“What? No!”
“Bichito, please.” With her hands shaking, Adriana tumbled off him, watching in horror as I rolled him onto his stomach and flipped his jacket up, confirming my suspicions.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Adriana’s tortured wail harmonized with the refrain of gunshots and soprano screams filling the night air. The back of Brody’s white shirt was stained red, and a bullet hole on his lower back pumped out a continuous stream of blood.
No exit wound.
Goddamn it.
“He jumped in front of me!” she cried. “He pushed me to the ground. He… he… Brody wake up!”
I needed something to stop the bleeding, and my jacket didn’t have enough give to the material. Just as my eyes shifted toward the train on Adriana’s dress, I caught the briefest glint of black.
There was no time to warn her. Grabbing the back of Adriana’s head, I shoved her down against the wood and fired three times. Another unrecognizable pendejo hit the ground with a hole between his eyes and two in his chest.
I was done fucking around.
Braced on her forearms, Adriana twisted her head and stared at the dead man, her body starting to shake. “Val,” she whispered, her face turning to chalk. “I’m going to be sick.”
I didn’t have time for her to be sick. I loved her, but right now, I needed her to be a cartel queen, not a bride. “Sit up,” I commanded. When she blinked at me with a vacant look in her eyes, I leaned over and grabbed her chin. “I said sit up!”
Still dazed, she flopped onto her ass, which was fine. It gave me the access I needed. Grabbing the train of her gown, I said a silent apology to mamá before shredding the fuck out of it. Adriana didn’t budge. After a few more rips, I snapped my fingers in her face. “Adriana! Ponme atención! Pay attention! I need your help to stop the bleeding. There are others here I have to...”
I froze. It was like taking a sledgehammer to the chest.
“Eden.” I was so blindsided by the gunshots, so unsettled by the fucking men in black, so rattled by my sister’s bloody wedding dress, so consumed with saving my new brother-in-law’s life, and so focused on task after task, that I left my heart exposed.
“Val, what are you doing?” Adriana snatched the fabric out of my hands. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Eden…” I repeated, climbing to my feet again. “I have to find Eden.”
“Don’t you dare fucking walk away from him! Val! Please!”
Shaking my head, I backed away. “I’m sorry…”
“Go, Carrera. I’ve got this.”
The voice behind me was familiar, but instinct took over, and I turned around, greeting its owner with the barrel of a gun against his forehead. Instead of raising one of his own, he cocked an eyebrow and glanced down. “I bet that hurts like a bitch.”
Of course.
Cristiano Vergara.
But the asshole was right, so I finally looked down at my own wound and assessed the damage. Not as bad as I thought, but still ugly as fuck. A clean surface shot through my shoulder. I’d had worse. I’d need some stitching and an entire bottle of tequila if I survived this shit.
“Make sure he lives, or I’ll kill you myself.” Vergara’s answer was to walk away from my gun and kneel by my sister’s side. “Apply pressure and find someone to help you get him to the helipad,” I growled at his back. “I have medic choppers waiting.”
As I backed away, I heard Cristiano calm my sister in a soothing voice. “He took a bullet to the back, but he’s still breathing, cariño. Talk to him and keep pressure on it while I tighten this.”
“Cereza!” Her name was the only thing on my lips as I wove my way through the carnage of bodies decorating my courtyard. In an ironic twist of fate, the only color I sought out was red.
Fucking red.
Bullets still flew around me, one coming so close to my ear, I felt its heat. Nothing stopped me. Nothing slowed me.
Where were my guards?
How in the hell had this happened right under our noses? In our faces?
As I carved my path, exposed faces frozen in death sought me out. Syndicate leaders. Bratva pakhans. Corrupt politicians. My own fucking men. One thing was for sure. The targets were clear. Seats of power.
I surprised myself by thinking of Ava and hoping she’d survived the fall.
Fucking conscience.
Halfway across the courtyard, I forgot about the pain in my shoulder because the one in my chest was about to explode. Dangerous thoughts crept inside my head, poisoning it with images that blackened my vision.
My heart. My life. My world.
Gone.
But then I saw it.
Red.
“Eden!” She was lying on the grass with a man standing over her. A man in black.
An entire army couldn’t have stopped me. I ran until my lungs burned. She was the only reason I didn’t pull the trigger. He was too close to her.
But I didn’t need a gun to kill.
However only a few feet away, the man in black turned around, gun in hand. “What the fuck is this, Carrera?” A cool darkness simmered in Niko’s eyes. It was the rage of a trained assassin ready to strike. A man conditioned to thirst for the kill.
A man who stood, ready to defend and protect his wife.
The redhead.
Ava was on the ground, blood covering her legs. Her dress was pulled to her waist, revealing where a bullet had entered and exited the outside fleshy part of her right thigh. The wound wasn’t life threatening, although considering the murderous look in Niko’s eyes, you would’ve thought she was near death.
“Who the fuck did this,” he repeated, aiming his gun at my chest.
I wasn’t concerned. If he pulled the trigger, a bullet to his skull would soon follow which would leave his precious Ava helpless. The Russian was smarter than that.
“Who the fuck do you think?”
“Santiago…” he growled. “He’s a dead man.”
Knocking his gun out of my way, I continued my search while muttering, “Get in line, motherfucker.”
“Eden!” Impatience consumed my humanity faster than I could salvage it. If I didn’t find her soon, fire and bullets would be the least of everyone’s worries. I’d burn this whole damn place down myself.
“Val!” Mateo’s voice hit my ears, but it wasn’t as much my name as the urgency it carried that drew me toward him. I didn’t see, I flew. I bulldozed. And when I arrived, I fucking roared.
My second-in-command knelt on the ground in the far east corner of the courtyard, ash and debris falling around him like snow. His hands were covered in blood all the way up to his elbows, his tuxedo jacket gone, and his white button-up shirt stained that fucking color.
Red.
Then I heard crying. Tortuous sobs torn from a heart being ripped at the seams. Female sobs. My gaze slid to the other side of Mateo where his wife, Leighton, openly wept, mascara trailing down her pale cheeks in streams of angry black tears. She shook, prayed, and begged with her hands extended in front of her.
The mind was a fascinating thing. As humans, we thought we controlled it. We made it think what we wanted, see what we wanted, and believe what we wanted. But in reality, it controlled us. It protected us from ourselves. From the things we didn’t want to face.