Page 88 of His Pet

My eyes go wide, and my shoes scrape the porch with a jerk.

“Lorenzo, help!” Amelia pleads. Valentine tightens his arm around her neck and her face gets red and lips part. Blood oozes from his arm onto the floor, and my only relief right now is that it isn’t hers. There’s a gash on his arm.

Valentine throws Amelia to the ground and points his own gun at her. He doesn’t look to me. He looks at her. This isn’t a threat.

I leap into the doorway, and Nico slams the door behind me.

“No!” Amelia cries out. Valentine turns his head to look at me and smirks. Ma rushes into me and wraps her arms around my torso while crying, but Nico drags her off me and pushes her toward the dining room. I turn that way just long enough to see my brother and father at the table, Settimo looking near death.

The lions' den I’ve walked into doesn’t fully register until several men emerge from the living room, all looking smug as they swarm around me as if expecting me to pounce toward Valentine at any moment.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask, forcing myself to stare at Valentine instead of Amelia. “Do you have a death wish?”

Valentine laughs and shakes his head. “Only you and your pompous brother could make such threats from low places. Doyouhave a death wish, Lorenzo?”

He steps up to me, and his face contorts in an angry fashion. “But we both already know that you do, don’t we? Unless you’re just as fucking clueless as you look.”

I narrow my eyes and try to figure out what he’s referring to. For crossing him? Is he really this deranged to take this kind of action over delayed construction of aresort?”

“All this because of a feud?” I ask, looking back at Settimo. His head hangs and his eyes are closed, but his chest heaves with his breathing. Blood seeps from his once pristine white shirt. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“A feud.” Valentine grabs my collar and barks in my face. “A fuckingfeud?” He shoves me back and shudders with rage as he steps away.

“If you fuck with my business, you must know I’m going to fuck with yours.” I stand straight and clench my teeth. “It’s a fucking hotel, Valentine. It’s easily—”

“You killed my nephew!” he screams with the strongest kind of antipathy. “But you think what? That I’m angry over my resort getting delayed?” He shakes his head and gets red in the face.

His nephew.

Shit.

“I’m going to fucking kill you and everyone you care about, you stupid son of a bitch. Except for this little whore,” Valentine says, darting his eyes to Amelia. “This one, I’m taking my time with.”

I spot the gash again and am filled with overwhelming pride before the panic can take hold.

I feel the other men’s eyes on me and prepare to slide the knife into my palm. I have no plan. None. The best I know I can do is take out Valentine and hope to get Amelia out of the way.

But Ma, Settimo, my father, and me… I don’t know.

“Which one was your nephew?” I ask, just to get his leering eyes off Amelia. “The coward or the big one?”

Valentine’s eyes widen as he snaps his head to me.

“The coward, right? You know he cried before he was thrown off the ledge? I swear to God, I heard him begging for his mommy on the way down.”

“You motherfucker,” Valentine says, his voice low.

“Or maybe he was begging for you. I don’t know, to be honest, I was more interested in the splat.”

Valentine growls and lunges toward me. I jerk the knife from my sleeve and grasp it just in time for him to barrel into me. I feel the friction on the knife as it digs into Valentine’s stomach, hopefully puncturing his intestine.

“Fuck!” he yelps, backing up and looking down at the red circle growing on his shirt. Blood drips from my knife.

Nico and Ma stand to the left of me, and I stab the knife into his neck before anyone can think to react. Blood sprays and Ma screams.

“Run!” I yell, dropping the knife and going for my gun before the others do.

Ma runs into the dining room, and the men scramble for their weapons. One gets to it before me, and a bullet wizzes past my head.

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