Ryder ran for the door as fast as he could. He was no sprinter, but when his life was on the line, plus the life of the woman he loved and their child, there was nothing that was going to slow him down. Especially not his own body. He breathed through the pain, the pain pills he’d taken earlier barely having an effect on this level of exertion. When this was over, he was going to sleep for days and let his body heal.
A man ran at him through the front door. He held a gun up, pointed at Ryder’s head. “Freeze!”
Ryder didn’t hesitate. He raised his own gun and shot. While running, he was still a better shot than most men were when they had time to sit and aim. This guy stood no chance. Whoever he was. Ryder didn’t know him. And he never would. The man lay on the ground, unmoving.
Ryder spun to look behind him. Surely more men were coming after him. But he saw no one else. They must be very slow. They must not have been ready for this at all. Did they not expect him to come? They had underestimated him, then. Fools. They’d pay for that mistake. Big time.
But as he was about to reach the steps up to the house, someone tackled him from the side. He’d been hiding in the bushes. Damn. Ryder hadn’t looked that closely. Stupid move. He had underestimated them just as he was thinking they’d underestimated him.
The guy managed to get him on the ground. Easy only because Ryder was still in so much pain that being hit from the tackle had caused him to go still to avoid more pain. Landing on the ground was like falling into a pit of glass. Everything hurt. He had to lie there for a second to catch his breath and to avoid passing out. He breathed deep and opened his eyes to see the guy’s gun pointed at him.
“On your feet!” he shouted.
Ryder still had his gun in his hand. Had he not noticed that? Ryder moved like he was going to get up, but shot the guy in the chest. He landed beside Ryder and he crawled over to make sure he was dead. He pushed himself shakily to his feet. Asshole. Now his whole body was in fresh agony.
He stumbled and had to close his eyes a moment to regain his balance. He forced them open and checked around him to make sure no one else was coming. He took a moment to steady himself, then pushed the pain from his mind and moved forward. He didn’t have time to let the pain get to him.
Ryder ran up the cement steps to the large wooden front door. It was covered in wrought iron swirls, the wood stained green. It was a beautiful door, and he had often admired it, but the only beauty Ryder was concerned about now was the one behind the door. Pia.
He turned the knob and yanked the door open. It wasn’t even locked. He blinked and his eyes adjusted to the indoor light quickly. He saw Matteo first, his arm tight around Pia’s throat, his gun pressed against her head. Then he saw Solano. He was closer to him, and he had his gun aimed right at him.
Ryder stood very still. One wrong move and they could both be dead. Pia let out a small whimper. He allowed himself one glance at her.
She was scared, but smiling. Clearly happy to see him. And he was so relieved to see her. She was alive and looked mostly well. A little pale maybe. A little dirty and messy, like she hadn’t showered recently, but she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
He hoped the baby was okay. He had no way to tell just by looking at her. She did look like her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but that could have been over any number of things. He wouldn’t worry yet. He’d assume everything was fine and ask her about it when he could. Once they were away from all this and found a place to live, they would get her to a doctor to make sure things were good. Didn’t pregnant ladies see their doctors all the time anyway? She hadn’t been to one yet, so she probably needed to go.
He gave her a small smile to tell her everything would be okay. But of course, everything wasn’t okay. Her own father was holding a gun to her head and this psycho Solano was pointing a gun at him. He sized up the situation fast. If he shot Solano, Matteo would shoot Pia. He couldn’t take the chance that he would be able to shoot both Solano and Matteo fast enough. Too risky. Same thing if he tried to shoot Matteo first. Solano would have time to shoot him. That would at least get Pia free. Except that shooting Matteo would be much harder since he was holding her in front of him, and even if he shot Matteo, if Solano shot him, then Pia would only be safe for a short time. If he couldn’t kill them both, there was no point.
“Put the gun down,” Matteo said. “Or I will shoot Pia, and Solano will shoot you.”
Ryder put his hands up in surrender, setting his gun down on the floor at his feet. Of course, he had others tucked away, but they didn’t know that.
“Pia is mine, you fool,” Solano said, glaring at Ryder. “You really thought you could come in here and take her from me? You’re nothing. Why would she want you?”
Ryder glanced at Pia, trying to convey in his expression that everything was going to be okay, even if it looked like he was giving in. Did she have any idea what was really going through his mind? Did she know that he wasn’t really surrendering, but only appearing to play along? He hoped she knew enough about these types of situations and about him that she would know better than to think he was doing what they wanted. Or that they would win.
