Instead, the man awkwardly steps forward and then collapses on top of me.
"No!" I scream and I use all my strength to push him off me.
Several more gunshots flash around me and then silence falls while I shove the body away with a yell and dig my heels into the grass to push myself away from him.
"Rose!" Calvin darts to my side and his hand lands on my shoulder but I instantly shrug it off with a flinch. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"
I can't speak. My eyes lock onto the open, empty gaze of the dead man and I can't look away.
"Rose!"
"I'm okay," I croak. "I-I'm okay."
"Fuck. Okay." Calvin's hand loops around my arm and he pulls me to my feet. "Come on, I need to get you out of here."
I finally break eye contact with the body and glance down to where his rumpled clothes sit haphazardly across his chest.
Calvin wastes no time in scooping me up, and as he does, I notice something else familiar about the stranger.
His jacket's fallen open and just beside the glistening crimson spread of blood sits a silver heron pin.
20
KONSTANTIN
"You killed my son."
It took a week for this cunt to settle on a meeting time and place and that's how he greets me?
Anger licks through my thoughts like the ignition of a flame while heat builds in my chest.
"Your son stole from me," I reply quietly with my gaze fixed on Leo, the Italian don who has been a thorn in my side ever since before my wedding to Rose. "He got what he deserved."
"Stole?!" Leo, wearing a heavy overcoat to appear taller and broader than he actually is, takes a step forward that sends a ripple of tension through his guards and my own.
We stand opposite one another in an abandoned warehouse near the docks, the only place that borders our territories without endangering civilians if this goes south.
The last thing I need is the cops interfering.
"Yes. S-t-o-l-e," I repeat much slower this time.
"My boy has never stolen a thing in his life!" Leo shouts with such fury that his face turns purple and spit flies between clenched teeth. "And you stand there with such an accusation as if it justifies youmurderinghim!"
"It does." I force my shoulders down a fraction. "It is no secret that I have a zero tolerance policy for shit like that. Zero. We briefly had a deal when I first arrived in the state, in which I clearly stated how I run things. You watched me take the heads of my own men who thought they were wise enough to steal from me. What makes your son any different?"
"You can justify this any way you fucking want to," he snarls, and he points at me with a hand weighed down in rings. "But I will never stop, you hear me? I will not stop until I have sent your balls back to Russia in a fucking box."
"Then why did you demand a meeting?"
"I wanted to look you in the eye when you admitted to killing my boy," Leo snarls and tears shine in his eyes. "I wanted to see the look on your face when I swore to burn down your empire. And I want to see the pain in your fucking eyes when I tell you this."
Leo stalks forward again and his men move like the ripples in a pond.
"You don't have a son for me to take so I will get my blood elsewhere, you hear me? I will drain that bitch of yours until she meets the same fate as your last wife, and then I will?—"
He doesn't get to the end of his sentence.
His threat against Rose is enough to settle the matter for me, so I whip my gun out from the holster hugging my ribs, and fire three shots.
