Page 112 of Mercenary
A body lands on the carpet beside us. I gasp as I spy Franco lying next to us, with his eyes opened and with a bullet hole between the eyes.
“You lying jerk,” Kylie yells. Her weight lifts off of me as she rises up onto her feet. “Franco was mine. Why did you do that?”
I roll up onto my knees, gritting my teeth as the skin around my wound stretches. I guess the pain is my way of deflecting. Focusing on my own injury instead of agonizing over the thirteen dead men surrounding me.
Us. Death surrounded us. Me. Kylie . . . and whoever she’s so pissed off at . . .
Oh. My. God.
“He shot her,” I hear Declan snap. He’s furious, positively furious. And he’s here.
“Let me get this straight. You took Franco out because he hurt Madelyn?” My sister sounds surprised.
I’m not. This is who Declan is, right? A killer.
And . . . so is Kylie . . .
I feel the heat of his fingers against my skin as I’m lifted off the carpet and placed onto my feet. I raise my chin to look at him.
My lover.
My heartbreak.
And good Lord, he has two guns drawn on Kylie.
I quickly step in between them, dodging his attempt to grab hold of me. “I forgave you,” I say in a calm tone, so contradictory to what I’m feeling. “You promised me.”
He scowls fiercely at me.
“I trusted you a second time.”
He stands without moving, pistols cocked, mouth in a firm line, so bleeding cold the temperature in the room drops below freezing.
“Don’t do this.”
He shakes his head slightly.
“She’s my sister, Declan. You’ve seen how heartbroken I’ve been, how worried I’ve been about her. I forgive you for what you’ve done to me. But if you care for me even the tiniest bit, I’m pleading with you to let her go.”
The sound of wood vibrating—did Kylie just kick the bedpost?—reminds me we’re not alone. “You better shoot me now, Declan. What exactly did this asshole do to you?”
“He loved me.”
“He what?” Kylie screeches.
“Stop, Madelyn. We don’t have time for this,” he interrupts, his tone full of warning.
“I’m going to rip your balls off your body and crush them beneath my heel. He fucked you, you mean?”
Yeah, that too. “No. He loves me.”
The room grows quiet enough you could hear a pin drop. “Madelyn, honey. There’s a difference between sex and loving someone. He used you—to get to me.”
“Jesus Christ, Kylie. Shut the fuck up.”
“Oh, isn’t this grand? Better shoot me now, Declan.”
Something inside me snaps. I act before I think, and raising the pistol in the air, I shoot a bullet into the ceiling. Pieces of plaster rain down on us. But . . . it’s worth it.
