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Finally, I loosen the last clasp, ease the vest off my shoulders. My pulse quickens. This is the most precarious step of disarming the explosive. With painstaking slowness, I lower the vest on the concrete floor.
“The things that woman did to keep them safe,” he says with a dry chuckle.
Blood roars through my ears as I approach Galliano with furious, measured steps. He rises onto his knees, using the carcasses as cover. One of his arms hangs limp at his side, his white glove dripping with blood. Just as I predicted, the other hand holds another gun.
“The woman used to eat my shit and drink my piss like it was champagne. Toward the end, she used to love rubbing?—”
I pull the trigger and hit him square in the chest, but he only flinches.
Galliano shoots back, his bullet whizzing past my ear and lodging in a nearby carcass.
I take cover and grind my teeth. The bastard must be wearing a bulletproof vest. How did I let him into my mind? He fires again, this time at my foot. I break into a run.
Tommy cackles. “I know you’ve taken off your vest. You can’t kill me, but I’m free to fill you with bullets and take Emberly as my wife.”
Rage boils in my veins, powering my steps. This bastard knows I need him alive. “Don’t think I won’t shoot at the explosives and take us both down.”
“You’re too much of a coward, just like your siblings who hid within the walls of your mansion while my brother and I debased your mother?—”
I shoot, my bullet catching him in the shoulder. His gun arm drops, and I use the opening to shoot two shots into each knee.
Galliano drops to the floor with a howl.
I take another shot at his hand, and his gun falls to the floor with a clatter.
“You’re going to tell me everything.” I close the distance between us and lift his head by the hair. “And you’ll start with where you’re hiding Emberly.”
He glares up at me, his eyes burning with hatred. “She’ll die, just like you killed Cousin Freddy.”
This time, I don’t wince. My pocket is buzzing with messages. Either someone already identified where he’s hiding Emberly or is close. Galliano is without hands that work, without men, and without hope. After he directs me to Emberly, I’ll store him in the basement, where he will repeat what he said about our mother.
I drag his limp carcass across the slaughterhouse floor. “Tell me where she is or look forward to a long life full of pain and degradation.”
“What are you doing?” he growls.
“Taking you somewhere with more space to work. When I’ve finished, you won’t just be begging to spill Emberly’s location, you’ll be begging for death.”
When I’m outside, the sun hangs low in the horizon, casting long shadows across the street. I’m about to slip a hand in my pocket to check on the phone, when Gil drives by in one of the bullet-proof vehicles and winds down the window.
“Did you get the text?” he asks.
“What?”
He opens the door and steps out. “Leroi recognized the room.”
“Where is it?”
Gil lifts Galliano by the collar and drags him to the back seat. “Frederic Capello’s old house.”
Fuck. Galliano’s lackey told me he was a trickster, but keeping Emberly captive at the site of her family’s massacre is twisted.
“Let’s go.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
EMBERLY
Tommy walks out, leaving me sliding against the wall, my mind teetering on the knife-edge of hysteria.
