Emme’s breathing never changed. Slow and even. The man had turned now, and was punching at her, shoving up with his hands, yelling into his radio for aid. She had seconds before the men from the truck would come around to help him. Nothing else mattered in the moment but her job. She focused completely on breaking his neck.
The man bucked like a stallion, using his weight, realizing for the first time that his opponent was a woman. He reached one hand up and caught at the front of her jacket, feeling the swell of her breasts. Then he punched hard, over and over. She ignored the pain and counted, knowing his entire concentration was on hitting her. She breathed in and out. On the sixth punch, she wrenched hard, heard the familiar crack and reached for the gun that he’d dropped in the grass when he’d rolled over her leg.
As the first man rounded the hood of the SUV, calling out to ask “Mo” what was wrong, she shot him three times, twice between the eyes and once in the heart. She immediately lay flat. She didn’t struggle to get her leg out from under the heavy body. The ground was soft from the rain, so she wiggled gently to see if she could create a little space, but the entire time she searched for another man she’d glimpsed coming toward her from the truck. He would have heard the gunshots very clearly.
“Mo? Talk to me, Mo. What the hell’s happening out there? Get moving. Just drive through the gates. Blow them if you have to,” Angelo commanded.
There was no answer. No vehicle moved. Emme scanned under the SUV, looking for the last man. There was no sound to give him away. The blast had been loud, and now a fire was roaring in the distance, but she kept her entire attention on the one hunting her. She stayed on her belly, ignoring the pain pounding through her body where Mo had repeatedly punched her. Something moved behind the SUV, but she didn’t see legs or feet. He had to be on the bumper. She hadn’t seen the vehicle move, which it would have when his weight had been added to it. He’d used the distraction of the helicopter and Mo’s fight to plan out his attack.
She kept wiggling her leg, inching it out from under Mo’s heavy body. It took patience to keep slowly working the leg as if she had all the time in the world and any minute someone wasn’t going to be shooting at her, possibly with an automatic weapon. She kept her breathing slow and even. Breathing in and out. Letting her body, her training, take over the way it had done for years. She relied on that discipline, that training, had confidence in it.
A boot slowly dropped down to the ground right next to the end of the SUV. The leg came into view as the man wholly committed to climbing off the vehicle. He took one step forward to allow his other leg to drop down. She could see the partial end of a gun as he planted the second boot on the ground. Two-handed, Emmanuelle fired three shots into the exposed calf and knee, going right up the leg with each bullet. The man screamed.
She yanked her leg free and rolled under the SUV to the other side and was up, crouching low, searching for any shadow she might slide into, even as she checked the truck to see the status of the enemies there. Both the back passenger and driver’s-side doors were open. A body hung out of the back passenger door.
“Pull back,” Miceli’s voice ordered. “Now. All of you. Pull back immediately.”
“We can still do this,” Angelo countered.
“Be quiet,” Miceli snapped. “Pull back now, everyone. This is that girl, Angelo. Emmanuelle. I know you’re here, sweetheart. You’re defending him. Valentino. He isn’t worth it. He’s been playing you since day one. I thought you knew that. I thought you found his true character out.”
His voice had gone from a whip of menace, of complete command, to that of a sweet older man talking gently to a young, mixed-up girl. Emmanuelle could clearly hear him over the several radios on the men lying dead on the ground.
“It must have been so difficult for you to grow up like you did. A mother who doesn’t love you, never wanted you and is so ugly to you, abusing you every chance she gets. How humiliating for you. It’s no wonder you were ripe at such a young age for a grown man like Val, who was experienced in seducing women, to take advantage of you.”
There were no shadows for her to disappear into. Nowhere she could go to escape the voice that was telling not only every one of his men her story, but her family and cousins as well. Miceli was doing so deliberately to provide a distraction so his men could safely pull out. He knew the Ferraro family was helping Val, Dario and Giuseppi. He knew their reputation. He didn’t know how they did what they did, but like everyone else, he both respected and feared them. He wasn’t willing to lose more men to them.
“I always have a place for you, Emmanuelle. You’re a beautiful woman. Angelo and Tommaso both have long wanted to ask you out, but Val had made it plain that he had a claim on you. They would treat you with the respect you are due. They wouldn’t cheat with other women the way he does. They wouldn’t lie to you. You wouldn’t have to put up with your own family calling you names and disrespecting you. We would protect you from all that. Come to us, Emmanuelle. Val is pure poison. He will turn on Giuseppi. He is out only for himself. I tried to tell my brother, but he looks at Val through the eyes of a loving father. I can’t save him, no matter how hard I try.”
The man she shot in the leg crawled to the truck and hauled himself into the driver’s seat. He closed the door and wrenched the steering wheel, turning so the truck lurched forward awkwardly. The body hanging out the door of the back cab slid farther so the head, the torso and even the hips were out. The tips of the fingers dragged macabrely on the ground. The dead man’s boots seemed to be hung up on something inside the truck, or he would have been ripped out.
Two other men in the back raised their heads for a moment, semiautomatics at the ready, eyes scanning around them as the driver quickly made a U-turn to make a run for it. Emmanuelle had a good shot at the driver, but didn’t take it. They were running, and it didn’t seem right to kill men who were retreating. In any case, she couldn’t get a clear shot at them without exposing herself, and there were too many of them not to take a hit from return fire.
“Think about it, Emmanuelle,” Miceli kept on. “Come to us.”
“Cut the bullshit, Miceli,” Valentino snapped. “You tried to kill my father. Your own brother. What kind of man are you? There is no place on this earth that you can go that I won’t find you. There will be no truce. No peace. You wanted war. You thought Giuseppi weak because he loved Greta and he stayed close to her while she was dying. You thought I wasn’t paying attention. That was a mistake on your part, Miceli. A very big mistake.”
There was no reply. Dead silence followed Valentino’s declaration. His voice had been low. Deadly. She knew that voice. He meant every single word. He would never stop until Miceli was dead.
She just sat in the grass watching the truck disappear down the long drive, heading away from the lake. It wouldn’t be long before emergency vehicles began to show up. It wasn’t as if one could hide a helicopter crash, or the fact that a bullet had taken out the pilot. A war had been fought here at the lake house. Stefano, Giuseppi and Valentino could decide what they wanted to tell the police. She didn’t want to see or talk to anyone.
She wanted to feel a sense of peace. She’d had that for just a little while when she’d been with Valentino here at the lake house before she’d gone to his room and seen him with the blonde he’d identified as Marge. She pulled her knees up and tucked her chin down to rub along the tops of her legs. They’d been happy together—at least, she’d been happy. She thought Valentino had been happy as well. Who knew about others? How did one know? Her brothers were happy with their choices. They seemed to adore their wives.