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‘I heard,’ he signs with his free hand.
I shake him loose. ‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘Yes, but not yet.’ His eyes are ablaze. ‘Phoenix and James are at the front. Alice is on the sofa, and Aldis is standing in front of her. Ricci is standing near the front door, and Guido has his back to the kitchen. You’ll need to be quick. Take Aldis out at the knee or the thigh, but avoid any place where he’ll bleed out. I’m going to give Phoenix the signal. He’ll subdue Ricci once you have Aldis down.’
I realize what he’s not saying. Romano is his, and that’s something I can live with. He’s allowing me to be responsible for setting the scene, and that’s enough. That’s more than enough. I surge forward and kiss him, and he hums, just a quiet whisper of noise into my mouth while his hand tangles in the back of my hair.
I indulge for only a second because there’s no way in hell I’m letting Alice sit there in front of those bastards any longer.
“Go,” he whispers.
So I do.
The door slides open almost silently, and striding forward, I pass through the archway that kept me hidden from these three morons, raise my gun, and fire before Aldis can say a word. He drops to the ground, his hands bracing himself on the coffee table as my bullet grazes his kneecap.
Alice sucks in a breath, but the look on her face is worth everything because she’s pissed, and she’s fucking happy to see me.
There’s a single shout where Ricci and Romano try to mobilize, but the door flies open, and before anyone can react, Phoenix has Ricci pinned to the wall by his throat, a gun at his temple. I look over my shoulder to Romano, who hasn’t said a word, and I can see why.
Kane has him. He’s behind him, a hand wrapped around his throat, and there’s no doubt a weapon against his back.
“Took you long enough,” Alice says, her voice wobbling.
James is at her side as though he materialized there, and I dart forward to drag Aldis away while James gathers her into his grasp and presses a hard, desperate kiss to her temple. “We wanted to give you your moment of glory,” he says, then pulls back.
It’s at the same moment for all of us, I think—apart from Phoenix—that we notice her face. A bruise under her eye, a bloodied lip, and there are some rust-colored stains on her robe near her shoulder.
James swallows thickly, catching my gaze first, then Kane’s, before he looks back at her. “Who did this to you?”
Alice snorts. “Marco knocked me out, then slapped me. Guido joined in on the fun when he didn’t like my backtalk.”
“She deserved it,” Guido spits.
It’s all he manages to say before I lose control and let my fist fly, knocking him back into Kane as the bone beneath my knuckles gives a sharp crack.
Kane’s grip on his throat tightens, and his face goes red. “Those are the last words you’re ever going to say, old friend.”
Guido opens his mouth, but then his eyes go wide before they roll back, and he slumps to the ground, leaving Kane’s hand exposed with a syringe pinched between his fingers.
I drop my foot against Aldis’ chest, who doesn’t struggle because the idiot knows better—fuck, he knows so much better than this—and I look at Marco, who has pissed himself. There’s a dark stain on the front of his cream trousers, and Phoenix sniffs once before he grimaces.
“Fuck’s sake.”
“He can ride in the boot,” James says, not looking over while he gently traces Alice’s swollen lip. “Give him more water. Maybe he’ll piss all over these two on the ride home.”
Phoenix grins, then tips Marco’s head up just slightly. “Take a good look around. This is the last time you’ll ever see the sun ever again.”
Chapter 18
KANE
Marco wasthe first to die. He spilled his secrets as readily as Ari spilled his blood, though there wasn’t much left for us to learn except that I owed Alice an apology for the sin of not trusting her about Leo. Ari didn’t need to work on him long before he admitted that he and Romano had cut Leo off from almost all resources years ago. In their eyes, he was weak, emotional, and useless.
Alice had known, but I’d assumed that Marco couldn’t be a threat without his brother.
And that was something that I’d never allow myself to be absolved from.
Ari finished Marco off before Alice was done being treated for her concussion, but he wasn’t the one we’d wanted to save for her, anyway. Guido was still unconscious, on an IV drip on the table. We’d wake him when it was time, but Aldis was next on my list.
