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“You are a vile human being. How could you?” She’s shaking her head. Anger sends trembles across the finger that rests on the trigger.
An uncomfortable feeling stretches across my bones. “You will have to be a little more specific, Carina. You’re waving that gun around like you might use it.”
“The Pits. You are in charge of the Pits.”
For a moment, seeing her with a gun between her delicate hands had been a slight turn-on, as uneasy as it made me. I had to admire her boldness. Anyone else, and I would have let my men take the shot. But as her accusation leaves her lips, the beast inside me roars to life, and I want her blood. I take a step toward her, the gun pushing into my chest.
I’m glaring down at her, and I want her to eat her fucking words. The Pits cost me everything—they cost me my best friend, my sanity, my humanity. I fight with everything inside me not to strike out. I can’t even form words, as my jaw is locked with fury. Maybe she sees the fury in my gaze. She blinks several times, her brows drawing together. She doesn’t seem so sure anymore.
“One last time. Put the fucking gun away,” I warn.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and she’s searching my face, but I’m sure all she sees is my rage.
I try to calm down and remind myself that she has no fucking idea what she is talking about.
I blink, my shoulders tightening in reaction as a shot is fired.
I spin, roaring. “I said stand down!” But as my eyes sweep across them, I don’t see a weapon. Another shot is fired, this one taking one of my men to the left of me to the ground. One of my men pushes me toward the SUV, and I jerk out of his hold, grabbing Carina and yanking her along. I shove her into the back of the SUV and follow after, my man pushing me down onto the floor of the SUV and jumping in as another shot rings out.
He goes heavy suddenly, falling in on my back. Twisting around, I push his dead weight off me and see sightless eyes. I twist fully and kick him out of the way so I can close the door, then grab Carina’s hand and drag her to the floor.
“Drive!” I roar.
Tires screech as we reverse at full speed. A spray of bullets shatters the windows, and I cover my face as glass flies in every direction. Carina still clutches her gun. As my driver stops to spin the SUV around, she lurches up to fire a shot back. I grab her again and pull her down. A bullet whizzes through the back window and strikes the ceiling, right where Carina’s head was.
“Why are you always stopping me from retaliating?” She’s glaring at me like I’ve lost my fucking mind.
I’d laugh, but the situation is far too serious. “This isn’t really the best time for an argument.”
“There never is a right time, Luca. It’s always on your clock. What the fuck about mine?”
The SUV tears out of the parking lot and onto the street. Horns blare and stop after a few seconds, and the sound of shooting fades off into the distance.
Dragging the sleeve of my jacket across my hand, I wipe away some of the glass from the seat for Carina to sit down, but when I try to help her off the floor, she pushes me away. “I don’t need your help.”
“You never do,” I murmur, thoughts of the other night uppermost in my mind.
Carina sits up on the seat, the wind from the shattered window whipping her hair in all directions. She fights with the long tresses, yanking her hair back into a knot at the base of her neck. I rattle off an address to the driver. We need to get to a safe house.
“You could drop me at home,” Carina says after wrestling with her hair.
“Your home isn’t safe.” I send her an incredulous look. Do I really need to tell her this?
“I’m clearly not safe with you, either,” she remarks.
“You pulled a fucking gun on me,” I remind her. “Maybe whoever just killed my men was really there to wipe you out. It wasn’t the first time now, was it?” When I say it out loud, my gut twists.
“Let the pieces fall,” Evie had said.
Fucking A.I most definitely did not just let the pieces fall. In fact, I would say I matrix-level paused them midflight and redirected them with a merry little return-to-sender message. Shit.
And Carina, sitting there giving me a death glare, has no clue what I’ve just done. I pinch the space between my eyes and, for the first time in my life, contemplate picking up a pack of cigarettes.
The SUV slows down as we approach the safe house. Carina is silent as the vehicle stops, and I get out. The safe house is in a rundown neighborhood. There are boards on the windows of most of the block and even some boards on the windows of the safe house. This place isn’t where anyone would expect me to hide, which is exactly why we use it.
I open Carina’s door, and she gets out. The three men who survived the attack file out of the vehicle with us, two of them moving ahead to secure the house.
Three. That means three lives were lost today.