But he needed her to be brave and strong. To not give up or give in. To not do something stupid that could get them both hurt or killed. He needed her to read his mind. And, he thought, as soon as they were out of here, he would teach her. If they ever got into a situation like this again, she would know what to do. They would do it together, kind of like a Bonnie and Clyde type of team. Pia and Ryder, the outlaws. They’d get to that later. They’d have time for all sorts of things later. First, they had to live through this and get away.
Solano stepped toward Ryder cautiously, still pointing his gun at him. Ryder held his hands up with a bored expression on his face. Solano stepped behind him and put an arm around his throat, then pressed his gun to his head, mirroring the position Matteo held Pia in. It seemed like they were done for. Both of them had guns to their heads and if they tried anything, they would both be killed.
Ryder had a plan. The gun at his ankle was locked and loaded. He just had to get it. Or the knife at his waist. He still had both of those weapons, and like a total fool, Solano hadn’t thought to pat him down. Amateur. If this guy didn’t have money and people around all the time to protect him, he’d never have survived this long.
They wouldn’t just stand here all day. They would be taken somewhere. And as they were walking, it would be easy to suddenly trip Solano, to bend down and grab his gun and shoot him quick. He just had to time it right. He needed to be behind Matteo and Pia so that when he did this, it would give him a split second to kill Matteo before he could turn and see what happened and kill Pia. It would work, though. These guys had no clue what they were doing when compared with him, the trained and well-practiced expert hitman. If Matteo had been smart, he would have killed Ryder already. Should have shot him the moment he walked in the door.
As he was looking for angles and holes in their positions, waiting for someone to move, always watching for an opening or some opportunity that would give him the time he needed, Pia did something that shocked him. She reached out her arm suddenly and drew it back, elbowing her father right in the crotch. Her height, at almost a foot shorter than her tall father, gave her the perfect position. She only had to bend over the tiniest bit to hit the money spot.
Matteo cried out in pain and bent over, clutching his groin.
“Shoot him!” Pia yelled, jumping out of the way.
Ryder dropped to his knees forcefully, breaking Solano’s grip on him. He tore his pant leg out of the way and grabbed his gun, then raised it, aimed, and shot Matteo in the chest before he even stood up. Then he stood quickly and elbowed Solano. When he bent over in involuntarily reaction to the pain, Ryder shot him at point blank. Solano dropped with a loud thud. Ryder walked over to Matteo and kicked him. He was dead. He knew he was dead. His perfect record still held. But he hated this man with a passion. He put one more bullet in his head for good measure. Matteo should consider himself lucky. Ryder never wasted two bullets on one man. But he needed the satisfaction of tearing his brain apart. Too bad Matteo’s heart had already stopped so there would be little blood. He wanted to see his blood pour from his head.
More men were coming, though. Alerted by the gunshots and the commotion, no doubt. They had to get out of there fast. He turned and three men were coming through the front door, slowed by the bodies in the way. Two more were to his left. On his right, two more. So many guns were pointed at them in that moment. If they’d all shot simultaneously, a rain of bullets would fall around them, surely killing them both. He had to get them out of there now before they wised up and figured out that they had Ryder and Pia completely surrounded.
***
Pia had never been so terrified in her life. When she let her father hug her, she’d been wary of him. But she never expected him to do what he did. When his arm tightened around her hard, she cried out for him to let her go, but he spun her around and tightened his arm over her throat. That was bad enough. The pressure hurt and she could barely breathe, let alone swallow. But then he pressed the end of his gun to her temple.
Her father truly was an evil man. She’d been upset before, thinking he didn’t love her, but deep down inside, she figured he did and was just being mean to get his way. She did that sometimes, too. But this was different. Such a blatant and hard threat? There was no going back when someone acted like they would kill you at any second. Her heart turned cold to her father in that moment. She wanted him dead. She’d shoot him herself if she had a gun. Now she wished she had. She’d have to get Ryder to teach her to shoot and buy a gun so that she was never in this helpless situation again. She’d never play the victim or be someone’s pawn. She was going to learn to stand on her own, with Ryder by her side.
When Ryder had come in the door, she’d been so relieved to see him, she almost forgot about everything going on around them. She wanted to run into his arms, to throw herself at him. To feel his arms around her, keeping her safe, to feel his lips on hers, hot and passionate. She lurched forward to get to him, but her father held her tight, choking her. When Matteo held his gun to her, Paolo pointed his at the door, under her father’s command.
