Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 396(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
It immediately exploded, so I’d struck it just in time.
“Cristo!” Frankie yelled.
Windows broke on the other side of the house. I listened to them shatter.
We were about to be surrounded on all sides. This was the kind of shit that I lived for, the dump of adrenaline that made me feel alive, the high I chased every single day in the hope of getting a single hit.
But I didn’t feel it.
All I felt was terror.
Terror that my girl wouldn’t make it out of here alive. I never cared about my own life—I was going to die at some point—but now even my own life had different value. I had to live long enough to know she would make it out of this.
Within the next second, more guys rushed into the house from the front.
Francesca had already reloaded her shotgun and took out one then another. But it was chaos, guys coming from the front and the rear, bullets everywhere. I fired my rifle, but this time, they were expecting it. In close quarters, the guns were actually more detrimental than helpful, so I used my gun to bash in a face before I punched another so hard he dropped. I pulled out my knife and stabbed another in the throat while Francesca continued to pick off whoever with her shotgun.
I felt a bullet hit me in the back of the shoulder, and I screamed before I turned around and stabbed my knife clean through the spine of the asshole behind me. Lifted him from the floor then used his body and his vest to protect myself from the spray of bullets that came at me like a tropical storm.
“Fuck off!”
The momentum of the bullets pushed me back, the force of everything the same as a charging Clydesdale. When the spray of bullets started to wane, I looked over to see Francesca standing behind them because their attention had been entirely focused on me.
She fired the automatic rifle, went through the entire magazine in just a couple seconds. “Fuck the fuck off!”
They all dropped to the floor.
I shoved the body off me and realized I’d been shot in the shoulder and the forearm, but I didn’t actually feel it. Just felt the warm blood drip down my body. “Baby, are you okay?”
She screamed a war cry, her eyes glistening with angry tears. She was deranged, like the adrenaline gave her that high that I spent my life chasing. She breathed hard and then abruptly started to cry.
“Baby, are you okay?” I asked as I rushed to her.
She nodded as the tears dripped down her cheeks, but then her eyes focused on my arm when she realized I’d been hurt. “No…no…you’ve been shot.” She snapped out of her catharsis and grabbed my arm, getting blood all over her fingers.
“I’m fine. I’ve got to kill off any more who are outside before they get away.”
She looked at my shoulder. “You’ve been shot twice—”
“You can clean me up after.”
“You could bleed to death.”
I grabbed the rifle from her hand then ripped the vest off a dead guy before I strapped it on, knowing I should have stored one here in case of something like this. I ran outside and saw the headlights of the vehicles as they tried to speed off. “Like I’m letting you assholes get away.” I sprinted along the house to the road and then fired my rifle into the sides of their vehicles, hoping they weren’t bulletproof like mine.
When glass shattered, I knew they weren’t. One car veered off the road and crashed into the vineyard. The other kept going with a spray of bullets in the door, flooring it over the dirt road in the dark. Then a car appeared out of nowhere and chased him down, a car that I recognized as Andre’s.
I watched Andre pursue him while the adrenaline still pumped hard in my veins and nearly made them burst. I continued to bleed out from my wounds, but I didn’t notice the pain from the bullets embedded in my flesh. Other cars pulled up, the headlights hitting me right in the face while I felt the rage dump on me like a bucket of cold water.
Warren.
I turned when I heard the sound of a door shut.
Leo stumbled out of the car as he moved toward the house, and with a look of abject horror, he stared at the destroyed house, all the windows shattered, with broken pieces reflecting from where they lay on the ground. His eyes wide, he trembled slightly as he started to pant. “Francesca…”
“She’s alright,” I said as I walked toward him. “She’s not hurt.”
But he continued to look at the house as if he didn’t hear a word I said. Overcome with shock and grief, he dropped to his knees.
“Leo, I said she’s okay.”