“Al, Tony, search this joint. Kill anybody you find. The Kung Fu Fighter over here’s gonna learn a lesson when he wakes up. I’ve been waitin’ to talk to this motherfucker for a long time now.”
That could only be Santino Picolli, the Italian Ninja himself.
Chapter 30
Jace
The water felt freezing when it hit me, and I gasped for air, hallucinating for a moment that I’d fallen off a ship somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The reality was much worse.
I didn’t know how long I’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for, but it couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen minutes because the first thing I heard after “wakey, wakey, motherfucker” was Tony, or Al, telling Santino that there was nobody else in the cabin.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to not let my relief show. I should have been given an honorary entry into the Poker Hall of Fame.
I allowed myself to have one last memory of her, taking those barriers down and letting herself love me. I wore it like an impenetrable fortress around the very core of my being. They would take my life today, but they’d never break me. I’d be in there to the end. With Kendall.
“I said wake up, you little bitch.”
Santino gave me a slap across the face while I tried to muster up as much swagger as a soaking wet man tied to a chair could while regaining consciousness. I twisted my head to each side, making the vertebrae in my neck crack, and looked up at him.
“Santino. How’d you manage to find time around your busy cock-sucking schedule to come here?”
“Oh you always were a funny son of a bitch, Jace. Truth is, I’ve been dreaming of this ever since you bit the hand that fed you. You knew your days were numbered, right? You didn’t really think a piece of shit like you could bring us down forever, did you?”
“Sure did fuck up your day though, didn’t I?”
“A hundred and ten years we’ve owned that fuckin’ city, and we’ll own it for a hundred and ten more with you out of the way.”
“You know, I had a picture of your father painted in my toilet bowl so I can piss on him every morning?” I asked.
Santino’s brow furrowed and I saw his skin move a few shades closer to red. He cocked his fist back and punched me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me.
It took me a few seconds, but I laughed as soon as I could breathe. If I could get him blind-angry enough, he’d snap and kill me quick, rather than dragging it out over the course of hours or days. That was preferable.
“You punch like a Picolli. Where the fuck have you rats been hiding these last couple years?”
“You’ll be beggin’ soon enough, motherfucker. We had to call in some old favors, and promise some new ones, but we managed to regather in New Ashby.”
“New Ashby? Oh yeah, Gavino Bertolini always did like the special way you had of licking his gooch, Santino. I bet he’s letting you know all the time how much better the Bertolinis are than you, huh? Especially while he’s got your wife and daughter giving him a tag-team rim-”
Santino punched me in the face and I was reacquainted with visions of stars. The pistol-whipping under my eye he followed up with was going to swell it shut soon enough too.
I clenched my teeth, holding in the grunt of pain. On the inside I was climbing the winner’s podium. This final gloat of his wasn’t going anywhere near as well as he had no doubt imagined it. It was a shame my prize was only going to be a quicker death.
“Shut your worthless fuckin’ mouth. At least we’ve got some fucking allies. You’ve got nothin’, punk, you think any of the other families are gonna shed a tear when we go on tour with your rotting body?”
“Should I give a fuck?” I asked.
“Even your own people would rather see you dead. Lorenzo’s been feeding us information, bet you didn’t know that, huh? Must sting to know that even-”
“I killed that piece of shit this morning. Give me your address and I’ll have my people send you his shiny bald head in a little box with a pink bow.”
Santino faltered for a second, I could see him getting hot under that collar and edging towards the danger zone, but he shrugged and tried to regain his composure.
“Well, we would have ended up killin’ him for runnin’ with you in the first place anyway, no big deal.”
“Yeah, true. Hey, if we’re coming clean, let’s talk some more about your daughter. Did you know I corn-holed that bitch? Man, she cried when she took it, but she was back for more the next day. The last thing I wanted was a worthless slut like that again though, so I told her to fuck off.”
Santino’s eyes went from attempted-smug to murder in a blink. With a shaking hand, he brought his gun up and held the barrel against my forehead. The various Picolli, maybe some Bertolini, soldiers leaned forward, enthralled, waiting. Checkmate, motherfuckers.
“Everybody here knows you’re too big a pussy to do it,” I said.
I could feel all that rage in every quiver of the muzzle against my skull, and time slowed to a crawl. Every blink I took seemed to last for minutes. Every breath, for hours.
My job was done. I let my mind wander and memories of Kendall drifted in front of my eyes, blurring reality. I was lucky to have had that, to have had her, even if it wasn’t for long enough. Forever wouldn’t have been long enough with a girl like her anyway. Fuck sake. Goodbye.
Bang!
Chapter 31
Kendall
Jace’s gun kicked back and I wasn’t able to completely halt its momentum before it struck me right in the middle of the forehead. I flinched at the impact and then held the gun out again as quick as I could, smelling a strange burning odor.
The way things looked, the trigger on the gun might have been connected to time itself. Nobody was moving. Jace was still tied to the chair, head bowed, while mobsters in suits stood watching the impending execution with several of their colleagues dead on the floor.
Even the one holding the gun to Jace’s head still stood there, still as a statue. The only difference was that I could see a red hole just behind his ear, and a spray of gore on the wall opposite.
Holy shit! I shot somebody!
All at once, things started moving again. The older man started to tumble as Jace brought his head up, eyes narrowed in concentration.
The Mafia men started turning around, reaching inside their jackets, and I aimed at the closest one. Terror gripped me with every squeeze of the trigger, replacing the desperation with which I had pulled it the first time.
The noise was terrifying and after the second shot, I sprayed bullets almost randomly, looking out at the chaos through squinted eyes. Men were diving and falling in every direction, some of them still oblivious as to what was happening.
Jace leaned forward, standing to his feet with the seat still strapped to him, before throwing himself backwards to the ground and breaking the flimsy old chair into a million pieces. The last thing I saw was him struggling with ropes before my nerve broke and I stumbled to the side of the doorway, cutting off my view.
To my ears, the noise in the other room was no quieter than inside that car with Jace when the Picollis attacked us with those machine guns. Gunfire, screaming, crashing, thumping. I clutched Jace’s gun, my lips pulled back in a petrified grimace as tears streamed down my cheeks.
Through the doorway came a man with his hand clamped against his belly, on top of a dark red stain that was quickly spreading. Looking around in a daze, he soon spotted me.
He tried to aim his gun in my direction, but raising his arm seemed to be causing him some incredible pain and it was slow going. I screamed, pointed my weapon and pulled the trigger.