Heading down the corridor again, I come to a ragged hole blown through the exterior wall. The floor all around is littered with debris.
It’s about a six-by-six opening. A substantial size, which means substantial firepower. This mess was made by something with much more oomph than a hand grenade, especially considering the walls are reinforced.
The echo of heavy footsteps catches my attention.
I duck into a niche in the wall and listen as the footsteps move farther away. I can tell there’s more than one man, but not more than three. Holding my handgun at low ready and keeping my footfalls as light as possible, I walk farther down the corridor until I come to a break in the wall, beyond which is an enormous sitting room with a glossy black grand piano in the corner.
Two men with rifles move swiftly among the clusters of sofas and chairs. The scopes of their weapons are held to their masked faces, the muzzles pointed at a figure standing still on the other side of the room.
It’s Reyna.
Her hands hang loosely at her sides. Her expression is impassive. She watches the men approach with an eerie detachment in her eyes, as if the scene unfolding in front of her is happening to someone else.
She’s in shock. Fuck. Reyna, run!
I raise my weapon, take aim, and fire.
Brains splatter the wallpaper in a chunky vivid patchwork of red. The intruder the brain belonged to drops heavily to his knees. He falls face-first onto the carpet.
The other one spins on his heel and jerks the muzzle of his rifle in my direction.
Before he can get off his shot, Reyna pulls a knife from a pocket in her dress and embeds it in his neck.
He screams, staggering sideways and dropping his rifle. As he grapples with the blade jutting out from the side of his neck, desperately trying to dislodge it, I put a bullet between his eyes.
He jerks and falls, landing backward on a velvet sofa. Blood squirts erratically from the wound in his neck. Then he slides slowly to the floor and remains still, his mouth hanging open.
Reyna looks at me with undisguised irritation.
“I had it handled, Quinn.”
This woman. Jesus, God, you really broke the mold when you made this one.
“You were about to get your bloody head shot off! And you’re welcome!”
Rolling her eyes as if she thinks I’m being ridiculous, she kneels down next to the body in front of the sofa. She yanks the knife from his neck, wipes the blade on his jacket, and stashes it back into the hidden pocket in the skirt of her dress. She picks up his rifle, checks to make sure there’s a round in the chamber, and stands.
“You know these guys?”
Impressed by her utter calm, I say, “No. You?”
She shakes her head. “Where’s Lili?”
“Gianni’s taken her to the safe room.”
“And Mamma?”
“In the kitchen alone, drinking wine in the dark.”
She nods, as if what I’ve just told her is entirely normal. When more gunfire erupts outside, she says, “Any idea how many of them there are?”
“I counted six. Killed one in the hallway. Plus these two, that leaves three left.”
“Two.”
“How do you figure?”
“I killed another one on my way in here.”
“Of course you did.”
With a toss of her head, she flips her hair over her shoulder. “Flashed my tits at him. He froze like a deer in headlights.”
Funny how I can be insanely jealous of a dead man I’ve never met.
“How creative.”
“Men are annoyingly predictable.”
“Tits are our Achilles’ heel. Now get down to the basement with your brother and Lili. I’ll clear the rest of—”
“Oh, shut up, Quinn,” she interrupts crossly, then spins around and strides out of the room.
I have to take a moment to press a hand over my heart, which is having a seizure.
No matter how long I live, I’ll never forget the image of Reyna Caruso in a black dress and stilettos, carrying a high-caliber rifle at the ready as she heads off to hunt armed intruders, her full hips swaying and her long dark hair flaring out behind her like a flag.
I leap into action again when I hear the staccato pulse of shots fired.
Weaving around the velvet chairs and tufted divans, I head out of the room. I search five more rooms on the ground floor, each bigger than the last and seemingly used for nothing more than display of hideous furniture and frightening, religious-themed art.
All are empty.
Near the staircase in the foyer, a man clad in black combat gear lies facedown in a pool of blood. His weapon is missing. The front door stands wide open. I see three of Gianni’s guards sprint past outside, in pursuit of someone running on foot.
Several seconds later, there’s more gunfire, then some shouting in Italian that sounds celebratory.
If there were only six men who entered the property, there’s one more to go.
Reyna’s nowhere in sight, so I run up the stairs and go from room to room, checking them one by one to ensure they’re empty. When I’ve confirmed they are, I trot back down the stairs, then hurry through the remaining rooms on the ground floor. They’re all empty, too.
Then I hear an angry voice coming from a nearby salon, the last one still unsearched. It’s a voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“Go ahead, fucker. You’ll be doing me a favor. But I’ll see you again in hell, and then I’m going to cut off your balls and choke you with them.”
Reyna.
My heartbeat surges into overdrive. Moving fast but quietly, I stride over to the salon, gun in hand, and slow just outside the doorway.
When I glance in, my pounding heart skids to a dead stop.
Reyna stands in front of an unlit fireplace, eyes flashing with fury, chin lifted in defiance. A man stands across from her, about six feet away.
He’s pointing a semiautomatic hand gun at her chest.
A rifle lies on the floor beside him.
I think it’s the one she was carrying. He must’ve surprised her somehow and pulled it from her grip.
I say loudly, “Oy. Dickface.”
He jerks his head to the right.
I squeeze the trigger and put a bullet in his temple. He collapses like a rag doll into a heap on the floor.
Then something kicks me in the shoulder from behind.
“What the…？”
I spin around to find another masked guy in black crouched on one knee in the corridor, arms outstretched, holding a Glock semiauto in his grip. Before I can raise my weapon, a shot rings out.
Blood mists from his mask in a spray. He topples sideways, gun clattering against the marble, then lies still.
Breathless, Reyna runs up beside me. “It’s too bad you can’t count, Quinn. There were seven of them, not six.”
Too stunned to argue, I stare at her holding the rifle in her hands. “Did you just shoot a man to protect me?”
She looks at me, blinks, then winces. “Shit. Must’ve been a reflex.”
“Or maybe you were feeling gratitude for both times I saved your life in the last ten minutes.”
She scoffs. “Please. I didn’t need your help.” Then she gasps and her eyes grow wide.
“Don’t tell me. You just remembered you didn’t make me supper yet.”
“No, Quinn…” She reaches out and lightly touches my shoulder. “I think you’ve been shot.”