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One of the servers called out over the chatter that dinner was about to be served. As I walked toward my seat by the foot of the table across from Colt at the head, Dad caught my arm. He leaned to speak gruffly by my ear. “Let’s see more of that smile. Remember this is ahappyoccasion.”
I gritted my teeth behind the grin I plastered on. “I know.” I’d been a lot happierbeforehe’d spoken to me. My hatred unfurled like tendrils in my chest.
Just one more day.
I wasn’t getting away from him just yet. He sat down next to me, and I let my fingers curl around my fork. Imagining stabbing him with it also made me happier.
You could do a lot of damage with a fork. I knew from personal experience when one of the lower-level Claws lackeys had tried to get handsy with me.
Everyone had taken their seats except the servers, who were standing back as if waiting for permission to fetch the food, and Colt, who’d stayed on his feet at the head of the table. His cousins and a few other close associates from his gang had turned toward him. He raised his glass, and everyone quieted down. Even the music stopped.
“Thank you for coming, everyone,” my fiancé said. “I’d like to make a toast. Here’s to the beginning of a new era for the Steel Knights!”
Something twitched in my stomach. Why would he mention the Steel Knights and not the Claws too?
That was all the warning I got before the servers around the table whipped guns from beneath their aprons.
Colt’s men jumped up from the table, drawing their own concealed weapons, and the room exploded with ear-splitting booms of gunfire. Uncle Steven caught two to the chest in mid-yell. Aunt Renee’s scream was cut off by a bullet to her neck. As I sprang out of my chair, her blood splattered all over my dress. I looked down at it with shaking hands.
Colt’s eyes were pure ice as he pulled out a pistol of his own and aimed it at my father. His first shot caught Dad in the shoulder.
Dad lurched and more shots rang out around us. My heart racing, I dropped down beneath the level of the table. My knees jarred against the tiled floor.
“You traitor!” Dad shouted, heaving to his feet.
“It’s only business, Tyrell,” Colt replied, crisp and even.
With another bang, Dad fell to the floor, his eyes staring. Blood streamed from a circular wound in the middle of his forehead.
He was dead. They werealldead.
I stared numbly at the bodies scattered around the table, limp and blood-splattered. Oh, God,Grandmawas lying there just a few feet away from me, one last gurgle working its way out of her throat. The front of her dress was drenched with red.
No, no—this couldn’t be happening—
“Make sure you geteveryone,” Colt said in the same awful voice, and my own blood turned cold. He meant me too.
Grief and horror constricted my chest, but my heart was still pounding, my fingers still clutching the damn fork. A searing haze closed in on my mind.
I’d been so close to claiming my freedom. So goddamned close. Just one more day…
I wasnotgoing to fucking die here.
My head jerked around. The two bodyguards had left the door to join in the carnage. At the same moment as I marked their positions, one of them caught sight of me.
I flung myself toward one of the smaller restaurant tables, ricocheting this way and that as years of tumbling and parkour practice guided my body, trying to keep some kind of furniture between me and the various attackers while my pulse thundered on in my head.
There must have been a couple of people on the Claws side still living, because a few more shots rang out behind me, followed by a thump. I dove right under another table and sprang out the other side, hurtling toward the door—
Anotherbangrattled my eardrums, and a blazing pain cut across my upper arm.No.
Swallowing a gasp, I threw myself onward. One of the servers charged at me, and I whirled to the side just long enough to stab the fork as deep as I could into his gun hand. Then I burst past the door into the night.
Pain kept throbbing in my arm. Shouts carried after me. I dashed along the sidewalk, stumbling and then kicking off my stupid heels. My bare feet pushed me faster, but footsteps stomped out of the restaurant behind me.
At the end of the block, a guy was standing next to his car, one hand resting on the open door. He tossed his keys into the air with the other as he chatted with friends at a patio table lit by café windows.
I summoned a fresh burst of speed. The guy and his friends all whipped around at the sound of my feet, but I was close enough. I snatched the keys and dove past the open car door.
