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CHAPTER1
Angel
The courier girl was cute. As she handed me the manilla envelope, her eyes scanned the surroundings of Club Eliseo before landing back on mine. She held my gaze, and I sawincendio. Fire.
If only I didn’t have a thousand things to do.
She would have been a fun distraction. In the middle of her speech about whatever service she worked for when I turned away, mind already on the next task. I heard a faint click from behind me, and then something slammed into me, sending me tumbling to the ground.
There were screams. I grabbed the body on top of mine and rolled us and looked down into the courier girl’s startled, frightened face. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I spat.
She pointed a shaking finger towards the bar. “He tried to shoot you!”
Before I could ask anything else, the front door of the club flew open, and hell rained down on us. Gunfire exploded over my head, shots discharging in rapid succession. Over the sound of bullets denting the platinum finish of my club, I could hear my men shouting and my younger brother Omar barking orders. Fucking Omar. He wasnevergoing to let me live it down that a courier got the jump on me.
I reached into my jacket for the holstered gun there and stood, aiming and firing at the bastard behind my bar first. My speed caught him by surprise, and a bullet lodged deep in his chest. Blood bloomed across his white work shirt, and he fell backward into the shelves of liquor behind him, shattering bottles and sending others crashing to the floor as he crumpled into a puddle of expensive whiskey.
I swung around, firing at the men trying to come through the door of the club. My ears rang with the noise. “ETA on cops?” I shouted at Omar. There was no way that someone out on Ocean Drive hadn’t called. Luckily, we always got a heads up when they were on their way.
Omar spared a look at his smart watch to read his text messages. “Less than ten.”Shit. We weren’t going to have time to clear the bodies. I mentally added another zero to the “donation” check we sent quarterly to the Miami PD. “Are these Rojas’s men?” I fired and watched red spatter across the walls. The smell of gunpowder and copper pennies filled the room, so did the sounds of men groaning and dying. “Angel?”
One of the men wrapped his hands around my lieutenant Esteban’s throat, and I reached out, yanked his head back by his greasy hair, and put a bullet through his right eye. He dropped with a heavy thud. “I don’t know. Find one that’s still alive.”
The shooting stopped, and Omar looked down at the carnage around him. He swore aloud. “I’ll do my best.” He shifted through the bodies of the men who came through our door and came up with two who were still conscious. Omar and Esteban dragged them across the club and tossed them at my feet.
One of the men was young, twenty at the most, and he was bleeding from a nasty cut on his head. He’d caught the butt of a gun to his face but remained stoic, giving away nothing. “Who sent you?” I asked him. He clenched his jaw in answer, and I levelled my gun against his temple. “Tell me, and I’ll let you live.”
“If you don’t kill me,” he spat out, “I won’t live long when I go back. I’m dead either way, so I think I’ll go out loyal.”
I turned to the other man. He was significantly older and already sniveling. He smelled strongly of piss.Fucking pathetic. “And you?” I asked. “Do you feel the same way?”
The man shook his head, sucking in a shuddery breath. “The Rojas family sent us.”
“Traitor!” the boy hissed and spat at him.
I tucked the barrel of my gun under the older man’s chin, bringing his gaze to mine. “Why did they send you?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he all but wailed. He was shaking now. “He didn’t tell us why. Just to bring back proof that you were dead.”
“Luis Rojas wants me, specifically, dead?” I popped the clip out of my gun; I had one bullet left.A message only needs one messenger, I thought. “Tell your boss that his plan was shit, and that he’ll be hearing from me personally.”
I aimed the gun at the kid’s head, met the fury in his eyes, and then shifted the barrel to his companion and squeezed the trigger. The back of his head blew outward, and I heard a yelp from behind him. The body slumped to the ground, and the courier girl came back into view. Her face was spattered with blood and bits of flesh; it made her light brown hair look darker. She shouldn’t be that pretty, given the look of horror on her face and the gore she was now covered in. But her hand shook as she raised it to touch one of her plump lips, and my gaze was drawn there. It was ruby red, as if she’d bitten it in fear.
Her eyes met mine, and I could see the scream before it escaped her lips.Thiswas the woman who saved me from that first shot? Fury boiled in my gut, and I stepped over the body. She tried to scramble back, but she slammed into the bar and nearly knocked down a stool for her trouble.
I wrapped my arm around her upper arm and yanked her to her feet; she squeaked in fear and tried to pull away, but I placed the barrel of my gun beneath her chin. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”
Her eyes, a crystalline blue, were wide and full of fear.Good, I thought.She should be fucking afraid. “Please,” she breathed out, barely more than whispering. “Please, don’t —”
I pressed the barrel harder into her skin. “Give me a reason not to,” I said, almost crooning the words to her. “Tell me that you weren’t a part of this little scheme. That you didn’t back down at the last second like a goddamn coward.” I leaned in and could smell the sweet scent of her skin beneath the blood and gore that was already becoming tacky. “It would have been better for you if he had killed me, you know.”
The girl’s eyes went sightless and rolled back into her head. I sighed as she went boneless, becoming dead weight in my arms, and contemplated dropping her.
“What are we doing with her?” Omar asked.
It would be simpler to kill her and dump the body…but she had saved me, and all my men had seen it: I owed her a life debt...which meant I was fucked. “I need to talk with Padre.”
Omar nodded and swept the girl over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “We need to go before the police show up. Este can stay and clear it up.”
