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I took one to my shoulder as I dodged the rest, but holding back all four of them became impossible. I needed help, and as I looked over my shoulder at one of the men who had passed me, I found Luca giving me all the help I needed. He disarmed the man easily, and I heard as he grunted through each hard hit. One of the men trying to get past me stepped back and lifted his weapon, and I had only enough time to dive atop him, knocking his gun from his hands and allowing the other two forward.
“Fuuuck!” I shouted as I landed hard on my arm. I grabbed the man’s gun from his hand as he fell beside me and pointed it at his head before pulling the trigger. I aimed at one of the two men who rushed at Luca, but the gun only clicked. I didn’t give myself even a moment to think about the aching in my arm or the way I felt a small trickle of blood easing down my head and into my eye. I swiped it away as I charged and grabbed the leg of the man aiming his gun at Luca. This time, though, he pulled the trigger before I could stop him.
I gasped in horror as the man went down from my attack, hitting his forehead on the floor. It disoriented him long enough for me to reach for the knife block on the side of the counter and pull a knife from it. The whole thing crashed to the floor beside us, but I crawled atop his body and plunged the long steak knife into his throat. He gasped for a few seconds, sputtering up blood, before going unconscious.
My eyes trailed up to where Luca still stood, holding the man he’d been fighting as a human shield. I couldn’t help a sigh of relief as I realized the gunshot hadn’t hit Luca at all. It had hit one of my father’s men in the fleshy part of his leg.
I couldn’t bring myself to stand for a long moment, but it didn’t matter this time. Not as Luca threw the man to the side and he bounced back, standing as if he still had plenty of fight left in him, despite the gunshot wound. Luca rushed forward and slammed the gun from the man’s hand. I watched in surprise as Luca showed brutal hand-to-hand skills. He destroyed the man with nothing more than his fists, and when the man fell, he finished him with a swift gunshot.
Luca stood in the middle of the room, catching his breath as I remained sitting, heaving in all the air I could. He stepped toward me with all his impressive bulk, and he offered me a red-tinted hand. I nodded and took it, heaving myself up with a groan. He observed every crevice of my face, reaching forward and wiping some blood from my forehead. I tested my arm and sighed in relief when only a tinge of pain came from the motions. There was no break, and that’s what mattered most. “You’re one crazy motherfucker,” he said, shaking his head with a straight face. “But thank you.”
I only nodded, forcing myself to stand straighter as I looked at the carnage in the kitchen. We’d taken out ten men—nearly a third of the ones coming. It had been pure luck that my father had given the order for his men to keep me alive, and I’d used it to my advantage. Luca and I returned to the main room. I had no idea how long had passed—it could’ve been minutes or an hour—but we found the remainder of Vincent’s tactical team inside and a man on his knees in the center of the room. Blood dripped from his mouth, but he didn’t look otherwise injured.
I caught Vincent’s gaze as he stood over the man, and my heart dropped for just a moment. A part of me expected him to come forward and shout at me for having something to do with this attack. I expected him to shove me into a wall and tell me it had all been my fault. I recalled my father shouting at me for making small mistakes in the past, and my mind was still conditioned to receive that form of treatment. Why the hell had I allowed myself to be treated that way for so long?
Instead, though, he rushed forward. He reached a hand out for me, and I flinched. Concern etched across every line of his face as he dragged a thumb lightly across my forehead. “Are you okay?” he asked. He looked almost unmarred by the attack, and it didn’t look like anyone had gotten inside on this side of the house. I noticed blood on his sleeves, so I knew he did some sort of fighting, but I wondered if it was as intense as what Luca and I had faced.
I nodded, and I felt a deep sense of guilt in my chest for this entire situation as I noticed a few men at the windows on the ground, lying in pools of their blood. On the outside, over a dozen people lay on the lawn, not one of them quite yet to the house. “Are you?”
“I am. It’s over,” he told me, moving his hand down my cheek before wrapping an arm around my waist. He looked over my shoulder and eyed Luca, in noticeably worse shape than me. “Thank you,” he told the man.
“Thank her,” Luca said. “She took out more guys than me.”
Vincent gave me an impressed look. But it hadn’t been a challenge. Something in my mind had flipped. I’d done it to protect Luca and all the people here. I’d done it because they no longer felt like enemies. They felt likemypeople.
Vincent’s gaze dropped back to the man in the center of the room, and his gaze hardened. “Take him to the basement to be questioned,” he said, and three of his guards lifted the bleeding man and did as he asked. As people worked to remove the bodies of both our people and my father’s, my chest ached from the intense guilt that this had all been my fault. I’d been the one to send my father a text message. I could’ve called and explained the situation, and maybe he would have understood…
I cut off my thoughts. No, he wouldn’t have. This was inevitable, and I should be thankful I was here to lessen the bloodshed. He did this because of me, and now that I had decided to stay with Vincent, he’d have the full support of the Commission to do whatever he needed to do to get me back.
20
VINCENT COLOMBO
All I could focus on was the still bleeding cut on the top of Mia’s forehead as she followed me around the manor and helped clean up the mess her father had caused. When I walked into the kitchen, finding bullet holes in the walls, countertop, and refrigerator, I gaped. Ten bodies lay strewn about the room, and I considered how Mia and Luca had done this by themselves. How had neither of them sustained far more life-threatening injuries? I pulled Mia more tightly into my side, speechless at the sight.
“Don’t,” she said, and I looked down at her with furrowed brows. “Don’t get pissed off at what happened. They’re all dead, and that’s enough of a payment for what they did.”
I took a deep breath. “Whichever one gave you that cut deserves a far longer and more brutal death than what he got here today.”
She scoffed but didn’t say anything more as we made our way through the rest of the house and ensured it had been properly cleared of her father’s men. Mia pulled me to a stop as we approached her door, and she shook her head. “We can go and clean up after we get the answers from the man in the basement.”
“I want you to have your cut cleaned first,” I demanded, but she shook her head.
“We take care of the most important thing first.”
“You’re the most important thing.”
She snorted. “No, I’m really not.”
I wanted to argue, but she left no room for debate as she turned and pulled me toward the basement stairs. She released my hand as we walked down them, and she paused at the landing, staring at where the man sagged in the center of the room. His arms hung above him as ropes held each of his wrists upright. His entire body weight dangled from where the rope held his wrists, and I smirked at the discomfort on his face as I passed by Mia, sliding a hand across her waist.
“I plan to ask you a few questions, and I amreallylooking forward to doing it the hard way,” I told him, moving toward the rack of tools a few feet from him. I slid a finger over the tip of many weapons. Hurting him would be a gift, and he had no idea how serious I was about that. Mia’s blood flashed in my mind, and it made me feral.“Let’s begin, shall we?” I gripped a long fillet knife, one traditionally used to cut into fish. I knew how sharp it’d be.
“You don’t need to do none of that,” the man said, shaking his head. “I’ll talk.”
I made a sound of disappointment and gestured for one of the guards to lower him to the floor. He did so slowly, leaving the man’s arms tied, but loose enough that he could grip the angry bruise over one of his ribs as he hunched. “Well, go ahead, then.”
Mia stepped at my side, her face just as tight as mine. The man looked at her and held her gaze for a moment. I stepped forward and slid the blade across his chest, making sure to nick one of his nipples. “What the fuck!” he shouted, grabbing the narrow slice and groaning in pain.
