Page 85 of Broken Mafia Prince
“I’m not leaving until I see Luca breathe his last breath,” I snarl.
“I’ll take care of it.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me, Gagliardi.”
“I’m not doing it for you. That piece of shit owes me a few, too.” He pauses for a moment, eyes narrowing. Eventually, he digs out another gun from his back and tosses it at me. “We have about fifteen minutes to get out of here, so if you’re not going to shoot to kill, you’d better stay out of my fucking way.”
I nod at him, then meet Isa’s eyes. “You need to leave right now.”
“Good luck,” she whispers.
I don’t need luck, though. Luca isn’t leaving here alive, that’s for sure. Holding my gun steady, I head deeper into the dark building, Raffaele’s footsteps following closely behind. Most of the rooms in the building have lost their doors, so we can already see that they’re empty as we walk past.
Where the hell is that excuse of a human?
The sound of crunching gravel reaches my ear right then. I meet Raffaele’s eyes and shoot him a small nod. If I thought that our coordination from the warehouse had been perfect, it’s nothing compared to how we move in sync now, splitting into two directions and heading for the lone wall standing at the far end of the house.
Just as I round the wall, an arm wraps around my neck, and I’m pulled into someone’s body. My gun is slapped out of my hand, and at the same time, Luca wraps a wire around my neck, pulling it in as tight as he can and cutting off my circulation. I try to claw his hands away, but it’s of no use.
“Did you think you’d make it out of this alive, bitch?” He laughs.
My vision begins to fade as oxygen and blood to my head rapidly depletes.
Black spots are dancing at the back of my eyes when I’m suddenly released. I suck in a lungful of air, coughing andhacking. I look up to see Raffaele standing there, eyes burning with fury. I don’t need to look over my shoulder to know that Luca’s dead.
“Didn’t you say we had fifteen minutes?” I ask through a throat that feels wrecked and ravaged.
“Let’s go.”
I pick up the gun from the floor and shoot at Luca’s dead body, just because I can. The bastard deserved a far slower, torturous death than he got. Whatever pit of hell he’s in right now, I hope he’s gloating about how he escaped the worst type of death known to man.
“Watch out!” Raffaele suddenly cries, grabbing me around the waist and pulling me into his chest just as a ceiling beam falls to the ground. I crash into his hard chest, causing the burn in my ankle from where Luca stomped on me to intensify.
“Let’s get out of here,” he roars.
“I can’t,” I tell him, eyes wide with panic. “My ankle is broken or something.” My words are followed by another crash from somewhere else in the house. The entire building is falling apart, and any moment now, it will be reduced to rubble.
He glances down at my ankle, eyebrows furrowed. “Damn it.”
One second I’m on my own two feet, and the next, he’s picked me up like I weigh less than a feather. My hands automatically go around his neck, hanging on tight as he maneuvers us out of the hazardous building. I bury my face into the crook of his neck, shamelessly filling my lungs with the faint scent of his cologne.
I wonder if he’ll let me borrow it, so I can soak my bed sheets in it and roll around in his scent like a creep.
“Is this our life now?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
He glances down at me with understanding. “It’s always been our life. Don’t you think we’ve hidden from it for too long?”
“Not enough in my opinion.” I sigh tiredly. “I want something normal. I don’t want the bloodshed, the constant looking over my shoulder. I want to be safe, Raffaele. I’ve already lost enough of the things I care about to this world.”
His eyes narrow, and there’s something in them that’s warning me to stop talking, to not end this thing before it’s even started, to not draw a thick red line in the sand.
“I can’t let myself lose anything else,” I finally say.
Raffaele stops moving. We stare at each other for too long, a current coming to life and sparking between us. The sound of something crashing behind us snaps us out of our daze.
Raffaele clears his throat and looks away. “Noted.”
We’re a fair distance from the building when there’s a thunderous boom. I raise my head in shock, watching as a large ball of fire rises out of the building just before it blows apart, pieces of the building flying around. Raffaele hunches his back, tucking me into his body as debris lands everywhere.
