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I didn’t let Arthur get any further, and he screamed as I shot out both of his knees. He crumpled to the ground in agony, and it startled Baron enough that it took him a second to retrain his gun on me. The Irish bastard just smiled as if I couldn’t see the blood seeping through his shirt. One of the initial spray bullets cut pretty deep into his left bicep.
“Good to know you’re not that stupid,” he grinned, still looking almost smug. Heaving and dizzy from pain, Arthur tried to grab his pistol only to be shot in the arm by Mark. Baron laughed. “He’s been selling you out for months. He turned his back and betrayed you for all of two million dollars, like the sewer rat he is.”
Rage boiled under my skin. Arthur had been in my father’s service for almost 35 years, and he could turn his back for money? All that for ten times less money than he could have demanded?
He had never been one of us.
“Sir?” Mark asked, ready to carry out my orders. I grinned like a lunatic.
“I promised Fabrizio he’d get Baron’s teeth,” I said. “I think I’ll give my father Arthur’s tongue.”
Baron cursed and pulled the trigger, but the kickback was too strong for his injured arm to steady, and the bullet went wide. It hit me and dug into my upper thigh, but only through the muscle. I felt the burn but not the pain, and both Mark and I opened fire back. Mark got him twice in the ribcage, and I got him once right in the neck. Declan Baron, the bane of our lives at the moment, fell backward, clutching his shattered windpipe with a broken choking sound.
He writhed, not yet dead, and I strode forward confidently to kick his weapon away from him. Arthur, somehow, still had the nerve to glare at me as he raised his one remaining uninjured limb, trying to pull the trigger left-handed. Mark stomped down on his wrist, crushing it with a horrific snapping sound, and Arthur howled.
I turned my attention back to Baron, where it belonged, to find the man still desperately gagging on his own blood and kicking away from me with pathetic desperation. That last-ditch attempt that all men make, no matter how powerful they once were. I would do the same someday, but right now, I was just pleased to be watching the terror consume Baron whole.
I stomped on his chest, making him convulse, and then I reached for my Bowie knife. I kneeled and hummed happily to myself. Plucking out teeth was such a waste of time—why bother when I could just take the whole jaw?
So I did. I sunk the tip of my blade into Baron’s cheek and pushed, splitting the skin and muscle from the corner of his mouth to the hinge of his jaw. Baron screamed as best he could with a hole in his windpipe, genuine horror filling his eyes. I smiled. Yes, this was what I’d wanted to see. I yanked on his jaw until I heard a loud pop, separating the joint enough to fit my knife between the bones and start sawing at the tendons and ligaments. This was Fabrizio’s trophy—I wasn’t going to miss anything.
Baron passed out sometime during that and was dead before I got the other side of the jaw off as well. Oh well. I was wildly pleased with my work and the knowledge that Baron had felt me do it, so I didn’t even mind when I pulled the jaw away and layers of skin on the front of his neck got sheared away, too. I would have to clean the bone later anyway.
I stood, hands dripping, and turned to where Mark had Arthur pinned with a boot to his chest. Arthur thrashed and struggled, stubborn to the bitter end, and I just smiled at him as I sunk to my knees beside him. He shook his head violently like that would stop me from grabbing him by the jaw as well, grinding into his pressure points to force him to open up. It was so hard to reach the back of the tongue; it was truly inconvenient. So I hooked my blood-soaked fingers behind his lower teeth and wrenched his jaw down until it broke.
“That’s better,” I hummed happily, shoving my hand into his now unnaturally gaping mouth. The corners of his mouth had ripped to allow his jaw to open impossibly wide, giving me all the access I needed.
I grasped Arthur’s tongue, the very tool he’d used to betray us all, and pinched it firmly with my fingernails to keep it from sliding away from me. I pulled and pulled until it was as far out as it could possibly be, then grabbed Arthur’s dangling jaw in my other hand.
“Thank you for your service, Arthur,” I said cheerfully. Then I slammed his teeth closed on his tongue like a guillotine, cutting through the thick muscle with brute force. Arthur’s scream petered out as I did it again, then again, as he fell unconscious at last.
It was a good thing one of my earplugs had fallen out because otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to hear the front door creak loudly as it opened. I froze, eyes darting to the stairs. Was I imagining it? But no, it closed loudly, and I could hear someone’s keys jingling as they made their way to the stairs. I looked up at Mark, who was pulling his own earplugs out to find out what had caught my attention, and with a single head gesture from me, we were both darting to the half-open window.
I dropped to the fire escape platform, my trophies clutched firmly in my blood-soaked hands. Mark landed right beside me, but something in me didn’t want to leave yet. As Mark released the fire escape ladder, making a loud series of clangs as it extended down and hit the ground, I peered over the windowsill to see who was coming.
I knew the minute I saw him make it to the top of the stairs that I was looking at Kieran Baron, Declan Baron’s only son—and, now, the new leader of Chicago’s Irish Mob.
I watched him freeze, taking in the bullet holes in the walls and the one dead guard he could see, before grabbing his gun from his waist and sprinting forward.
I pulled back so he couldn’t see me and only looked again when I heard him wail. There he was, next to his father’s corpse. I almost felt bad for him. I didn’t regret what I did, and I never would, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t extend some sympathy for Kieran for finding his father dead with half his face ripped off.
Kieran carefully cradled his father’s head, all-consuming sorrow and a seething hatred warring on his face. He cried without shame.
Mark gestured at me, making a face so expressive I could almost hear him saying, “What the hell are you waiting for, an invitation?!” as he gestured again at the ladder. I knew he was right. I took one last peek at the damage I’d wrought before walking to the end of the platform as quietly as I could. These rusty old structures weren’t exactly silent, but by sliding my feet instead of taking steps, I cut down on a lot of the noise. Kieran’s howling covered most of it anyway.
The last thing I heard Kieran Baron say was an oath he screamed at the sky: “I will make them pay! Whoever you are, you will pay!”
And as I drove away, I knew that, someday, I would see him again. He would spend his life hunting me if he had to, and I knew it because I wouldn’t have done anything less. But that would have to be dealt with when it happened. Right now, I had other wrongs to right.
Chapter Thirty-Four
LAUREN
Isighed, trying to decide what to do for the day. After my incredible win yesterday, I’d decided I needed a day off, but none of the Marinos had called to tell me I was safe to return to my own home, so I was stuck in Jen’s apartment without her while she worked. A lot of her job could be done remotely, but sometimes even she had to see the problem in person. Today was one of those days.
It should have felt good—and it did, honestly, just not good enough. To win, that is. I won that case in every way I could be asked to, but I still didn’t feel good. Fabrizio was a good kid, and three years would be hard for him. It would be hard for anyone. I wished I could have gotten him free altogether, but I’d known from the beginning that it was a hopeless pipe dream that wasn’t worth chasing after.
He'd thanked me anyway. It was bittersweet.
