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This was a mistake.
I should have ignored Angel when I saw him.
What I shouldn’t have done was come over and interrupt something that was obviously none of my business. But what the hell is Angel into? These men scream cartel. I don’t know which one, but in general, the cartels around here are organizations that, as far as I know, the Valachi family doesn’t mess with. They’re all drugs and nastiness Father has always told me he wants no part of, including brutal slayings of their enemies and twisted dealings with their associates.
Did he lie to me? Are we in bed with the cartels, and I don’t even know it?
“Not so fast.” The leader’s statement has the men closing around Vivi and me once again, forcing us further back into the alley we stand at the entrance of. I narrow my eyes as he shifts his attention to Angel. “You owe me a debt,” he says, voice low.
Angel swallows. “I’ll get you what you want—”
The other man’s reply stops him. “Not good enough,” he says. “The time for that is past. Leave the girls with us—”
“The hell I will—” Angel says.
“No!” I gasp a response. Behind me, Vivi goes statue still, a tiny whine escaping her lips.
Hands descend on my shoulders, pulling me farther into the alley. An SUV idles several yards away; windows blacked out. “Angel—”
He swivels his head to look at me, his eyes wild, noticeably shaken. “Carlos, enough! This is not what we agreed upon—”
“Whether you saw it coming or not makes no difference,pendejo.”
I struggle against the hands that grip me, managing to twist around to face my assailant. Another man tugs at an unresistant Vivi, and I reach out to grab her and pull her close. She’s murmuring to herself and entirely zoned out, as she’s done a time or two in the past when we’ve been in a dangerous situation. Turtling, I call it. She curls into herself and hides until the danger is over.
It comes from a lifetime of exposure to violence, and the instinctive understanding that sometimes the only safety is in hiding.
Now is not the time to turtle, Vivi.
The one holding me claws at my arms, trying to get a better grip as I struggle against him, and behind us, I hear a scuffle break out, laced with low exclamations and grunts.
Bloomingdale’s. This is happening right outside Bloomingdale’s.
A gunshot rings out, checking my inane thoughts. It’s loud and unmistakable in the alley, even suppressed by a silencer, and several others follow in the space of seconds. I whip my head around to see Angel, gun in hand, clutching his thigh where a wound pumps blood swiftly. Angel sinks to one knee alongside the tear-tatted orchestrator of this chaos, whose open eyes stare sightlessly at the sky.
He’s been shot. They’ve both been shot. The cartel man is dead, and—
My brother’s been shot. “Angel!” The scream rips out of me, loud, shrill.
A hand covers my mouth, and I bite down viciously. He jerks away with an oath, and I’m free suddenly. I can run, get away… but—
“Vivi! Come on!” I grab at my sister, but the man holding her simply pulls her inexorably closer to the waiting vehicle.
I sob in frustration.
Distantly, I hear the sound of a car squealing to the curb. Men scatter, and the one dragging Vivi suddenly pushes her into my arms and runs. I turn my head and see Damon—Damon!—leaping into the chaos like an avenging angel. He dispatches a quick, merciless bullet into each of the heads of the remaining men and then hustles Vivi into the SUV waiting at the curb, engine running. He bends and scoops Angel up by the armpits and drags him efficiently to the same destination, where he pushes him up and into the back seat as Vivi scrambles out of the way.
Then he’s standing before me, his warmth reaching out to comfort me, his fingers curving around the back of my neck and pulling me to his chest in a quick, hard embrace before he’s pushing me, too, into the car.
He runs around the hood and slides into the driver’s seat, pulling swiftly into traffic with a restrained growl of the engine. He places a hand on my thigh and squeezes briefly before returning it to the wheel, looking at me a single time as he makes his way out of the city. The depths of his gaze are plagued with something like desperation.
I close my eyes and lay my head back against the headrest.
I recognize it, that desperation. I feel it, fueled by the same hunger and fear and helplessness that races through my body.
Relentless.
Eternal.
