It was the Stiches—at least a dozen on them—crowding the entranceway, fanning out to cover the reception area. I stared down at them, mouth agape, until Jeremy, a guy I’d worked with on a previous bodyguard job, strode over to me.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, finally finding my voice again. I couldn’t be seeing this right. How on Earth did they find out about this? It didn’t make any fucking sense.
“D’Orazio sent us,” Jeremy explained quickly. “Said he knew there’d be more in it for us if we were working for him and protecting one of our own.”
I shook my head in disbelief—well, one thing was for certain, and that was that D’Orazio really, truly, and utterly knew what the fuck he was doing when it came to guys like us. Honor spoke louder than money—though, of course, the money helped a whole lot too.
“So, what do you need us to do?” Jeremy beckoned the rest of the group towards us, and they hurried up the stairs, surrounding me in a tight circle. I recognized them all—men I had worked with over the course of the last ten years, all them here to help me out in my time of need. Yeah, they were getting paid for it, but it was me they had come out for—that that made me feel pretty fucking special.
“Condotierri is on his way upstairs in the elevator.” I began to make my way up the stairs again, taking them two at a time, hotly pursued by the rest of the Stiches. “Tenth floor. He had two guys with him, but there could be more.“
I ran out of breath as I led the charge towards the top of the hotel. None of the guys questioned what I was doing here or why I was so invested in getting this woman to safety—hell, I wondered if they knew that Maria was involved at all. It was likely not—I knew I wouldn’t have taken a job like that for fear that I would fuck it up and permanently be on the bad side of a man like Lucca D’Orazio. Was he here yet? I glanced back down to the entrance, but I couldn’t see anything. I turned back up to carry on up the stairs, and then I heard a loud curse from somewhere behind me.
“Shit!”
We turned as one, and my stomach flipped with fear as I saw the cause of the alarm. A large contingent of guys—at least double the amount we were packing, anyhow—had burst through the door of the hotel. I didn’t recognize any of them—and all of them were heavily armed. They immediately began to fire on us, and we continued on our way up the stairs with much more urgency than before.
“Who the fuck are they?” I panted to Jeremy, who had bounded ahead of me.
“Alfonso’s men,” he guessed. “But I don’t care to stick around long enough to find out, you know what I mean?”
“Tenth floor,” I reiterated. “We can barricade the doors when we get up there.”
“I don’t know if that’ll be enough to keep them out,” he warned me, but I didn’t have time to speak—Alfonso’s men were already gaining on us, and we needed to make a stand.
“Guns at the ready!” Jeremy barked, spinning around where he stood and drawing a pistol. The rest of the men did as they were told—we were just around the corner from Alfonso’s goons, their footsteps echoing up the stairwell in front of us. But we would have the jump on them—the only thing that really mattered.
“Jeremy, gun?” I grabbed the empty air in front of me, indicating my lack of weapon, and Jeremy tossed me a small revolver.
“Keep going,” he ordered. “You get her out. We’ll take on these guys.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go!” Jeremy snapped, and I knew that was the last warning I’d get. I sprinted up and around the corner, launching myself as far away from the action as I could—moments later, the sound of gunshots rattled the stairwell, making my head pound and my ears ache. I wanted to go back there and fight with them—but I knew I had to get Maria out of here alive before I could do that. She was the priority, for all of us.
Finally, I arrived on the tenth floor—it felt as though I had been running for a lifetime, and my breath burned as I dragged it into my lungs. Yeah, of course this was the day that I had chosen to start smoking again. Great idea, idiot. I paused for a moment as I peered through the doors ahead of me, cupping my hands around my face to make sure that I wasn’t about to be ambushed—but, seeing no one, I kicked the doors open and made my way into the corridor.
I had to fight the urge to yell out Maria’s name, knowing I couldn’t blow my position so soon but desperate to hear her voice again. If she could even still speak. Don’t get hung up on that, I scolded myself, holding the gun out as I made my way down the hallway. At least this time, we would be meeting on equal footing. I felt more relaxed with a gun in my hand, as if I was finally home—and, of course, that was when they got me.
I heard footsteps behind me, and spun around at once—I found myself face-to-face with one of Alfonso’s goons, one of guys I’d spotted back down in the entrance hall when I first got here. As he lunged for me, I went to fire a shot—but before I had the chance, I felt a pair of hands grab me from behind and smash my head without mercy against the wall opposite me. The gun slid out of my hands, and my vision began to slip to black.