I didn’t say a word even as my blood ran cold. I stood very still, keeping the gun sights on his forehead and my finger on the trigger. He knew Freddy Russo. He knew about the thumb drive. He’d used the tracking device to find us at the motel. It was clear this fucking guy was up to his neck in this shit.
“Things don’t need to get ugly,” Dominic insisted, but I knew he was lying. We’d both come here to get ugly. No sense in leaving disappointed. “Hand it over and we both walk away.”
“No.”
“Don’t be a fucking idiot. You can come out of this looking like a hero. Save the boss’s daughter. He’ll be grateful.”
“Hard to believe after all the Accardos I’ve killed.” And Sofia’s father would be looking for the thumb drive too. Who did this asshole think her father would blame when it was gone?
“You want in on the cut? Maybe you can have Freddy’s piece of the pie.”
“And end up like him? No, thanks.”
“I killed him because he couldn’t kill you. That was his end of the deal. He failed. He paid.”
“I know the game you’re trying to pull off. You’ve already lost.”
“You don’t know shit. You’re an outsider. Nothing but a tool.”
I ignored the insults. I wasn’t an impetuous kid anymore. I’d been called worse, and my feelings weren’t easily hurt. I wanted to know more before this turned violent, but he seemed to be clamming up. I needed to prod him.
“Let me talk about your little scheme, and you tell me if I got it right,” I challenged. “Your good buddy and mine, Freddy Russo, hires me to kill Sofia and those Accardo goons. You roll in the next morning to take her to the airport—but most importantly for Don Accardo, to make sure that thumb drive gets to the Cayman Islands. You find Sofia dead like the two of you planned. You steal the thumb drive and tell her father that I stole it. Meanwhile, my friend Freddy kills me when I show up for the rest of my money. You and Freddy blow town with all that stolen crypto coin. And if a war breaks out between the Accardo Family and the Sartinis over the murder of Giovanni’s daughter, all the better for you. But maybe you end up killing Freddy later and keeping it all for yourself because why share? That sound about right?”
“Sounds like you got it all fucking figured out, smart guy,” Dominic said viciously.
I owed this bastard his own bullet for putting Sofia’s life at risk. He’d be getting it soon, but there was one thing I wanted to know first. “Why did her father drag her into this shit? Sofia’s his goddamn daughter.”
Dominic shrugged. The look in his eyes was one of contempt. Maybe for me. Maybe for her father. I couldn’t tell.
“He needed to get the drive to the Cayman Islands. No one would pay attention to some rich American girl on vacation with a USB drive in her luggage.”
So her father was using her but had nothing to do with the murder plot. I hated the guy, so I’d willingly believe he was capable of it. That wasn’t the case, and Sofia might feel better knowing her dad didn’t want her dead. I didn’t know how she’d feel about her father using her to move millions out of the country. She deserved a better father—
Dominic opened fire at me, catching me a second before I shot him myself. It was my fault for getting lured into talking in the first place. His pistol had no sound suppressor. The gunshot was the flat, loudpopof a 9mm pistol.
The guy was still as shitty a shot as he’d been at the motel. Instead of putting one in my chest, his bullet sliced along the meat of my left arm. The searing pain made me flinch. The bullet impacted the wall behind me with a thud.
But he’d hit my left arm, and I shot with my right hand. My flinch threw off the aim on my return shot. It went wide, putting a neat hole in the living room drywall behind Dominic. The sound of my pistol shot was a whisper, but my ears were ringing from Dominic’s indoor gunshot.
My bullet had missed Dominic’s face, but he’d felt the shot whiz past his head and panicked. He fired wildly while trying to dodge back into the living room for cover.
I’d already anticipated his move. My next shot took him in the chest, missing his heart but hitting a lung.
He flailed and fell. He didn’t even scream in pain. The impact of the bullet stole the breath from him, and with one lung sucking air, he would be struggling to breathe as it filled with blood.
Dominic was lying on the ground, moving weakly. I could see his legs from where I stood, but the rest of him was behind the wall hiding most of the living room. He was kicking at the ground, digging his heel at the hardwood floors as if trying to get enough purchase to push himself out of the line of fire.
My arm throbbed and burned along the wound. I took a second to evaluate the damage, gritting my teeth against the pain. A decent bit of blood, which was bad. But not the artery, which was good. From the look of it, his shot had grazed the lower part of my shoulder. I still had use of the arm, although the pain was distractingly fierce.
This blood was a fucking problem, though. It would make for a forensics field day.
It would’ve been easy to blame Dominic DeMeo since he was the asshole who’d shot me, but in the end, it had been my fault. I should’ve killed him on sight. That was how I always completed contracts. I let a gun do my talking.
At least I had the full story now. It might even have been worth getting shot.
I walked to Dominic and kicked his gun away, then squatted beside him. I put the tip of the suppressor cylinder against his heart and looked into his eyes.
He stared back at me, his ugly face a mix of fear and pain.
