Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 94048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
“Your brother’s not in the hall, is he?” Baritone asks.
“Nope, he’s not.” I put the gun against the skinny man’s head. “What’s Santoro have planned for my family?”
“I don’t—” Baritone starts.
I pull the trigger.
The skinny thug drops. His brain splatters forward as the bullet exits his eye socket. Baritone’s mouth opens and he starts grunting like he’s been kicked in the balls. I put the gun to his head.
“What’s Santoro have planned for my family?” I repeat.
“There’s an attack,” Baritone says, his voice trembling. “Please, it doesn’t have to be this way.”
I know why he’s begging. Sometimes I stay up wondering if I’d beg in his position. If my life were in the hands of a man who wants me dead, would I plead with him? Everyone always does, it’s inevitable. Just biological programming playing out through language. We all want to keep living.
“When and where? I need specifics. Start talking.”
But Baritone’s brave, or maybe he’s stupid, because he jerks back and tries to slam his head into me as he reaches with big fingers for my gun wrist. I pull the trigger and the bullet rips his ear off, but it doesn’t kill him, and he falls on top of me. I shoot two more times, both of them finding a new home in my friend’s body, but they’re not kill shots. He grunts as I knee him and punch him in the nose, but he’s struggling hard now, and he’s one big motherfucker.
We’re wrestling in the blood on my hardwood floor, but Baritone’s flagging. It’s not easy, getting shot twice, but I have to hand it to the guy. He took it like a master. I elbow him in the neck and roll him off me, and I try to stem the bleeding because I have more questions, but it’s too late for that. The light in his eyes fades and he sputters his last breath, blood-colored bubbles forming on his lips.
I sit in the middle of the carnage, breathing hard. “Fuck,” I say and look up at the ceiling. “Fuck.”
Chapter 45
Emily
“You ever have a big fucking Italian breakfast before?” Vito asks. He’s standing at his stove with a frying pan in one hand. Thick slabs of bacon sizzle, their meaty, red and fatty bodies crisping up as he rolls the fat around.
“Honestly, I have no idea what Italians eat for breakfast.”
“You got the classics. Baked eggs are popular.” Vito’s wearing a white tank top, slightly stained. His kitchen smells amazing. His wife’s upstairs, still asleep, and his tween daughter Lucia is watching her tablet with her headphones on, rolling her eyes at her father, and it’s obvious the girl loves him to death, and he loves her, because he served her first with a big wink.
“Baked eggs,” I repeat. “Sounds good.”
“Better than you think. Then there’s the bread. And all the croissants, which are fucking French, but Italians love that stuff. I gotta admit, it’s really good.”
“Extremely good,” I agree.
“There’s breakfast pasta.”
I roll my eyes and grin at his daughter when she does the same. She grins back. “I don’t think breakfast pasta is real,” I tell him.
“It’s real as fucking shit,” he says, practically shouting. He plates more bacon and starts frying eggs. For such a big, loud man, Vito moves around the kitchen like he’s a dancer, sifting the ingredients around, keeping his workspace relatively clean and organized. I’m kind of impressed. He looks like the cooks back in Cucina’s kitchen, and I wonder if he has professional training or something.
“Next time I crash at your house, you’ll have to make it for me,” I tell him.
He roars a laugh and refills my coffee. “If only you’d be so fucking lucky,” he says.
“Papa, stop cursing so much,” Lucia scolds. “You sound like a fucking moron when every other word is fuck.”
“You see what I deal with? The girl? She’s got no manners. She fucking curses more than I do and she fucking thinks I’m the one with the bad mouth. Fucking get outta here.”
Lucia mimes hanging herself and her father swats at her head, and I sit back, smiling at the pair of them, and worried sick about Simon.
He dropped me on Vito’s doorstep in the middle of the night. I thought they’d kick me out, but Vito was awake and prepared already. He gave me the spare room, made sure I was comfortable, then went back to sleep. I could hear him snoring through the wall. Simon’s been gone since then, doing God knows what, but he left with a look in his eye that I’ve never seen before.
It was the same look he had when he killed those two guys in the hall. And again when he killed the men in the car. He was heading off to do something violent and dangerous, and now I’m afraid he won’t come back.