Page 104 of Deathless & Divided

“Shit,” Damian hissed, glaring to the side.

Several unmarked police cruisers blocked the gate of the house, keeping anyone inside from leaving. Police spilled from the vehicles with guns drawn while several more unmarked cars with their lights flashing brightly continued on down the road in the direction of the black suburban.

Lily’s confusion only climbed higher. “Why are they here? How did they—”

“Issues with the mob,” Damian said quickly in explanation. “We’ve been all over the news. Terrance was bound to have somebody watching his goddamn house. What did you see, Lily?”

Unable to answer Damian because her lungs just wouldn’t work properly, Lily stared around at the mess instead. People were helping others off the ground. A lot of guests seemed to have hit the pavement like Lily and Damian had. At the front of the house where the Trentini family had been standing with her uncle and the Rossi twins, a far more devastating scene took shape.

People were shouting, shoving … others on the ground, unmoving. Red stained the pristine white door. Cara Rossi sobbed, her fists shoved in her mouth as she cried out. Tommas rushed up the stairs to his sister’s side.

Where was the other Rossi twin?

Where was Lea?

“Ben!” someone shouted.

Lily’s ears felt like they were ringing from the gunfire and the catacomb of sounds surrounding her now. She couldn’t concentrate enough to understand what the people on the stairs said to one another, but there was fear all over their actions, in their shaking hands and the tears streaking down their faces.

Theo clamored up the steps after Tommas. “Ben!”

Terrance fell back from one of the bodies on his front steps. He put his hands out in front of him, his gaze trained in on the morbid red covering his skin.

“Lea!” Laurent screamed.

Serena Rossi’s devastated cry followed her husband’s from somewhere down with the rest of the people in the driveway.

God.

More blood.

So much more.

“Lily!” Damian snapped.

He tilted her chin up so he could look down into her eyes in that intense way of his that stopped her heart and made her think there was so much more to this man than she could ever possibly know. She was trying so desperately to keep from falling for him, but something about him that she couldn’t deny spoke to her. Something that kept making her trip over her own two feet, surprising her at every turn.

She was falling fast and hard.

He wasn’t even trying.

Damian swept his thumb over her trembling lips. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” Lily said quickly. “I saw nothing.”

For him, Lily would never see anything.

It had nothing to do with the Outfit.

It was Damian.

Damian nodded. “That’s right, sweetheart. It’s always nothing.”

The hospital emergency room was packed to the rim. Every time Lily turned around, more people seemed to flood the waiting chairs. But with no seats left to take, people were left hanging around doors and littering the outside with cigarettes.

Shaking hands, quiet murmurs, and paranoid stares had become common place. Guessing by some of the discussions filtering in around Lily, she knew the families were pissed and planning. This—whatever this attack had been—would not go unanswered.

War, someone hissed.