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The remaining guard grabs his gun and starts shooting in our direction, and we jump back, trying to scramble for cover.
“Fuck!” Knox curses.
More of Julian’s guards come rushing out of the room, armed and ready to fight, and it turns into chaos. The guards yell to each other, taking shots at us where they can. They rush down the hall, trying to overtake us in the same way we just tried to do to their buddies.
Knox roars his fury now that being quiet is a pipe dream, and he lashes out, knocking the guards back and taking a couple on with his bare hands, not really seeming to give a shit that they’re firing on him.
“Knox!” Gage calls out, ducking into one of the empty rooms as a storm of bullets rings out. “Get the fuck back here before you get shot!”
It’s hard to see in the chaos if Knox gets hurt, but when he ends up next to me, he seems alright. He’s breathing hard, and there’s fire in his eyes. These fuckers are standing between us and finishing this. Between us and rescuing Priest.
We can’t let that happen.
Bullets fly as we return fire, taking out what guards we can. They shoot back, and there are so many of them that we can’t move forward. They have us pinned down in a little corner, and it’s all we can do to defend ourselves.
The whole time I’m shooting, trying to make some progress, I can’t help the creeping feeling of terror that settles in my gut like acid.
What if Julian has heard the commotion and is killing Priest right now?
Logically, I know he probably isn’t. He wouldn’t resort to that unless he had to, since Priest is the only leverage he has against us. If he kills him, he’ll have nothing to bargain with.
So I keep pressing forward, holding on to that thought and letting it drive me.
Priest is still alive, and I have to get to him.
When Gage takes out one of Julian’s guards, sending him careening into a wall with a hole in his head, I see an opening. Without thinking, without hesitating for even a fraction of a second, I take it.
“Cover me!” I call to Gage as I dart forward, slipping down the hallway toward the room where Priest is being kept.
Gage curses, but he does what I asked. He, Ash, and Knox take on the remaining guards, holding them off while I slip into the room. I glance around quickly to get my bearings, and my heart seizes when I see the place where Priest is chained to the wall.
Julian lunges for Priest, and I draw my gun again and shoot at him, desperate to keep him away from the blond man.
I manage to clip Julian’s shoulder, and I lunge forward to finish the job, aiming for his head. Before I can get a shot off, Julian runs at me. Pure hate and disdain contort his features, and I try to duck back out of the way, but he nails me before I can get too far, bringing me down to the ground.
The wind is almost knocked out of me as we land on the hard concrete floor. My gun goes flying, and when I try to scrabble for it, Julian pins me down.
“Get the fuck off me!” I shout, grappling with him.
“I’m going to fucking kill you, you fucking bitch,” he growls. “You can finally be with your precious sister in hell.”
Any other time, I would have bristled at the idea that Hannah would go anywhere near hell if a place like that even existed. But now I’m too focused on the fight.
My gun went skittering across the floor in the struggle, and I don’t see where it went. That leaves me with just my bare hands as I try to fight off Julian. I put a hand on his face and push him away from me, trying to flip our positions so I can get on top.
It takes two tries, but I finally manage to roll us over. I straddle him, grabbing a fistful of his hair and slamming his head into the hard floor with a dull thud. He roars in pain, but instead of leaving him dazed like I hoped it would, the pain just seems to send a wave of adrenaline through him. He lashes out at me, slapping me across the face hard enough that my ears ring.
I jam my knee down, aiming for his groin, and he rolls away just in time to avoid it.
“You fucking bitch!” he screams, sounding wild and unhinged. “You cunt!”
I don’t waste my breath trading insults with him. And I don’t give him a chance to get away from me, grabbing him and putting all my weight into it. He struggles underneath me and ends up elbowing me in the stomach, winding me for long enough that he can flip our positions again and get an advantage over me.
All at once, I’m hit with a vivid flashback, one so real that it’s like I’ve been forced backward in time.
Julian’s face is hovering over mine, twisted into a mask of rage and desperation, and it reminds me of his father and the night I killed him.
Lorenzo and I fought just like this, grappling and trying to get one up on each other, each determined to get the upper hand. All I knew in that moment was that Lorenzo couldn’t live through the fight. He couldn’t be allowed to walk out of that bathroom and go on with his life. I had to kill him. There was no other choice.
