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Sebastian
Thetrucksmashesintous, and the rear glass shatters instantly. We’re thrown into the dashboard, and the car is pushed off the road. Metal squeals, and the car plunges into a side ditch as we’re pushed up on an angle. We’re completely exposed to the road.
We both reach for the shotguns as the truck comes to a stop behind us. There’s screaming and the sound of guns cocking.
I unbuckle my seatbelt and reach for the grenade that Luca’s packed. I pull the pin and throw it out my window. We scramble out of his side of the car and down into the grass. The grenade explodes, and the car rattles and shakes as their truck takes the brunt of the blast. My ears are ringing and my vision is blurry. Luca is the same but slaps my face to get me to focus. We point at the opposite ends of the car as gunfire opens up on us. It pings and ricochets off the car, and a few even break through, with the dirt around us whispering bullet hits.
Luca and I shuck our guns and wait for the lull in the fire. Once it happens, we rise from both sides, splitting their draw. The gun is like a biting shark and explodes from my hands with body shakingfoom.Their car takes more damage as we blast our way forward. It’s already heavily damaged from the grenade, but as we finish it off, the men hiding behind it can only scream in fear. One man rising to shoot Luca dies screaming with a bloody blooming chest as he falls backwards. Another rolls out to get us, and I make sure he doesn’t finish what he started.
Another engine is heard, and a second set of lights come on. But the car is reversing away from us and fleeing.
It draws our focus away, and then gunfire sounds to our right from the men in the warehouse. As we turn, Luca screams as a bullet tears through his arm. He drops to a kneel, firing his shotgun with weak arms. The gun flies from his grip, and his aim is off, but he kneecaps one of the men from a distance. He falls screaming as I take aim at the last guy and put him down.
“Luca?” I say, coming to him. He’s swearing in Italian and furious. “You okay?”
“Figlio di puttana,” he hisses. “My arm. My fucking arm.” He searches about for the shotgun and uses it as a crutch, standing up with my help.
We move on to the man blasted through the knees, watching him as he screams and rolls about. Our shadows slowly envelope him, and when he sees us coming, he stifles a cry and makes a desperate reach for his gun.
Luca stops him by stomping his knee. His scream rings out into the night.
My gun is trained on him, and he looks up at us with contempt mixed with fear. I hope for his sake that Mimi isn’t dead. Luca grounds his foot, and the man screams again.
A door bangs open, and people are stumbling from the warehouse. Carlos and Mimi collapse and fall to the floor.
“Go,” Luca says. “I will wait with my friend here and have a chat.”
I run for them. I don’t care if there’re any more Russians hiding or waiting to spring a trap; I can only assume they’re all dead.
I come up onto the cement platform as Mimi is cradling Carlos’ head in her lap. “What happened?”
“He’s gonna be okay, isn’t he, Sebastian?” Mimi asks in a small voice.
I look at the blood staining his shirt. I look at the blood seeping out onto the floor and the trail of it that leads back inside and to a man dead in a far room. I look again at the shirt and then eventually at Carlos.
He’s lying there on his sister’s lap and smiling.
“My man,” he says.
I kneel down and keep looking between him and his wound. At Mimi. “What—how?”
He licks his lips. “Hell of a story. Have to tell you while I whoop ya ass on NBA.” He coughs and splutters, and the wound does too.
Mimi is wiping her face constantly and can’t look at me. She just pats Carlos’ head over and over.
“Fuck’n Russians, hey.”
I snort a laugh. “Fuck’n Russians.”
Carlos smiles. But it flees immediately as he coughs again and tries to clutch his stomach as it spasms. He doesn’t have the strength for it though. He can’t survive something like this…
“Mimi tells me you’re gonna be a daddy.”
I feel my face growing hot. “Yeah. You’re an uncle too.”
He grins. “I could whoop two generations asses at the NBA then.”
I try to laugh, but it gets caught in my throat. Mimi is chewing her lips and trying to tell him not to joke like that, but she can’t get the words out. Neither can I.