“That’ll be the man who thinks he can steal Pia away from you,” Matteo said. “We have to kill him. That’s the only way to stop him.”
“No!” Pia shouted, but her father pressed his gun harder into her head.
The look on Ryder’s face when he came in and saw her father holding her was something she’d never forget. He was horrified and shocked. Maybe he didn’t think Matteo would ever do something like that either. How long had it taken him to see Paolo and realize there was a gun pointed at him, too? Despite all that, the look in his eyes when he looked at her was of pure longing. It mirrored everything she felt. Love, desire, yearning. He must have wanted to hold her tight as badly as she wanted him to.
In that one look, any residual hesitation was gone. If she hadn’t been one hundred percent sure of him before, she was one hundred and ten percent sure of him now. If she’d thought for a second he wouldn’t come or that he’d meant it when he ended things, all of those thoughts had vanished. They’d never return. She knew now. With him being here and killing the guards outside and looking at her like that, that it had all been part of the plan. He was playing their game and it looked to her like they had been winning and her father and Paolo were losing.
Except that now Matteo was holding her and pointing a gun at her, and within seconds of him being in the house, Paolo was holding Ryder and had a gun pointed at him. How would they get out of this? Ryder had to have some plan, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t come all this way, go through everything they’d been through, just to give up in the end. That was outrageous.
But she couldn’t see what the plan was. That was probably a good thing because if she could see it, then her father and Paolo probably could, too. They were mob bosses and what was she? Just a woman with little experience at any of this. Despite what she’d said to the doctor upstairs, she knew little of this world, had almost no connections that would help her, and had zero training when it came to guns and self-defense. She should have taken a class or something after she was almost kidnapped at her store. That felt like years ago now. She hadn’t, though, which was stupid, but nothing she could do about that now.
She waited. She kept her eyes on Ryder, waiting for him to make his move. It had to be soon, right? He couldn’t let them take them somewhere, or maybe they’d just shoot them anyway. Her father had said Ryder needed to be killed, so maybe he was only seconds from death. They met eyes and he smiled a little. She wanted him to give her some idea of the plan. Some little sign or something so she would know what to do.
But as she waited and watched him, she could almost see him thinking. And he didn’t look like he had a plan. He looked like he was still figuring things out. Which was no good. She couldn’t wait any longer. There had been too much of this. Too much waiting and too much anxiety about what might happen and too many threats. She needed this to be over. Needed to just be with him and have him hold her close and kiss her. Enough of this.
She didn’t want to put any more stress on the baby. She’d heard that stress was bad when you were pregnant and the level of stress she had faced in the last few days was likely far more than she should have faced in months. She needed to get to safety and have peace, and she should see a doctor. She didn’t even know when she was due and she wanted to know if the baby was a boy or a girl. Doctors could do all of that. Maybe not the one upstairs, clearly, but doctors who did that sort of thing could see inside her belly and assure her everything was just fine.
Then she thought of something. Obviously, Ryder couldn’t shoot her father because Paolo would shoot him, and he couldn’t shoot Paolo because then Matteo would shoot her. But if she could cause some sort of distraction, then maybe Ryder would be able to kill them both. She was in the perfect place to hurt her father, too. He probably didn’t even realize it. She held Ryder’s gaze and went for it.
She stuck out her arm and brought it back as hard as she could, sending her hard little elbow right into his crotch. That always hurt men. That was why you went for that spot first. It was the easiest and the surest. A guy was nearly incapacitated when you kneed him or elbowed him in the balls.
And this time was no different. Her father bent over in pain. She smiled for an instant, but then shouted to Ryder to kill him. In case he’d thought maybe she wouldn’t want him to or something.
She ducked and moved out of the way. That worked out to be perfect because her moving drew Paolo’s attention. Then Ryder was able to get his gun and shoot.
Only then did she stop to think. He’d set down his gun. What if that had been his only gun? She might have just gotten them killed. Seemed like Paolo should have checked him for other weapons or something. She knew that Ryder never had just one gun on him. Didn’t her father know that, too? He had to. So, wouldn’t Paolo? Oh well, better for them that he hadn’t, because if he had, she might have done a very bad thing. She hoped Ryder wasn’t mad at her for doing it. It had been kind of risky.
