped out, spittle flying as he yelled into the face of his father and I thought, okay, he’s whacked too.
The next minute, there was the all-too-familiar sound of gunshots.
Pop.
I wondered if I’d ever get used to the sound or stop thinking that it sounded so innocuously like a giant chewing bubblegum.
Pop. Pop.
Ace and Blackjack immediately went into action.
I watched from my strange third person perspective as Ace knelt behind the open door with a gun and knife in his hand and as Blackjack crouched in the corner with a bigger gun trained on the door. Three more bikers settled in, guns trained on the door.
We all watched the stairs.
The gunshots outside moved closer then echoed throughout the main level. There were shouts and thuds as violence swept through the house.
Then it was quiet.
The men in the room looked at each other but Blackjack held up a hand for stillness and we waited.
Then there was a roar at the base of the stairs and thunder as men ran up them. A crash sounded from a window on the landing and someone landed with a knife in his teeth amid the Nightstalkers set up outside the door.
Bat.
The three men turned to him but the ex-military man was already moving, dropping down to a lunge then coming up with his knife, slicing clean through the belly of one of the men.
His guts spilled out and he followed them with a thud to the floor.
A shot went off as they tried to get Bat in their sights, but he shifted at the last second like a dancer and the shot hit the Nightstalker behind him.
Another down.
The commotion on the stairs grew even louder but everyone in the room with me was focused on Bat as the remaining man leveled his gun at his face and fired.