Page 32 of Altered By Fire (Undercover Sinners 1)
The last thing in the world I'd ever want is to find out the answer to that question.
I throw my knee up as hard as I can, nailing Dmitri in the crotch, but whereas a normal man might scream or howl or let go of me, all that move does is get the crazy psycho to laugh. I can't see Weston, but the dark parking lot is quiet now. There are no more gunshots, no screaming bystanders, no distant police sirens.
We're all alone out here, in a pre-dawn dark parking lot outside a shitty market with hand-drawn sales signs in the windows. This is not the place or the way I will die.
Since Dmitri is still holding me up by the front of Weston's hoodie, I drop down and slide out of it. It's so loose that it comes right off, and I'm blessed with a few precious seconds to lunge for the gun. The pain of my bare nipples and breasts scraping across the pavement when I lunge … Well, nobody can ever say I'm not at least a little bit of a badass.
I roll onto my back as Dmitri grabs my ankle and yanks me toward him, firing off a shot that hits him right in the ear, blood spraying across the trunk of the car he just threw me up against.
"You fucking bitch!" he screams, whipping his own gun from a holster inside his jacket. There's zero hesitation when he lines it up to take a headshot. I have good aim, so I fight to get my round out first, planning to nail him dead center in the skull.
Instead, a body smashes into Dmitri's, knocking him to the pavement. Weston! I think as I scramble back to my feet, my breasts bleeding from my heroic dive. But it's not Weston that's wrestling with my father's favorite assassin: it's Arsen. Who better to fight a psychopath than a sociopath, right?
I flick my eyes around the parking lot and spot the green-haired faux priest bleeding on the ground next to his car. Several men are lying still around him. He might be down, but he took several others out with him. I'm torn between whether to stay here and give backup to Arsen or see if there's anything I can do for Weston. As I'm making my decision, one of the men rises to his feet and stumbles against the hood of the Challenger. When he lifts up his weapon, I have a single instant to take action.
Lifting my gun, I let out a long, slow exhale and pretend that I'm back at the shooting range with Mace, aiming at a paper target.
Only this paper target has hair and eyes, and I know for a fact that he's got a family and a name. I've met this man before, and he's only ever been nice to me. But he is my father's man, and he'll kill me in instant if those are his orders. I have to be as ruthless if I want to survive. If my father taught me anything all these years, it's that.
I'm going to have to become a nun after this; surely I'm going to hell.
I line my aim up and fire off a single shot, hitting the man directly in the side of the head and dropping him before he gets a chance to kill Weston. I just sacrificed the life of one of my father's best men for a guy I don't even know.
Shit, shit, shit.
Arsen rises up from the tangle of arms and legs on the ground and spits blood at Dmitri, whipping out a knife from his belt and spinning it around his fingers. The way he looks at the other man … I'd piss my pants if I were Dmitri. When I lift my borrowed weapon to focus on my father's right-hand man, Arsen puts up a palm and stops me.
"They talk better when they're alive," he purrs, flicking the blade with two fingers and sinking it into Dmitri's hand when he goes for a second gun on his belt. Arsen steps forward and promptly removes that, lowering the barrel and shooting the man in the thigh.
His scream is awful, but as soon as I hear it, I think of his wife and how she never even got the chance to scream. There's no sympathy left in me after that.
But God, there's so much blood, and it smells so awful. Memories of that night, just a few short days ago, flood my head. Kisten's hard cock buried inside of me, coke and sex and alcohol flooding my blood … until I'm spattered with his.
Clamping a hand over my mouth, I stumble around the side of the soccer-mom van and throw up in a nearby trash can, hooking my fingers around the edges and coughing on the acrid taste poisoning my mouth and throat.
