Page 160 of Freed
“He’s running,” one of my men curses.
I already know.
The adjoining door to the bedroom suite hangs open. We go through.
Another burst of gunfire tears into the room from the balcony entrance, driving us back. Glass blows inward. One of my men screams and goes down clutching his face. I fire twice toward the muzzle flare and hear someone fall.
Then I see him.
Cesaro.
He looks straight at me. There’s no panic in his face. Only calculation.
“Russo,” he says, almost conversationally. “My boss is going to be so happy when I bring him your head.”
I step over the shattered remains of a side table. “You should’ve stayed harder to find.”
A faint smile ghosts across his mouth. “And miss this?”
He fires.
I dive behind the edge of the bedroom wall as bullets chew through plaster. Some of my men answer from the other side, forcing Cesaro to shift. Another one of my men tries to angle through the dressing room and gets hit for the effort.
The suite is too open. Too fucking exposed. And Cesaro knows it. He’s using the balcony and the broken sightlines to bleed us slow.
“Cut him off,” I bark.
One of my trusted men signals two men left. They move but Cesaro drops one before he clears the doorway.
I come up and fire in the same second, driving Cesaro back toward the balcony doors. This time I’m the one moving on him, step by step, shot by shot, anger turning each pull of the trigger into something personal.
He hurt Birdie and I want him alive long enough to hear her name before he dies.
He retreats onto the balcony.
Wind slams into the room through the open doors, cold and violent and full of the city far below. My shoes crunch over broken glass as I follow.
Cesaro is bleeding now. Shoulder, maybe side. Hard to tell in the dark and the gun smoke and the flashing hotel lights behind us.
But he’s smiling.
“Did you really think you’d very away with this?” I ask.
He laughs outright this time. “I already have.””
I shoot the balcony railing inches from his hand.
“You’re going to die for what you did to Birdie.”
His expression changes.
“Ah,” he says. “So that’s where your loyalty ended up.”
“You touched her.”
“I did.”
I move before reason tells me to slow down. One step. Two. Gun leveled at his chest.
