Proof Rocco was born for this life is exposed when he yanks up the parking brake before he tugs on the steering wheel. He brings the Range Rover to a dead stop parallel with the jet still whizzing down the runway.
After grabbing an M16 stuffed behind the seat, I throw open my door, then climb onto the roof of the Range Rover. I’m not surprised when my glare down the scope has me stumbling on Rimi Castro in the pilot seat. He doesn’t trust anyone, not even a qualified pilot. That’s why he does everything himself.
I’m kind of the same, not that I’d ever admit that to anyone, especially not my enemy.
My target is locked and loaded, my finger is hovering over the trigger, but no matter how much my brain screams for me to fire, I can’t. Firing at a moving target takes skill and precision. I have both of those, but what if Rimi pulls Fien into the line of fire a nanosecond after I take my shot? What if I kill her like my father killed my mother? He may not have fired at her, but he did use her as a shield. He is the reason she’s dead.
“Five,” Rocco commences counting down a short time later, warning me that the jet will be in the air by the time he reaches zero.
“Four…”
I recheck my scope before wetting my lips, my mouth suddenly bone-dry.
“Three…”
While inching back the trigger until the clip is close to releasing a bullet, I suck in a final breath. It could very well be my last if my shot shatters the cockpit’s window, and Rimi still takes off. He’s stupid like that. He’d rather die in a fiery wreck than give in.
“Two…”
The vibrations of the jet’s engines overtake the shrill of my pulse in my ears.
“One…”
I take my shot.
My bullet perforates through the cockpit’s windshield exactly where aimed, but I fail to hit my target. Rimi slanted his head with barely a second to spare. His life was saved by less than a millimeter, and I’m too late to take a second shot. The plane’s wheels are no longer on the runway. They’re zooming past my head.
When the jet disappears into the moonlit sky, I discharge the remainder of the bullets from the M16 into the tarmac. Several of them lodge deep into the blistering surface, however a handful ping off the rigid material, coating both my car and face with shrapnel.
The one that skims my cheek enough to scold my skin all but obliterates my last nerve. I’m fuming with anger and willing to take it out on anyone I deem responsible for the loss of my daughter for the second time in my life.
Seemingly having a sixth sense to my inner psyche, Rocco places himself between the back passenger door of the Range Rover and me when I leap down from the roof. “This isn’t her fault.”
“How is this not her fault? If we didn’t stop to pick her up, Fien would be here!”
It’s clear he has no desire to live when he replies, “Carrying her out of the gulley took about the same amount of time for you to line up your shot. If you want to shift the blame here, Dimi, you’re gonna need to look in the mirror.”
He smiles like a sadistic fuck when I dig the barrel of the colt under his ribs. I slant my gun upward, so it’s facing his heart before getting to within an inch of his face.
Most men would piss their pants by now. Rocco isn’t my number two for no reason. “You gonna shoot me, Dimi? You gonna gun down the only man whose always had your back?” He brings his face even closer to mine. “Who stood at your side when you buried Ophelia? Who helped you search for Roberto when he disappeared? Who has offered time and time again to pop bullets into your father’s stomach because you can’t?” The disappointment flaring through his eyes is as obvious as mine. “That was all me, D. Every fucking one of them was me. But if you want to kill me, go ahead because you ain’t touching that girl.”
“I need to kill.” I can’t put it simpler than I just did. The urge is so white-hot, it’s burning me up on the inside even more than the truth of Rocco’s statement. If I don’t kill someone, I’ll turn the gun on myself. That wouldn’t just end things badly for me, it would leave Fien defenseless. The only time women in the industry are seen as valuable is when their womb is ripe with the next leader of the Cartel. Fien is years away from that age. If I die, she dies. There are no guarantees in my life but that.
“You can’t have Rimi yet, so why not go after the next best thing?” My brows inch together when Rocco takes a step to the right, unblocking the visual of the almost unconscious blonde. Even with the roar of a private jet’s engines barreling over her head and the discharge of a semi-automatic weapon, she’s still out cold. “She didn’t get banged up like that for no reason. Whoever did that to her is the person you should be taking your anger out on. She wouldn’t have needed rescuing if someone hadn’t fucked her over.”
As my lips itch into a callous smirk, I snag my cell phone out of the Range Rover. “Smith…” Adrenaline thickens my veins when he hums a second later. “Do you have a spare laptop at the ready?”
The crack of a laptop screen being pried open sounds down the line before Smith asks, “What do you need?”
Rocco’s grin matches mine when I say, “It’s time to go on a scavenger hunt,” but it sags when I add, “After we’ve dumped her far from here.”
What I said earlier is true. Women are worthless in this industry, so I wouldn’t do myself any favors adding another one into the mix. If the reports blowing up my phone are a true indication of how Justine encountered the Gauntlet, the nicest thing I could ever do for this unknown blonde is wipe the slate clean for her so she can start afresh.
If that means I have to remove everyone from her life, so be it. I’ll do that. I’ll do anything to ease the guilt tearing me up from the inside out.
Chapter Eight
Roxanne
My stomach swirls as violently as my temples thump my skull when I attempt to open my eyes. I don’t know how long I’ve been out for, but if the dryness of my throat is anything to go by, I haven’t had a drink in a thousand years. My mouth is bone-dry. I can’t even conjure up the slightest bit of spit to moisten the burn of my swallows.
“Eddie…” That’s the last thing I remember—paying for tickets to a stupid action flick Eddie wanted to see. If the price tag on the flowers wasn’t a jarring enough reminder that we have hardly anything in common, his choice in movies should have been the icing on the cake.
Alas, I’m a sucker for his sweetly intense brown eyes.
Did I fall asleep during the movie? That could explain why my body is aching so much. The new theater complexes aren’t as spacious as the out-of-date one in our hometown, and I couldn’t afford premium tickets, so perhaps I’m kinked up because of the rigidness of the chairs in the theaters?
“Or not,” I mutter to myself when I attempt to ease the throbbing of my temples with a quick swirl of my fingertips. My wrist is cuffed to a steel railing. I’m shackled to a bed like a convict at the start of the movie we watched.
“They said you murdered someone,” whispers a shy, frail voice next to me. “That you cut him up into little pieces because he hurt you.” After switching on the light hanging over her bed, a petite brunette with sunken, blood-stained cheeks and black eyes rolls over to face me. “Is it true? Did you kill him because he did that?”