Page 163 of Crave
We were losing men too fast.
Silas was already on his feet, his body protesting but his fury keeping him upright. He raised his gun, his movements sharp despite the bloodstains on his shirt. He fired—two clean shots.
A cartel man collapsed. Another stumbled before Theo finished him with a ruthless blow.
But there were more. Too many.
I pressed my back against the crate, forcing myself to breathe. Gabe was near the loading dock, his knife flashing in the dim light as he buried it into a man’s chest. He ripped it free, blood arcing through the air before he turned to the next.
Another gunshot rang out—close.Too close.
I twisted just in time to see a man lunging for me. My pulse spiked. I barely managed to duck, his blade slicing the air wheremy throat had been a second before. I scrambled back, hands slipping against the bloodstained floor, panic surging in my veins.
He was on me in an instant, grabbing my wrist, dragging me forward. I fought, kicking, twisting, but his grip was ironclad.
And then—a gunshot.
The cartel man’s head snapped back. Blood sprayed, hot and sickening, across my arm.
I gasped as his body dropped.
Silas stood behind him, gun still raised, his expression dark with fury.
“Move,” he snapped, his voice cutting through the chaos.
I pushed up on shaking legs, but the moment I stepped forward—I saw it
The cartel men weren’t advancing anymore.
The bodies on the ground—their own men—hadn’t mattered to them.
Because this attack wasn’t about winning.
No… it felt more than that.
Like the attack wasn’t their purpose at all. I sucked in the fetid, terror-stained air and tried to think. Not an attack…then what was it? A distraction.
The realization struck like ice through my veins. My breath stilled.
Silas knew it too. I saw it in the way his eyes darkened, in the way his fingers curled tighter around his gun.
And then he turned sharply, his voice deadly quiet beneath the ringing silence.
“We’re not safe,” he said. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
Marco hesitated. “And go where?”
Silas exhaled slowly, his jaw tightening.
The weight of the moment settled over all of us, pressing down, squeezing, suffocating.
And deep down, I knew—we were exactly where they wanted us to be.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
ANGELICA
Smokestill clung to my skin, to my clothes, to the air we breathed as we fled the warehouse. My boots pounded across the blood-slicked pavement, the sharp burn of adrenaline clawing up my throat.
