AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Not yet.
But I wasn’t sitting in this damn hotel suite, waiting for them to come back. I was going with them. Even if I had to hide in the damn trunk to do it.
“What?” I asked when a slow smile spread across Neo’s face.
“Sil ever tell you we got sisters?” Nero asked.
He had. Apparently, Miko and Neo’s parents were hopelessly in love. And went ahead and had seven kids. Four boys, three girls.
“Yes,” I said, nodding.
“Well, I’ve seen them make that exact same face anytime they were told not to do something, and they decided they were gonna fucking do it anyway.”
“You’re… not wrong,” I admitted. He would find out sooner or later. And he didn’t seem all that bothered by the idea of me tagging along.
It seemed to take forever before there was a knock at the door, and the clock on the wall was showed it was closing in on three in the morning.
Was Silvano okay?
“I got it,” Nero said, holding a hand up at me, then rushing to check the peephole, then letting his brother in.
“We’re ready,” he said, nodding at Neo, who nodded back. Clearly, they had some sort of silent brotherly language, because a lot seemed to pass between them right then that I wasn’t privy to.
I glanced over at Storm, who had taken himself to bed, curled up tight in a little ball.
We weren’t supposed to leave him alone in the hotel room. That was the rule. But what the employees didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them, right? He was always a good, quiet boy when he was alone.
“No, no, sugar,” Miko said as I walked determinedly toward the two of them as they went into the doorway.
“Unless you plan to gag and bind me, I’d like to see you try to stop me,” I said, pushing through the two of them and into the hall.
“Christ,” Miko hissed.
Neo’s little chuckle suggested he enjoyed seeing his unflappable older brother flustered.
“Sugar,” Miko tried again in the elevator. “If you get so much as a fucking hangnail while with me, Silvano is gonna fucking slit my throat, dig a deep hole, and bury my body in it. And I have plans to find me a sweet girl and make a half a dozen babies. Can’t be doing that in a dirt bath.”
“Then I won’t get a hangnail,” I said, moving out of the elevator as we got to the lobby, leaving them to rush to catch up.
They surprisingly didn’t put up much of a fight as we all piled into Miko’s car, then drove a short distance away from the hotel, parking on a backroad, so the guys could talk about guns, bullets, and night vision.
I paid attention as well as I could but it was getting harder and harder to hear my own thoughts over the whooshing of my blood in my ears.
“And you,” Miko said, turning to look at me, pinning me with a firm glance. “Are keeping your pretty ass in the car, you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I agreed, nodding, ignoring the way Nero pressed his lips together and looked away, knowing exactly what I was saying. And what I wasn’t saying.
I hear you. But I’m not listening.
“I’m gonna leave the keys in the ignition,” Miko went on as we drove toward the cabin’s road. “And you are gonna climb from the back into the front seat. You’re gonna keep your head down. Then, if anything, and I mean fucking anything, seems like it’s going sideways, you haul the fuck out of here. Then speed your ass back to the city, find Cosimo, and explain. You got it, sugar?” he asked, but his voice was tense now.
“I got it,” I agreed as he suddenly cut the lights, then drove mostly blind down the road toward the cabin.
We were getting close when we heard it.
Pop pop pop.
Gunshots.
