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“Take cover, man,” he says. “Don’t commit suicide over this.”
“Just look what those bastards are doing. This is our turf,” I growl, hoping to convince them to go out with guns blazing.
“Don’t do it.” Arsen reaches out and physically restrains me.
But it’s not just the destruction of my bar that has me feeling like I’m losing control. What’s even worse is bearing witness to all the innocent people—my dancers, my revolving door of women, my patrons—collapsing as they get hit. It’s flat-out murder, and my heart hurts to think that I can’t even make a move to protect them.
A couple bartenders get hit, the waitresses, and a number of my regular patrons. I’m certain at least thirty are dead, probably more.
Catching sight of Apollo and Ares across the room, I glance around, looking for an opening for them to get over here. When I see it, I gesture to the others and we make our move to cover them while they bound across toward us, shooting bullets over their shoulders. A couple of the masked men fall but still not enough to make a difference. When they reach, we all take cover.
One burning question is foremost on their minds, and Apollo says it first. “Where’s Caroline?”
I know how he feels. She’s become special to me, to all of us, and the experience we just had confirms it. She’s more than just a way to get my rocks off. She’s more than just a body. I care about her.
The thought of her beautiful face bearing witness to this is too much. I want her out of the field of violence. Not even my lust is aroused by this. It’s just a sad, sore sight. Innocent people dying and our home turf being invaded.
“She’s safe,” Samuel says. “We have her tucked away upstairs. She should be fine up there as long as we keep the shooters down here.”
Knowing that Caroline’s safe is the only bright side to this whole fucked up mess. I remember how she was so pliable and willing to fuck upstairs in that massage room. But I’d feel a whole lot better if she was out of the building entirely. Thinking of her facing the slightest chance of danger is too much. I’m starting to fall for this girl—that much is becoming clear—and that’s something that never happens.
“We have to go to her,” I say trying to cover the tone of desperation in my voice. “She needs to have us all there to protect her. Get the bodyguards down here to handle this.”
“Already on it,” Apollo says. “They have us outnumbered. Our guards are going to have a hard time shutting this down.”
“Fuck!” I scream out in frustration. Not what I want to hear.
I’m wondering yet again how this happened. I just can’t figure it out. Our crew is always on top of everything that goes down in this town, especially in relation to Sin, Inc. And now it’s raining bullets over our heads in our own goddamn headquarters.
“We have to go in, handguns or not. We need to win this thing.”
We start strategizing our plan when gunfire abruptly comes from behind us in the stairwell.
Fuck! No, no, no, not this.
“Do you guys hear that?” I yell over the sound of bullets shattering all that was once my greatest source of pride.
“Yeah,” Apollo says, alarm in his voice. “They’re in the stairwell. You know what that means—they’re headed for a target.”
Caroline.
We all have her on our minds, and the thought of what could happen has me frozen in time for a moment. I can’t move from the sheer terror of losing my girl, the only girl I could love. I’ve never been so concerned about somebody before. If she dies, if she meets her fate at the hands of these masked gunmen, there will be no reason for me to go on. In just this short amount of time, that’s how much she’s come to mean to me.
“We have to get back to her.” My voice is as steely as my resolve.
We turn to go, and to perhaps meet our own fate in the narrow halls of the stairwell. For all the hard living I’ve done, I guess you could say I won’t be sorry to go—only sorry to lose Caroline and to expose her to more pain and hurt than she’s already felt.
But this is it. The clock’s run out. Time to make our move.
We either die tonight or go down trying.
Chapter 22
Apollo
We race up the stairs, ready to take out the men who stand between us and Caroline. She’ll be so happy to see me. I’m the only one she’s aching for right now, I’m sure of it. She knows that I’m the best at taking away the pain. I’m all she needs.
We kill everyone in our path, ripping into them with a barrage of gunfire that downs them all in seconds flat. Nothing will stand in the way of us reaching Caroline. But there are still seventeen fucking floors to ascend. And each one feels like a mile.
