Page 57 of Drowning in the Deep
My mouth dropped open as the words tumbled through my mind. “For Ragno,” the cake read in bright red, crooked lettering.
I reached for my gun, which was always at my side, but she was quicker than me because she was ready. As my eyes came up to meet hers, three shots rang out, echoing through the small space of the store.
I heard them before I felt them. It didn’t even register at first that she’d shot me. I tumbled backward onto the floor, the force of the bullets sweeping me off my feet and knocking me down.
Staring up at the ceiling, I did my best to get my hand around my gun, but I couldn’t find it. The sound of footsteps approaching overshadowed the pain. If I didn’t act now, I was a dead man.
CHAPTER39
ELISA
It seemed like Daemon was taking forever inside the bakery. I sat in the car, twirling my hair around my finger, wondering what was taking him so long. He was probably growing frustrated if it was someone else’s fault. I couldn’t imagine he was going to stand there all day while someone baked me a birthday cake. He’d have to wait for it to cool and be iced and all that shit. No, I expected him to run inside and grab something and be back in a few minutes. I seriously doubted he’d thought ahead to order me a cake in advance, but that was okay. All of this was so thoughtful of him, it made me wonder what all of it meant.
Was he starting to have feelings for me? The real kind—not just the kind that made him want to fuck my brains out every opportunity he got. If so, did that mean we were a couple? I couldn’t imagine finally having my dark angel to call my very own after all of these years of longing for him. Even though I’d finally found him, I’d never been able to truly convince myself that Daemon Petrov belonged to me, and it was probably stupid for me to think that now. No, I definitely couldn’t let the fact that he’d done something kind and thoughtful make me think that this made our relationship any different than it had been before, even if that was what I longed for.
Letting out a sigh, I told myself that was fine, that we’d figured it out. I was just about to get out of the car to go see what was going on when I heard a noise that made my heart stop beating in my chest. Gunshots. Three of them. Close by.
My eyes widened as panic flooded my body. I ducked down in the car. Granted, this was Chicago, and people got shot all the time just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I thought it was far too much of a coincidence that I was sitting outside a bakery where a mob boss had just gone inside, and now I was hearing gunfire.
While my instincts told me it was a good idea to get the fuck out of there, thoughts of Daemon washed over me. Had someone shot him—or did he shoot someone else? Maybe both. I couldn’t take off in his car and leave him behind.
Frantically, I looked for a weapon of some sort in the car. I had used a gun before. Part of growing up in a mafia family was knowing how to pull a trigger even if you never planned on doing that when the weapon was pointed at someone. I checked under the seats, the glove compartment, everywhere, but no guns or knives were anywhere to be found. Feeling around in the small back seat of the spaceship car, my hand closed around something solid and metallic. I pulled it out to find it was a tire iron. It wasn’t ideal, but in a pinch, it would have to do.
I got out of the car, no longer thinking about my own safety. Daemon had come to my rescue more than once, so if I died in an attempt to help him out, then so be it.
I quickly puzzled through the unknown situation as I ran. If Daemon had been the one shooting, he’d be out here by now, wouldn’t he? And if he wasn’t, did that mean he was hurt? I had no idea, but I was about to find out.
With the tire iron in hand, I threw open the bakery door and gasped at what I saw.
A tall, muscular woman with dark hair stood over Daemon’s body where he lay on the floor, a pool of blood forming beneath him. She had a gun in her hand, and it was pointed straight at his head, as if she were about to finish him off. I couldn’t tell at first glance whether or not he was breathing, but if she shot him in the head at close range, there wouldn’t be anything I could do to help him. Nothing would be able to save him.
She looked up at me, startled, her dark eyes meeting my gaze. Her face flickered with recognition as her pupils widened, and I caught the form of a tattoo on her shoulder as her muscles twitched. I couldn’t see the entire shape, but I didn’t have to in order to recognize what it was or why it was there. It was a spider. A fucking spider.
Now, I understood why she was looking at me like she knew who I was. Because she did. And I knew her, too. “Raven?”
She hesitated for some reason. Maybe it was because she wasn’t actually expecting me to be there and now I was or maybe it was because I was her cousin, but it took her a split second longer to raise that fucking gun than it should have, which gave me all the time I needed.
I didn’t hesitate at all.
With as much force as I could muster in my weakened state, I threw the tire iron at her face as hard as I could. It spun through the air, crossing the short distance quickly, not giving Raven much time to react.
She raised a hand, but it was too late. The iron hit her right across her nose, knocking her backward so that she lost her balance. When she lifted her hand to try to block the blow, her gun slipped out, clattering on the linoleum floor and sliding in my direction. I didn’t hesitate to rush toward it as Raven stumbled backward, trying to keep her balance.
The gun had traveled through the pool of blood, so when I picked it up, it was slippery. I fought to get my finger around the trigger. When I raised it, Raven was already moving toward the bakery counter. I fired anyway, just as she flew over the exploding glass, landing behind the counter on her knees in the glass shards as I continued to pull the trigger until she disappeared through the door on the other side.
In the distance, I heard the sound of sirens and thought,Let them come. Normally, the mafia didn’t like the attention of police and ambulances, but if Daemon was dead, I didn’t care. If Raven came back through that door and sank a bullet through my head, she’d be doing me a favor. I wondered if I’d left any in the chamber for me.
On my knees, I could no longer hold back the sobs. With tears flowing from my eyes, I leaned up and kissed him, wondering what the fuck I was going to do now. I’d have to go into hiding somewhere if I wanted to keep my father from getting me. Would Daemon’s brothers help me? Fuck. I almost wished Raven would come back from behind that door and kill me. Why hadn’t I let her take me out, too? Without Daemon, I didn’t want to live.
All of the thoughts I’d been going over in my mind while I waited for him in the car came back to me. I’d thought we had a chance to be a couple. I’d thought there was a possibility that we could be together. But now, all of those dreams were shattered. The hopelessness I’d felt when my father had me locked in the storage closet came back to me. What was the point in any of this?
“Elisa?”
I heard him say my name and blinked a few times, not sure I heard correctly even though I was sitting right next to him, not caring about the blood I was kneeling in. I realized then that his eyes were open, though they weren’t focusing on my face—or anything.
“Daemon? How are you alive?” I could clearly see three bullet holes in his shirt, all near his heart. Quickly, I tore the fabric open to reveal a bulletproof vest and gasped in shock. He must’ve had it on from when he went to the wedding the night before.
Raven must’ve had some kind of heavy-duty bullets because the vest had failed a couple of times, but the bullet that was right above his heart hadn’t gone through. The other two were dangerously close to the organ, too, though, and if I didn’t get him help soon, he was going to bleed to death.
