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The pot looked sizable at least.
The first person to spot me was a gigantic guy big enough to have been a defensive linebacker on a football team sometime in his life. His eyes grew as wide as saucers when he saw me from across the room. He pointed from his spot on the couch and turned to tell the other guy with him in the room about me, but I had already squeezed the trigger, sending a bullet sailing straight into his skull before he could say a single word.
That gunshot was the first of many.
Anthony’s soldiers were untrained, but there were many of them. I threw myself up against a wall, shooting around the corner at every opportunity. Shouts erupted as more men poured into the room. Their reaction times were slow. They took too long to take aim and even longer to pull the trigger, which my men took advantage of.
Jon was in the center of the room. He was tied to a chair with his hands cuffed behind his back. Someone had used a liberal amount of duct tape to cover his mouth and he was blindfolded along with it.
His face was covered in blood. It appeared that he’d been punched in the nose. He wasn’t moving, but I could tell that his chest was still rising and falling. He might be resting and conserving his strength, or someone might have clocked him hard enough for him to pass out.
A shot went wild, and a bottle shattered behind me.
I dove behind the bar, ducking as another bottle broke into a million shards of glass to my left. My shoes crunched on the broken pieces, but my soles were thick as I took cover.
One of the men shot several bullets in quick succession, quickly emptying out the magazine. I listened closely, almost rolling my eyes as I listened to him try to load it with more bullets. Several of them clinked against the floor as he dropped them.
I jumped back up, got off a shot, and caught him in the arm. He yelled out in shock, dropping the gun to the floor. He didn’t last much longer as I squeezed the trigger again.
A shot right between the eyes killed him immediately.
I’d never really much been a man for violence and torture. I only utilized those tools when I needed to, but never more than necessary. A bullet clipped my shoulder, and I gritted my teeth from the burning agony.
I stood up just enough to peek over the bar. The room was filling up with more of Anthony’s men. I could see Frank leading the rest of my men through the door on the other side of the room. Our enemy hadn’t noticed them yet. I would use that to my advantage.
The stench of blood was heavy in the air. Already, my men had taken down at least six of them and there were still ten of them left. It appeared that the more inexperienced ones had fallen first. We could take the rest out fairly easily, but I wanted to give them a chance to walk out of here alive first.
“My name is Cyrus Holt. Some of you may know me. Some of you may not,” I began.
Several of them gasped.
“Cyrus,” one bellowed.
“Holt,” another exclaimed with terror.
“The big boss,” another shrieked.
I cocked my weapon and stood up. My men took aim beside me as Frank and the rest moved into position behind them. We had them surrounded now. I leveled my weapon with the man at the center, the one who seemed to oversee those left. He lifted his chin, trying to call on some sort of bravado as he stared down the barrel of my gun.
“What’s your name?” I asked him directly.
“Brandon,” he answered. I didn’t push him for his last name. Maybe he didn’t want to tell me, or he was protecting his family from the likes of me. Smart.
“Brandon, you know who I am, don’t you?” I asked pointedly. He glanced at my trigger finger anxiously and then back to me. He and I both know that I could decide to kill him and that there wouldn’t be enough time for him to jump out of the way.
“I do know who you are,” he replied. His voice trembled just a hair, which told me everything I needed to know.
“Then you know what I’m capable of, that I would slaughter every single one of you without a second thought if you tried to get in my way,” I threatened, and he nodded his head.
Frank closed in from behind, the four of them spiraling outward to cover more ground.
Brandon held up his hand, glancing around at his fellow soldiers.
“I want Jon,” I said simply.
“If we let you take him, the rest of us are as good as dead,” he returned.
“That is true, I suppose, which is why I would like to make you an offer,” I proposed with a growing smirk. Frank moved quickly after that, pressing the end of his gun against the back of Brandon’s head.
