“Declan . . . please.”
“Fine,” I hear myself agree. But the truth is, I don’t need to make promises about what I’d kill anyone in my way to do.
“Thank you for treating her like your little sister.”
Fuck. I grunt.
She scowls, then her eyes widen.
Then a stampede of footsteps saves me.
32
Madelyn
Franco kicks open the bedroom door with enough force it bounces off the wall and slams back into us. If I wasn’t so scared, I’d laugh.
“Motherfucking bitch,” he snarls into my ear, his elbow tight around my throat as he forcibly drags me just inside the room.
I immediately catch sight of Kylie, sitting on the edge of the bed with her red head bowed, like she’s studying the floor and isn’t aware of the angry men who’ve just charged into the room. Her shirt is . . . oh my God, it’s covered in blood.
I jerk my body away from the man responsible for hurting her. Not even anticipating the worse can prepare me for this. But I can’t panic.
We’re survivors, Kylie and I. I don’t know how but I’ve got to believe we’ll get through this too.
She hasn’t noticed me yet. Too preoccupied with the three men who stormed in ahead of us and are now lined up before her.
In a move so fast, so unexpected, so un-Kylie-like, she raises her arm and fires three shots. The men fall to the carpet like plastic ducks at a firing range. Holy sweet Mary. What I saw her do to Franco’s men at the motel wasn’t an act of self-defense—she’s good at this.
A professional.
Just. Like. Declan.
Only Franco doesn’t seem in the least bit surprised. “See what a bitch she is? That’ll be the last time you’ll mock me,” he says maliciously, waving his finger the largest of the dead man, the one who laughed at him earlier.
Yeah, payback is a bitch.
Kylie lifts her head and turns, directing her gun directed at the doorway. At . . . me.
“Madelyn.” She says my name without emotion. Not surprised. Not worried. Like I’m no one to her.
Three men brush by and come to stand in front of Franco and I. More ducks lined up in a row, except I’m right behind them.
Kylie sets her gun on her thigh, and hunches her shoulders forward in defeat. The quintessential picture of humbleness. But Franco’s not buying it.
“Grab that bitch,” he shouts.
“Tsk, tsk, Franco. No cause for profanity,” she taunts.
My jaw couldn’t have hit the floor harder. Who is this person?
Certainly not my sister, who can drop the motherf---ing f-bomb like nobody’s business. Ironic, right? How this is what’s running through my head. And not the in-my-face fact of how Kylie terminates people for a living.
Holy shit.
“Pin her to the bed so she can watch what I do to her sister.” He shoves me hard, sending me crashing into his men’s backs. They step aside and I fall down onto all fours in front of them.
“Remember the time you came home with two scraped knees and a cut lip?” Kylie quietly asks me. “What I taught you afterward?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Too late. I remember. Play the weak-female card. Then, when he relaxes, aim for his balls.
Yeah, I’ll do it. It’s not like I can say to Franco, “How about we sit down and talk things over?” Still, I glance over my shoulder at Franco, whose cheeks are brighter than a fire truck and the gun in his hand cocked and ready to hose us down.
“Please. Don’t hurt us,” I whimper in my most desperate voice, in an effort to draw their attention down to the floor. Ten men. Not counting the three dead ones.
Can’t we discuss this situation in a peaceful way?
My answer comes in the form of three more shots Kylie fires with perfect precision. Three more men, who fall to the floor on both sides of me. Now I whimper for real.
A bullet hits the carpet close. I feel a burn on my right hand.
“Ah. That got your attention,” Franco says. “One more shot and your sister is dead.”
No need to turn around, it’s clear his gun is aimed at me.
Kylie tosses her pistol on the carpet. Close enough that if I crawl forward . . .
She shakes her head.
Our eyes connect. Then her gaze lifts to Franco, then slides off to his right. “Six down, one to go,” she calmly states like she’s counting daisies instead of dead men.
Franco whistles. I hear his men’s footsteps behind me.
Kylie stands, drawing their attention toward her.
Now’s my chance. I inch forward, closer and closer still. Until my fingers wrap around the handle of her pistol.
A shot is fired. I flinch as my thigh is suddenly on fire like a hornet’s nest’s landed on my leg. A bullet. “It’s a graze . . . just a graze . . . no need to worry,” I say, for Kylie’s benefit as well as my own.
“The bastard shot her,” Kylie says.
For a moment, everything except the burn to my thigh seems to cloud my ability to think. Then holy mother-loving chaos breaks out inside the room.
“Oh, shit,” Kylie says before she slams her body into my back and pins me to the floor. Protecting me for the hail of bullets ricocheting around the room.
Somehow she’s convinced Franco’s men to . . . shoot each other?
“I love you, Madelyn,” she shouts into my ear. “I don’t know how this is going to end. Follow my lead and do as I say. Okay? No matter what.”
We lie like this for what seems like an eternity. Her curled over me, her heart racing in unison with my own. Blood, death, destruction is all around us.
Then I feel her stiffen.
“No. Don’t you dare,” she bites out.
A body lands on the carpet beside us. I gasp as I spy Franco lying next to us, with his eyes opened and with a bullet hole between the eyes.
“You lying jerk,” Kylie yells. Her weight lifts off of me as she rises up onto her feet. “Franco was mine. Why did you do that?”
I roll up onto my knees, gritting my teeth as the skin around my wound stretches. I guess the pain is my way of deflecting. Focusing on my own injury instead of agonizing over the thirteen dead men surrounding me.
Us. Death surrounded us. Me. Kylie . . . and whoever she’s so pissed off at . . .
Oh. My. God.
“He shot her,” I hear Declan snap. He’s furious, positively furious. And he’s here.
“Let me get this straight. You took Franco out because he hurt Madelyn?” My sister sounds surprised.
I’m not. This is who Declan is, right? A killer.
And . . . so is Kylie . . .
I feel the heat of his fingers against my skin as I’m lifted off the carpet and placed onto my feet. I raise my chin to look at him.
My lover.
My heartbreak.
And good Lord, he has two guns drawn on Kylie.
I quickly step in between them, dodging his attempt to grab hold of me. “I forgave you,” I say in a calm tone, so contradictory to what I’m feeling. “You promised me.”
He scowls fiercely at me.
“I trusted you a second time.”
He stands without moving, pistols cocked, mouth in a firm line, so bleeding cold the temperature in the room drops below freezing.