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38
“You need to get to her right now!” Mr Carmichael orders, firing off shots down the hall. He looks directly at Malakai who nods, slipping from the room and running full pelt in the opposite direction of the guards, whilst Mr Carmichael covers his escape. He doesn’t question. He doesn’t look back. He runs to find the person he cares about most, even if he denies it to himself: Connie.
“What the actual fuck!” Camden exclaims, pulling off his mask and swearing with the sharp sting. His face is covered in blood, a thick slash mark runs from his temple across his cheek. My heart thunders but he doesn’t seem to notice the pain, too intent on staring at Mr Carmichael.
“What are you doing here?” Ford asks
“I’ve no time to explain. Get out of here!” Mr Carmichael shouts, still firing shots from his gun.
Ford helps Sonny lift Pink, whilst I reach for Eastern whose face is drained of colour, his knees buckling in shock. He’s looking at the guard who has his kitchen knife sticking out of his chest.
“I killed him…” he whispers, ripping off his face mask and drawing in deep stuttering breaths. “I fucking killed him.”
Drawing his face between my palms I squeeze his cheeks just like I used to do when we were kids and he needed someone to drag him out of his fury or his sadness. “Focus, Eastern. You did what you had to do. Now we need to go.”
I flash a look at Camden who is now watching Mr Carmichael with narrowed eyes, his balled-up mask pressed against his face. I know what he’s thinking, because it’s the same as the rest of us. What the fuck is the principal of our school doing here?
“You’ve less than three minutes before the King reigns hellfire on all of us. I can only hold the rest of his guards off for so long. GET THE FUCK OUT!” Mr Carmichael roars at us.
Gathering Pink in his arms, Sonny heads back down the stairs into the cellar, presumably so he can haul her out of the window and get her to the car waiting beyond. Eastern and Camden follow him, but I linger at the top of the stairs, Ford by my side.
“What about you?” I say to Carmichael as he reloads his gun and fires off a few more rounds.
“I’m here to atone for my family’s sins, Asia. Now fucking go!”
We run.
Above us the sounds of gunshots still ring in the air, but I have no time to think about anything other than getting Pink to safety. Ford climbs out of the window first, whilst Camden holds it open so we can slide a half-conscious Pink into his strong arms. Once she’s clear of the ledge, we all pile out after her. We don’t wait to see if there are any guards left on the grounds, Ford simply scoops Pink into his arms and legs it to the spot where Kate is waiting in the car.
Except when we get there, she’s gone.
“Well, if it ain’t the Brady Bunch,” a voice says, stepping out of the darkness.
My skin crawls, my heart races, my world stops fucking spinning as Monk steps out of the shadows with Kate, a gun pressed to her temple.
“Make one wrong move and she dies,” he sneers and Kate whimpers. Her eyes are filled with regret, with acceptance even. She believes she’s going to die.
Fuck that.
“You bastard!” Camden growls, his fists clenched to his side as more men step out of the darkness. All of them are tooled up, guns cocked ready to fire. Ma Silva was wrong. The King has far more guards than any of us had anticipated.
We’re fighting a losing battle. Monk knows it, and now so do we.
Sonny steps in front of me, his instinct to protect me overriding everything else. “You don’t want to do this, Monk. Let us go. You’ve had your fun.”
“Fun?” His laugh is brittle, broken, and like the gathering storm full of destructive intent. He has no intention of letting us go. “The party’s just getting started, Sonny, and it looks like you’re all the guests of honour. Except for Kate here, she’smineto play with now.”
We all watch as he buries his nose in Kate’s hair and draws in a deep breath. She is shaking so violently that I worry Monk’s going to pull the trigger by mistake. I will her with my eyes to calm down.
“What the fuck do you want from us?” Ford grinds out, a still unconscious Pink in his arms.
“If I had my way you’d be dead already, but it seems the King has other plans. He wishes the pleasure of your company. The King, our father, wants to see his daughter, and where she goes so do you all, apparently.”
“Move!” a nameless man orders us, cocking his gun and jerking his head.
For one crazy moment I consider fighting back. It’s what I’ve always done. Fight. But as the heavens open once more and the sky cracks with thunder, the storm pelting us from all sides, I make the only choice I can, I turn around and start walking towards the Palace knowing that Monk is right; where I go, so to do my boys, even if that is straight into Hell.
* * *
