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That was all the warning I got before the servers around the table whipped guns from beneath their aprons.
Colt’s men jumped up from the table, drawing their own concealed weapons, and the room exploded with ear-splitting booms of gunfire. Uncle Steven caught two to the chest in mid-yell. Aunt Renee’s scream was cut off by a bullet to her neck. As I sprang out of my chair, her blood splattered all over my dress. I looked down at it with shaking hands.
Colt’s eyes were pure ice as he pulled out a pistol of his own and aimed it at my father. His first shot caught Dad in the shoulder.
Dad lurched and more shots rang out around us. My heart racing, I dropped down beneath the level of the table. My knees jarred against the tiled floor.
“You traitor!” Dad shouted, heaving to his feet.
“It’s only business, Tyrell,” Colt replied, crisp and even.
With another bang, Dad fell to the floor, his eyes staring. Blood streamed from a circular wound in the middle of his forehead.
He was dead. They werealldead.
I stared numbly at the bodies scattered around the table, limp and blood-splattered. Oh, God,Grandmawas lying there just a few feet away from me, one last gurgle working its way out of her throat. The front of her dress was drenched with red.
No, no—this couldn’t be happening—
“Make sure you geteveryone,” Colt said in the same awful voice, and my own blood turned cold. He meant me too.
Grief and horror constricted my chest, but my heart was still pounding, my fingers still clutching the damn fork. A searing haze closed in on my mind.
I’d been so close to claiming my freedom. So goddamned close. Just one more day…
I wasnotgoing to fucking die here.
My head jerked around. The two bodyguards had left the door to join in the carnage. At the same moment as I marked their positions, one of them caught sight of me.
I flung myself toward one of the smaller restaurant tables, ricocheting this way and that as years of tumbling and parkour practice guided my body, trying to keep some kind of furniture between me and the various attackers while my pulse thundered on in my head.
There must have been a couple of people on the Claws side still living, because a few more shots rang out behind me, followed by a thump. I dove right under another table and sprang out the other side, hurtling toward the door—
Anotherbangrattled my eardrums, and a blazing pain cut across my upper arm.No.
Swallowing a gasp, I threw myself onward. One of the servers charged at me, and I whirled to the side just long enough to stab the fork as deep as I could into his gun hand. Then I burst past the door into the night.
Pain kept throbbing in my arm. Shouts carried after me. I dashed along the sidewalk, stumbling and then kicking off my stupid heels. My bare feet pushed me faster, but footsteps stomped out of the restaurant behind me.
At the end of the block, a guy was standing next to his car, one hand resting on the open door. He tossed his keys into the air with the other as he chatted with friends at a patio table lit by café windows.
I summoned a fresh burst of speed. The guy and his friends all whipped around at the sound of my feet, but I was close enough. I snatched the keys and dove past the open car door.
The guy yelped, but I’d already yanked the door shut. Jamming the lock in place, I tossed myself into the driver’s seat, pushed the key into the ignition, and slammed my bare foot down on the gas pedal.
The car tore down the street, tires screeching as I avoided a parked truck just ahead. I sped around one corner and then another, weaving back and forth, nothing in my head except getting the fuck away from the guns and the blood.
Well, the guns, anyway. There was plenty of blood here, spilling down my arm from where the bullet had gouged it. My head started to spin.
Where the hell did I go now? What the hell had justhappened? Colt and his men—they’d just killed my whole family—he’d tried to killme—
Had this been his plan all along? Some kind of long game to wipe out the leadership of the Claws? He’d been playing me—and Dad—for the entire year of our engagement?
My stomach churned, but only some of the nausea was thanks to the pain burning through my arm. I’d trusted Colt. Not completely, but enough to be willing, even happy, to tie my life to his. He’d acted as if he cared about me. I’d pictured a whole future with him.
And now it was gone in a hail of gunfire.
I’d had no love for my father, and I couldn’t say I’d liked most of the rest of my family either, but I hadn’t wanted themslaughtered. And Grandma… A lump swelled in my throat, my vision blurring with tears.
