Page 91 of Great White
“No one scares me.” Marco verbally fires at me.
“What about your father? He must be so proud.”
“Ahhh, my dear father is missing all the fireworks. He had a brain aneurysm several months ago and is in a coma.” Marco scratches the stubble on his cheek with the barrel of his gun.
“So you’ve been pulling the strings this whole damn time?”
“Someone had to. That’s how empires work. Dog eat dog, kill or be killed, survival of fittest, and all that fucking crap.”
“That is an archaic point of view. No wonder you were so intimidated by us. We were progressive and you were antiquated.” I don’t sugarcoat my insult.
“Yes, well, I am taking care of that problem right now.” He points the gun at me with a deranged look in his eyes.
“I will give you credit. Coming here in person to finish me off.”
“You know what they say, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” A suffocating sense of mortality grips my throat. “You, then your narco.” He rolls the R sadistically.
“Tate has nothing to do with this.”
“He knows way too much. And he fucked Stefania. That’s enough of a reason for me.”
Idiot male machoism.
Marco’s finger tightens around the trigger, and in a moment of haste, I kick at the gun.
It flies across the room and we both dive for it.
I hit the ground hard, the hole in my side sending vibrations of pain straight through my abdomen.
Marco and I grab the gun at the same time, grappling and rolling to gain its possession.
It happens so fast, I don’t know who pulls the trigger, but the shots pierce my ears, and a startling gush of warm blood flows out from beneath us, soaking the carpet, turning it red.
24
Tate
I speedback to the motel.
The unmarked isn’t responding, so that has my pulse kicking and my mind racing.
Taylor called in the local police to check on the situation since I am more than an hour away.
I fight to calm my manic thoughts by trying to convince myself she’s safe. I tell myself Marco doesn’t know where she is, but my gut won’t let me believe it. It knows. It knows something is terribly wrong.
I have already seen one dead body today; I don’t want to find another one.
My heart pounds so hard my chest hurts.
When I pull up to the motel, I find one man being detained by the local police and the officers in the unmarked murdered. Before I can even get out of my truck, there are gunshots. Several of them.
I fly out of my vehicle and up the motel stairs. I have no gun, I have no vest, I’m just running on pure adrenaline and possibly straight into my untimely death, but I don’t know how much I will want to live if Dove isn’t in my life.
I burst into the room and find a bloody mess.
Marco is dead, and Dove is gasping for air right next to him on the floor. She’s holding her side, blood oozing out through her fingers.
When she sees me, something in her dark, hollow eyes softens. It’s like all her defenses go down.
