“You’re a ballsy cock-sucker, you know that?” Lorenzo growls, struggling a moment against my grip. Our faces are so close I can hear his breathing. It’s closer than I’d like to be to this piece of shit, but if my head isn’t close enough to Lorenzo’s to be a risk, I know that guard will take the shot.
“You’re one to talk,” I hiss back, “you’ve got guts, coming out here to die in a junkyard.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Lorenzo says as I keep my eyes locked with his guard, standing off with me uneasily. “I can feel the blood spilling out your wounds. My boys got you good.”
“If you think this is bad, you’re more spoiled than I thought,” I chuckle.
“Tough talk. Serena’s made you soft, Bruno,” he says in a taunting, almost singsong voice, “but she can get me hard, if you know what I mean.”
I’m about ready to throw caution to the wind and pull the trigger when a hint of movement catches my eye.
Paul.
His firing-arm lifts up and aims at the guard from behind. I see it at the same time as Lorenzo. But just as Paul fires, Lorenzo throws his elbow into my side and twists away. He tries to get a hold of my wrist and take that with him. I wrench myself free, but I have to let my weapon fall out of my hands to do so. It falls to the dust as Lorenzo pulls himself away and turns to flee.
I hear the guard cry out in pain and fall to his knees, but I’m already chasing after Lorenzo, who’s racing for the truck. My body is a better-tuned machine, though, and I catch up to him, diving into a tackle that brings him to the ground with a hard thud. The next moment, we’re locked in each other’s arms.
My legs twist to try to get a hold of him, but he’s more careful than to let me have that. He throws a punch that catches me in the eye, but I push through the ringing in my ears to return the blow, then work my way around him to try to get him in a sleeper hold.
But before I can do that, he rolls away and pushes himself up onto his feet. I do the same, and he draws a knife, a trickle of blood running down his nose and out his mouth. His eyes are wide.
I smile. That’s fear in his eyes. “Let’s settle this like men, codardo!”
Lorenzo’s eyes dart to his guard...but the man is dead, breathing his last on the ground. My jaw tightens as I realize Paul is gone, too. He used the last of his strength to give me a chance. My grip on my knife tightens as I ready to lunge at Lorenzo.
But as I move my leg, I feel a sharp pain shoot through my body, and I suppress a grunt of pain. I look down at my leg and realize that the entire side of my pants are soaked in red. My dizziness is catching up to my adrenaline.
For a moment, Lorenzo looks as if he’s going to take me on, but he proves himself even more of a coward than I thought. He takes his chance and runs, hopping into his truck.
I run for my gun on the ground and pick it up to shoot at the vehicle, but he’s already turned the ignition on and started roaring away. I fire my weapon and watch the sparks as it hits the back, but it just blazes on, tearing out of the junkyard.
I swear under my breath in my mother tongue. I have to go after him. I look around, and my gaze falls on Tony’s broken body. Cursing, I stoop down beside him, fighting off the fuzziness of my vision. I say a quick prayer I remember from my youth as I reach into my dead friend’s jacket to get the keys.
I start running toward where we parked the car. I have to go after Lorenzo. I have to end this tonight, dammit. I have to make sure he’ll never lay another hand on Serena. As I move through the junkyard, I pass the bodies of the men I’ve slain tonight. It looks like a wild animal has been turned loose on them.
That’s what this life has made me, I think in my delirious state. A wild animal. Un diavolo.
When I reach the fence, I realize that I don’t remember running through the rest of the junkyard. My leg feels cold. I look behind me and see spots of blood I’ve left as tracks. Shit.
Tony and Paul, gone. Did Mike make it out? Did the stupid fucking idiot listen to me and save his hide? They set a trap for us. They cost me two damn fine men. I’ll kill him with my own two hands. I’ll…
I shout out in pain that jolts me awake, and I realize I’m sitting in the car already. “Bruno, you son of a bitch,” I talk to myself in Italian, using the sound of my voice and the pain to keep me awake, “you’re not done yet. You’re not done yet.”
I fight off the blurriness one more time as my bloodied hand turns the key in the ignition.
SERENA
“Seriously, you need to chill out, chica. This is supposed to be our one night to relax, right? You’ve checked your phone, like, thirty times in the past five minutes,” Rafaela says, interrupting the dark train of thought I’ve been riding along in silence. I blink a few times and hastily put my phone in my back pocket, then look across the kitchen and give her an apologetic smile. I can feel just how unconvincing a smile it is, though. That nagging ball of worry in my gut just won’t leave me alone.
“Yeah. Yeah, sorry,” I murmur, swiping a hand back through my hair and sighing. Rafaela walks to the fridge and takes out a pre-cut lime section, then starts squeezing it over the green bowl of guacamole. She glances over at me as she mixes the contents of the bowl.
“You’re really into him, huh?” she asks gently. The genuine understanding in her voice almost makes me lose my cool—I’ve been fighting to keep myself composed the past day or so since Bruno stormed out of Bathing Beauty with some vague, probably dangerous mission on his horizon. So I nod.
“I am. I know it’s probably so stupid of me. I don’t have time in my life right now for some torrid romance or whatever, but ugh, Raf. I just like him a lot. He and I go way back and it’s just...I guess I was prepared to just never see him again. In fact, I’m starting to think that’s partly why I’ve been so willing to just throw myself into work and give up on dating and all that. Whether I knew it or not, I think I’ve subconsciously been kind of, you know, saving myself for him,” I finish, shrugging.
Raf raises an eyebrow and narrows her eyes suspiciously. “You don’t mean, like...sexually. Right? I mean, I did go to college with you. I remember that one party where you made out with that frat guy on a couch at the club for, like, an hour.”
Suddenly, the tension in my body breaks and I burst out laughing. “No, oh my god. I don’t mean that I’m, like, a born-again virgin or anything like that. It’s just that I haven’t let myself fall in love since— well, since Bruno stepped out of my life the first time.”