Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 77054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Tears trickle down my cheeks as I look at the two men left standing.
Both of them stare right back at me.
“Harper,” Marcello mutters as he looks at me, shock filling his eyes.
Fuck.
Marcello
“Perfect!” Frank crows. “You know, I had some men on the way to your home to bring Harper to us. But it seems she was one step ahead of me. A pleasant surprise.” He turns back to face me and grins. “You seem so fond of my daughter, Marcello.
“She’s not your daughter, you sick fuck.”
He ignores me. “Your man Giovanni told me how close the two of you seemed. How many nights you spent with her. You’ve proven yourself to be weaker than I ever thought you were, Marcello. I’d be disappointed if it wasn’t also so damn funny. The irony, you know?”
He shakes his head and laughs under his breath. Then as if catching himself, he straightens up and looks me in the eye once more. The red laser sights are still swarming me. I grit my teeth and clench my fists.
“So, finish what I started? Yeah, I think I will. But not until you watch me put the love of your life in a car and drive off. I want you to die knowing she’s back in my clutches. And there’s not a single fucking thing you can do about that.”
He lets out a chuckle as he glances around at the destruction that’s been sown here tonight. “Now, that’s all,” Frank announces. “You stay right there.”
He turns and saunters away toward where Harper stands. She hasn’t moved. Her eyes meet mine, and my heart clenches at the sight of her.
Her whole world has just shattered. Secrets beneath secrets, betrayals beneath betrayals—all of it crumbling to pieces. She learned who her true father was and watched him die in the span of a single breath. The fake father she thought she lost reappears from the grave and reveals himself as a psychopathic killer.
Everything she thought she knew is a lie.
I want to comfort her. To tell her that doesn’t matter anymore.
But I can’t move without getting thirty bullet holes through my chest.
So I just have to stand still and watch as an Irish soldier emerges from the darkness, points a gun at Harper, and makes her walk forward.
As Frank approaches her, seizes her by the upper arm with a vicious grin, and drags her into the back seat of his sedan.
As the door shuts and the car speeds away.
As Harper—my one hope for redemption, the only woman I’ve ever loved—disappears into the night.
But just before the car passes back through the entrance, there is a tinkling sound, metal on metal. A flashbang rolls past my feet.
In three…
Two…
One…
Everything explodes.
Smoke. Light. The biggest booming roar.
Claudio, the soldiers, and I immediately scatter in search of cover as a hailstorm of bullets descends on us. More grenades, more return fire, more explosions on every side. My men and I unload everything we have.
It’s complete fucking chaos.
This is it. The real firefight. It makes the first one look like a fucking Fourth of July show. Irish and Russian soldiers are pouring in from an entire armada of boats that had been stationed just out of sight. Dozens and dozens of men armed to the teeth, each of them adding to the gunfire already hurtling toward me from the soldiers stationed on every roof within firing distance.
I roar orders while running and killing. I become the fucking angel of death.
I don’t know how long I’m drowning in an ocean of explosions and ricocheting bullets, the screams of dying men piercing my ears at every turn.
A man comes up to me, holding a gleaming knife in his hand. I hit him with the butt of my gun and he slices a chunk out of my shoulder in response. We fall to the ground and wrestle for control until I manage to get enough space between us to fire two shots at his head. He slumps back, lifeless.
There are ten men for every one of us, and they came ready to fight to the death.
Unfortunately for them … so did we.
I stand and sprint to the first Irishman I can reach. Whipping a knife from my boot, I shove it through his throat. He falls to the ground, screaming and bloody, but I’m already on to the next.
Another stab. Another victim.
Two men pop up from the backside of a stack of crates. They each go down with a squeeze of my trigger, a new hole in their forehead blooming blood.
I fight my way to the van. The keys are still in the ignition, thank fucking god. I jump in the driver’s seat, crank the engine, and slam my foot on the accelerator. Harper and Frank were only a minute or two ahead of me. I can catch them—if I hurry. The van shrieks as bullets puncture the metal, but I keep driving. I can’t stop. If I stop, I lose her.