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I dive for them, kicking the back of the attacker’s knee in a move that should have dropped him.
Instead, he grunts and rolls with it, pulling a knife out with what should have been his non-dominant hand when the roll traps his gun arm underneath him for a moment.
He slashes upward, forcing Dante to jump back, and Maddoc slams into him from the side.
They both go down, but the attacker’s training shows when he manages to evade a potentially lethal headlock I’ve seen Maddoc use before, and twists out of his hold completely, rising up to his knees.
“I don’t fucking think so, motherfucker,” Dante says, kicking the gun out of his hand before he can take aim with it.
The attacker pivots, driving his fingers into Dante’s throat and rolling out of the way when I try to take him down again.
He comes up with another weapon in hand, and this time he gets a shot off.
He aims for Maddoc again, but Dante clocks the guy in the back of the head with one of our bar stools, and the fucking bullet goes wide, shattering the edge of the counter right above Riley’s head.
Chunks of marble rain down on her, and the terror in her voice when she screams again fills me with a dark fury that eclipses anything I’ve ever felt before.
“Riley, get the fuck out of the kitchen,” Maddoc shouts, diverting his attention from the attacker.
Mine narrows, all my senses converging on the intruder with a single-minded focus that’s only possible because I trust my brothers with my life. More importantly, with Riley’s life.
Maddoc’s got her. I need to take the attacker down.
Dante has the same idea, but even two-on-one—three-on-one a moment later, once Maddoc gets Riley out of the fucking room—it’s an all-out brawl with the guy. He’s more than good. He’s lethal.
He gets another shot off that rips a line of fire across my hip, the bullet digging into the oven door behind me, and proves he really is ambidextrous when he shreds the shirt Maddoc threw on downstairs, leaving bloody slashes all across his chest before we finally wrestle the fucker down and disarm him and toss both his knife and the second gun out of reach.
“Who fucking sent you?” Maddoc demands, all three of us holding the attacker down.
Maddoc kneels on his thighs, keeping his legs down, while Dante pins the fucker’s right wrist to his chest in a position I know will allow him to break it if the guy is stupid enough to fight it.
His left wrist already broke when we finally managed to get the knife from him, and it lies limply by his side as I keep his head down. But when Maddoc flicks a look at me, I ease up on the chokehold so the piece of shit will have enough air to answer Maddoc’s question.
He doesn’t, which I’m sure Maddoc lets him get away with only because none of us actually have any doubts about who sent him here. There are still things we need to know, though.
Maddoc’s eyes narrow. “Who are you?”
The attacker meets that one with a silent sneer, obviously trained not to give any information up.
Dante’s eyes flicker over him, then go hard. “He’s an assassin.”
I go still, letting that sink in. Not just a mercenary. This is someone who’s trained specifically to kill, and who came here with a laser-focus on taking Maddoc out.
Of the three of us, only Dante was formally trained in that art. I have no idea what he sees, but I trust him implicitly. Which is why I become hyper-vigilant as Maddoc continues to question the man and notice the small, twitching movements he’s making with his left hand.
His broken one.
I take a split second to admire the way his training trumps the pain it must be causing him, but the moment I see him extract something small and metallic from his sleeve—a weapon clearly meant to be accessed even when he’s pinned down—I move before he can, twisting his neck in a sharp, practiced motion as he palms it and starts to jab the thing toward Maddoc.
His spine snaps with a clean break, his body instantly going limp as he dies.
Maddoc stares down at him, the room quiet around us for a moment. Then—
“Fuck,” Maddoc yells, slamming his fist into the side of the island next to us. Then he sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face.
“I had to,” I explain, turning the assassin’s left hand over to reveal the weapon he held there.
Dante sits back on his heels, shaking his head, and Maddoc nods. “I know,” he says, giving me a grim smile. “Thank you.”
