But today wasn’t about death.
It was something else entirely.
A victim was on the line.
“Where’s the girl?” Penny asked, never taking her stare away from the men shutting their doors and doing a quick sweep of the street and movement around them. “She should be—”
“Maybe in the back. You know how this works out in broad daylight. Money first, transaction later. Sometimes at a different location. Play their game, and we see how it goes.”
Chase made sense.
Penny still didn’t feel right.
“That wasn’t the agreement made when contact was made,” Penny murmured.
“Shit changes all the time,” Chase replied. “You know that.”
That didn’t mean she trusted anyone but especially not skin traffickers who specialized in the trade of children. If there was anything she learned in her life, it was that monsters would always do the most monstrous things when given the chance.
Her current problem was bigger.
She didn’t have the time to reconsider their situation or the meeting. The men entered the pizzeria before Penny and Chase could discuss a change in their plans, forcing them to go ahead with their original one.
The thing was, that required a girl. One that was supposed to be delivered in exchange for the hundred grand that was to be transferred into an offshore bank account during the meeting. But there was no girl ... and she was pretty sure there wasn’t one waiting in the back of the black car—that they had left running—outside.
The few patrons of the pizzeria barely looked up from their pizzas or phones when the men entered. All the details had already been passed between the two parties. Chase and Penny could arrive first—although real names hadn’t been given, of course—and would sit on the right side of the bay windows together. Easily seen. Quick to leave when it was over. She would wear a black, long-sleeve dress with a red necklace. Chase would also wear a black suit with a red tie to match.
There was no mistaking them.
The men had no issue spotting them.
“Get this done,” Chase said, standing from the table as the men approached without greeting, “and we get the fuck out, right?”
“Right,” Penny agreed at the same, quiet level. “Once we have the girl.”
“Not if it means—”
“Where’s the product?” Penny asked the taller of the two men, the one on the left with a scar that ran down his cheek and left the side of his face droopy when they came to a stop only two feet away from their table. “Money won’t be transferred without at least an inspection.”
“Sorry, my wife is a bit ... particular about this sort of business,” Chase added, smiling tightly. “But she is correct. We were promised a look at the—”
“There is no girl,” Scarface said.
Shorty on the right quickly added, “The Elite send their regards to the white ghost.”
They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t be so brazen; so stupid. There wasn’t a chance.
And yet, Penny knew in that moment how badly of a mistake they had all made. Her, actually. Just her. She had made a terrible mistake. Maybe it was the emotion involved in these things that made it all unclear for her.
It didn’t matter.
Dare had been right—The Elite finally figured out what was happening to each of their members and that every kill Penny had made up, including her last, was all connected to them, their organization, and their business of trafficking children for wealthy pedophiles.
It was too late to fix her mistake.
Her ignorance ...
In a split second, as both men reached for the guns hidden in holsters beneath their jackets, Penny was all too aware that she was in the final moments of her life. The men paid no mind to the people or the employees of the business. They were clearly there with a mission—a job to get done.
Chase hit her from the side when the first gunshots rang out. Glass shattered—likely the window behind them. The screams echoed.
Penny was already reacting even as her body crashed to the floor with Chase’s heavy body falling on top of hers. She grabbed the gun that she kept in the holster at her inner thigh and the one Chase kept at his side before he could reach for it himself.
With a gun in each hand, she aimed around the table and fired two shots. They both hit the man with the scar, straight in the face, marring him further and taking him to the ground.
“Move,” she snapped at Chase.
The only sound he made was a grunt when a bullet plugged into his back. She quickly realized it wasn’t the only gunshot he had taken. The one that ended up in his chest was bleeding through his button-down over Penny’s black dress.
He wasn’t dead.
Yet.
He would be.
Soon.
“Masters? Masters, look at me!”
Penny slipped out from under Chase on trembling legs as her adrenaline kicked into high gear. The only asshole left alive, while the few patrons scattered to the exit, was currently leaning over his partner in crime. As she stood to her full height, the guy finally realized she was still alive. His gun started to raise as she lifted her own.
Bang.
The bullet plugged between his eyes. He hit the ground, slumped over his partner’s corpse, but it wasn’t over.
Not even close.
All it took was Penny glancing to the side where the window had been shattered by an earlier bullet. She could have tried to help Chase. If it weren’t for the two men who rushed out of the backseat of the still-running vehicle outside. Like the men dead on the pizzeria’s floor, they also wore black suits. And had guns in hand.
She had hoped a girl waited there for her to save from a far worse fate—the same hellish existence she had been forced to live through for years. She couldn’t have been more wrong. Now, Chase was dying on the floor because of it, and her one option was to leave him there.
Penny headed for the back of the restaurant. Her companion would die alone; she would hear his final grunt for the rest of her life knowing it had been her fault, like so many other things.
What choice did she have?
It was her only chance to get out of this alive.
12.
Luca
LUCA had realized early on that bad shit was about to go down in the pizzeria. Long before he heard the sale of a girl-child mentioned between Penny and her associate. Before the bullets were shared between adversaries, he’d known. He couldn’t say why, exactly, but that heaviness in the pit of his stomach only grew in weight the longer he sat in his vehicle and waited for whatever it was to happen.
And then it did.
Fast.
Horribly.
Spectacularly.
Violence tended to be that way. Without warning and uncompromising. No prejudice and available to anyone at an unfortunate distance. He heard the shots second—the screams next. The first thing had been an unfamiliar voice crackling over the comm in his ear as he listened to the conversation happening inside the pizzeria.
A long time ago, Luca learned there were two kinds of people in the world. Those who ran away from danger, and the ones who ran into it. The people who sought danger had different reasons for doing so while the ones who ran from it only had one—to save their lives.
Luca didn’t like dangerous situations. He did have a sense of self-preservation despite what his profession and family legacy might suggest. And yet, often, he still found himself running into the danger instead of away.