He let the pressure on my hand go. “You can’t—”
“We can end this,” I said. “We need to. You can’t protect me. I know it’s your instinct, but you can’t. Face it. The more you try to protect me, the worse it gets.”
With everything crashing down on us, time froze. Antonio froze. The kiss he’d left on my mouth tasted like years with him. I’d die with it on me.
The pressure to move toward the gate disappeared as he considered. The line of shouting men from the house got closer. Louder. More intense.
Antonio let me go.
He turned and aimed at them, and I followed suit. I doubted there were enough bullets between us to make any kind of difference. Maybe if every one found a home. Maybe in the event they were all unarmed. Maybe if God was with us, which was unlikely.
Suddenly, they were all cast in bright light. Drowned in shadowless white. Antonio knocked me out of the way a second after I heard the roar of an engine and the creak and scrape of something being dragged.
A car roared past us, pushing a nice length of barbed-wire-topped gate. The men chasing us had to jump over the wire. A couple didn’t make it and sprawled away with injuries.
“Margie’s going to kill me,” I said, getting my feet under me. “That’s Valentina. I don’t know what she’s thinking, but we can’t run now.”
I stood over Antonio. With his face and chest to the light of the night sky, I saw what they’d done to him, and they were all going to die. I was going to leave a swath of blood across Los Angeles. The decision was calculated. I couldn’t detect any emotions in it. Just facts.
He was on his feet like a cat. “With you, I can do anything.”
forty-eight.
antonio
d plucked the gun from Carlo’s hand. He’d made the mistake of letting his attention wander while he was alone in the room with me. I’d been ready to die, but there was no reason not to avoid it if I could.
They were clearly interested in my territory and readying to make sure my death at the hands of an old woman was recorded. I would have given every penny to them if there were rules to achieve such a thing. But there weren’t, because too many had changed their minds later and brought war.
Kill. Die. Run. Those were the only ways out, and I’d already tried two of the three.
So as much as I’d been running for my life before I crashed into Theresa, I was ready to attack. I had been running because I had no choice. I was attacking because with her, it was possible.
She attacked with me, running in the shadows alongside the car while we could, because they’d assume I was still headed to the gate and they had no idea she was even there.
Get to the house. Attack. Assault. Confront. That much was understood between us. We didn’t have a plan any more detailed than that.
The trees opened into the small clearing in front of Donna Maria’s house. The light of the car changed behind us, and I turned to look. Valentina had shaken the gate and was making a U-turn. I stopped.
“Jesus,” Theresa said.
Valentina headed in the opposite direction. The two men that were left jumped out of her way. They shot at the car, but it kept moving. If she made it out, she’d just keep driving. Theresa and I had no way out of the miles of preserve. I was in no worse position than I had been when I’d crashed into her.
I glanced at her as she watched the car, then she turned back to me.
“No turning back,” she said.
She was a cat. A beautiful devil. I feared and admired her. I wished I could fuck her one last time, but I would have to do without. “Let’s go.”
forty-nine.