Page 50 of Drowning in the Deep
“Something like that. Elisa, listen, I know I’m not good at showing you how I feel about you, and sometimes I’m a real jackass, but you have to know, I’ll always come for you.” His voice cracked with emotion a little on those last words, and I felt in my heart exactly what he was saying to me.
I wanted to pour out everything right then and there and let him know how much I really cared about him, how he had been part of my life since that night all those years ago when he unlocked my true self who had been hiding deep within me. But words and emotions were not Daemon’s thing, and I didn’t think it was worth the risk of overwhelming him. I didn’t want him to rescue me and then take off again, hiding away until he could find something else to be angry at me about.
“I know,” I told him. “I knew you would come.”
He brushed his thumb along my cheek. “Well, if you feel like your legs are working, let’s get you the hell out of here,” he suggested.
“Sounds like a good plan to me,” I agreed. I wrapped an arm around his waist so I could lean on him as I took my first few steps, afraid that my legs wouldn’t work, but they seemed to be mostly fine. My stomach muscles were sore from all of my father’s punches, which made it difficult to lift one leg and then the other, but knowing that I was leaving my father’s house, I would’ve found a way to fly out of there if it had been a requirement.
We’d only taken a few steps out of the storage closet when footsteps echoed on the floor above us, a sound I hadn’t been able to hear in the closet, even when I’d strained to do so.
“Fuck,” Daemon muttered, grabbing his gun with his free hand. “I guess the maid was wrong and there are guys waiting for us upstairs.”
“Shocking,” I muttered, knowing what we were up against now.
“Elisa, I will get you out of here, but it won’t be easy. I need you to be strong just a little bit longer, okay?” His words were whispered near my ear as we heard the sound of people approaching the door at the top of the staircase.
“Don’t worry about me,” I told him. “If my father couldn’t kill me, I’m pretty sure I can’t die,” I joked.
He chuckled under his breath. “Let’s not test that theory, okay?”
With Daemon’s arm around me, we began to make our way up the stairs. I took a deep breath, stealing myself, ready to fight for my life again.
CHAPTER34
DAEMON
Part of me wondered if I’d waited too long to start moving Elisa up the stairs. If I’d scooped her up into my arms the moment I’d gotten her free from those fucking chains, maybe we would’ve been able to run out the front door without confronting any of her father’s soldiers.
But that was a stupid thought. She was in so much pain, I’d needed to take a few moments to massage the life back into her arms before I moved her, and these pricks would’ve heard us either way. Now, as we stood at the bottom of the stairs, preparing to fight our way out of the basement, I heard them coming and knew that there was going to be a shootout.
That was fucking fine with me.
After seeing what her father had done to her, I was ready to spray some blood all over his fucking house. I didn’t understand how anyone could do something like that to their own flesh and blood, especially when he’d gifted Elisa to me to begin with. What did he expect to happen? That she wouldn’t become loyal to me? It was a shame Alexander La Rosa wasn’t home right then so I could shoot him in his smug fucking face.
But then, when I killed him, I wanted it to be slow and painful. I wanted Elisa to have the opportunity to shoot some burning hot lava up his fat nose. So maybe it was better that his ass was at the wedding with all the corpses so I would have some time to plan out his death a little more and didn’t do anything rash.
With Elisa behind me, my gun in my hand, I headed up the stairs. When the door flew open, the two dickheads who came rushing down weren’t paying any fucking attention, which made it way too easy to shoot them right between the eyes. The first one lifted his pistol only slightly as the bullet pierced his flesh, lodging in his head where his brain should’ve been. The guy behind him didn’t react to the sound of the whizzing bullet until my second shot hit him in the same place. The two of them tumbled down the stairs, and Elisa let out a little screech as they threatened to sweep her feet from under her.
I pulled her to the side, and the two of us climbed faster, stepping over their flailing limbs. I could hear more footsteps as we approached the doorway at the top of the stairs. It sounded like they were coming from the right, and since the exit was to my left, I hoped we’d be able to get ahead of them and make it to the front door before they caught up with us, not that I didn’t want to shoot as many of them as I could, but my first priority was making sure Elisa was safe.
We stepped out into the hallway near the entrance to the small doorway that led to the stairs, and I took stock of the situation. With thundering footsteps only on one side, I pushed Elisa in front of me and headed toward the door. We ran around the corner and into another hallway, but before we could make it to the end, two more assholes came storming around the corner.
“Fuck,” I muttered, grabbing Elisa and pushing her into a doorway. I shot one of the guys, hitting him in the shoulder. My aim was off because I was trying to keep Elisa out of the line of fire. I’d been aiming for the bastard’s head.
“Oh, shit!” he screamed, falling to the floor as I aimed to shoot him again. This time, I hit his leg as he went down. Blood spurted across the hallway and coated the wall next to him.
The other guy had ducked around the corner the moment I’d opened fire, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t hit him at all. As the wounded man lay on the floor screaming and thrashing about, I waited, not sure if the other guy would reappear or if we would see the guys I’d heard in the hallway coming around the corner from the other direction soon. While the doorway was wide enough for Elisa to take shelter, we couldn’t both hide there, and I needed to get her out of the house anyway.
As I stood there contemplating my next move, the guy who’d disappeared popped back out, gun drawn, and began to fire at me. Then a third man reached around the corner to try to grab their injured buddy and pull him out of the line of fire. Undeterred by the thug’s horrible aim, I opened fire again, this time riddling his body with bullets so that it looked like he was dancing as each of them collided with his body. He went down hard, landing on the wounded man who screamed in pain.
The third man turned his head and looked at me, recognizing how fucked he was since the guy he was trying to help was now pinned under the weight of his other dead pal. I smiled at him as he released the wounded guy and attempted to duck around the corner again.
My bullets were quicker. The first one lodged in his left eye, and the second one hit him in the right. Fountains of blood shot out of his eye sockets as he fell backward onto the floor.
The cries from the first guy lying there beneath his friends grew louder now that the footsteps had been silenced. I wanted to go shoot him in the face, but before I could get there, I heard the same footsteps that had met my ears earlier coming up behind me. I spun around and got a shot off quickly, hearing a bullet screaming past my head as I moved aside and fired again, dropping the second guy.
With the hallway clear, I took Elisa’s hand and headed off down the passage again, only pausing for a moment to plant another bullet in the screaming bastard on the floor’s head. We turned left again, still headed toward the front of the building when we approached a room that made her hesitate.