But Ryder shot her father, then Paolo. When both of them were on the floor dead and her and Ryder were uninjured, it looked like it had been a good plan after all. Thank goodness. But there were more men coming for them. She heard footsteps all around them, and she was terrified all over again. There were so many guns, all aimed at them. But now she didn’t have to worry. Ryder was here.
She dove for him, throwing herself into his arms like she’d wanted to so badly for days. He squeezed her back and the feeling sent liquid warmth and comfort running through her. This was where she was meant to be. Right here in his arms.
There wasn’t time for a kiss. They had to get moving now or they’d be in trouble all over again. But the men were coming at them from every side. What could they do?
Ryder took her hand and tugged her forward. They ran up the stairs two at a time. She was out of breath when they reached the top. She still needed desperately to eat something to get her strength. She’d have to find some energy from somewhere, though, because the men were on their heels.
They went into her father’s room, the master bedroom. The door was locked, but with one hard kick, Ryder broke it down. As they ran, he would turn around every few seconds to shoot someone who was getting too close. How in the world did he aim like that as they were all running? He continued to amaze her.
She dashed over to her father’s dresser and tore open the top drawer. She reached to the back, where she knew he kept extra money. She grabbed everything that was there.
“What are you doing?” Ryder asked, exasperated.
She held up the cash for a split second before shoving it in her pocket.
“Come on,” he said.
They pushed open the French doors that led to the balcony. She’d been so upset when they moved into this house years ago and he wouldn’t give her the room with the balcony. He said he’d have one built onto her room, but he never did. Jerk. It was a gorgeous view usually. But right now, all she could see were two dead bodies in the yard.
Ryder led her to the side of the balcony and up to the railing. “Climb carefully down the trellis. I’ll be right behind you.”
“But they’ll be here before I can get down and you can follow. How will you get out?”
“Don’t worry about me.” He leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss. “As soon as you hit the ground, run.”
“But, Ryder—”
“Go!”
She swung her leg over the railing and grabbed onto the thin bars of the trellis. She looked over at him and met his eyes for a moment. “I love you,” she said.
He pulled his mouth into a crooked smile. “I love you. Now go.”
The trellis looked like it would barely hold her as she began her climb. How would it ever hold Ryder? She made her way down as quickly as she could. One foot, then a hand, then another foot and another hand. Her bare feet touched the grass, she let go, and looked back up at the balcony.
He was standing there, alternating between watching her and looking behind him. He saw her reach the ground and as she watched him watching her, a man appeared behind him and put his arm around Ryder’s throat.
Pia screamed and watched in horror. She reached for the trellis to climb back up, but she wouldn’t be able to do anything. She dropped her hand and as she continued to stare, saw Ryder clock the guy in the nose with his elbow. Then he turned around and she heard a gunshot.
Ryder hopped over the edge of the railing and grabbed the trellis. He didn’t go one rung at a time, foot then hand, as she had. He swung his body down far, caught two rungs with his feet, grabbed the bars at his waist and let his body hang. He let go and hit the ground hard. He had dropped at least ten feet.
He took her hand again and they were running. They ran right to the fence. She had thought maybe there was a broken piece or some sort of door that she didn’t know about. But when they got to it, Ryder bent down and laced his fingers together.
“I’ll boost you up. Grab the top and pull yourself over.”
“What?” she squeaked. Not only did she not think she was strong enough to do that, but what if she fell?
“You’ll be fine, just jump into my hands and grab the top of the fence.”
She took a deep breath and hopped into his hands. He pushed up, sending her up so high, she almost flew over the fence without even trying. She grabbed the top and flipped her leg over, then held on for an instant to lower her body before letting go. She heard a loud bang on the fence, then Ryder’s hands appeared at the top. He must’ve jumped on the fence. His head showed, then his whole body flew over the top and he landed on the ground.
He stood and took her hand again. They ran up a grassy hill, her feet slipping with the effort. He got behind her and picked her up, tossing her into his arms like she weighed nothing. He ran up the hill with her in his arms and all she could think was, He is so strong. She could fall asleep right now in his arms. She was that peaceful and comforted by him.
He put her down gently on the gravel next to his car and opened the door to get her in. Then he dashed to the other side, jumped in, and they took off. The tires spit gravel behind him as he sped away.
“We’re just going to make one stop, then we’re getting the hell out of this city.” He reached for her hand, took it, and kissed her knuckles.