I couldn’t stand to see Malik get shot, I didn’t want to live if he died trying to save me. Gabrielli positioned himself in front of me, but he was using me as a shield, betting on the fact that the Connor brothers likely wouldn’t shoot if they thought they’d hit me too.
Sure enough, when Malik walked into the room and surveyed the situation, he threw down his rifle, then he immediately had to jump out of the way to avoid Gabriellie’s gunfire.
“Trudy, don’t move, this will be over in a second!” he shouted.
“You’re right about that, Connor, because I’m about to blow the brains out of your precious little genius girl hacker,” Gabrielli retorted.
He fired like a mad man, blowing holes straight through the wall and into the ceiling. He didn’t even seem to be taking aim, just counting on shooting enough so that one of his errant bullets would find its way to Malik eventually.
“Wet towel!” Malik shouted as he tossed something into the bathroom. Red and acrid thick smoke started to rise from Gabrielli’s feet and fill the room. He immediately started coughing. I grabbed the wet bath towel I’d used from the floor and pulled it over my face. Gabrielli doubled over hacking and then Malik was in the room with us, a bandana tied around his face.
“Get low, stay low!” he shouted at me.
In one swift move, he grabbed Gabrielli by the lapel and dragged him to standing only to smash him down on the double sink counter hard enough that the whole room shook with his impact. Then Malik jerked him the other way and his head crashed into the tub with an audible crack of his skull. He lifted the mobster and crashed him down again, this time hitting his neck so that his head hung at an unnatural angle. Blood trickled out his ear and the corner of his mouth. Malik grabbed his feet, clad in expensive Italian loafers and lifted them, forcing his whole body into the still full bathtub. Then he climbed the side of the tub to reach the window and forced it open in one thrust.
He jumped from the ledge and pulled me, already sobbing, into his arms.
“Did he touch you, Trudy? Please tell me I got here in time,” he begged me.
I wiped at my eyes and nose and shook my head, too upset to speak.
“Freeze mother fucker!” We both heard it at the same time but Malik wouldn’t drop his arms from me. He’d turned his back for just a second and it was a second too long.
The grave mistake made me feel like I could never be a part of Malik’s life no matter how much I desired to. His profession depended on him operating alone. I could only ever be a liability, hampering his missions.
Malik turned to face his executioner and lifted his hands up in surrender. He walked a few paces forward toward the man pointing a gun at us before he spoke.
“Take me, but leave the woman alone. She’s not the hacker, she’s her social worker. She’s not involved.”
The man seemed to take us both in, trying to figure out the situation and whether or not he could trust Malik’s word. He couldn’t see into the tub, so he didn’t yet know that his mob boss was dead.
“You can put down the gun,” Malik told him. He walked toward him slowly with his hands in plain sight. “I’ll come willingly if you promise to leave her alone.”
The gunman hesitated and wavered just for a second and Malik took that second to seize the bedside table and hoist it over his head. He smashed it into the mobster knocking his gun out of his hands and sending him stumbling backwards. He rebounded in anger coming at Malik with renewed vigor, hatred darkening his face.
The two men struck into one another, the mobsters' hands finding Malik’s throat and wrapping around it in a vice grip. He was bigger than Malik and seemed equally trained in the dark arts of murder because soon he had my lover on his knees and his face was turning an unnatural purple color.
It dawned on me suddenly that I was no longer that helpless and wounded child trembling in fear. I moved to the tub and reached in the water pulling back the lapel of Gabrielli’s suit jacket. My fist closed around the gun Malik had given me to use and I lifted it up out of the water. I knew guns could fire wet, what I was worried about was my aim.
But with a slight tremor in my hands, I lifted the weapon in both hands and squared away the assailants back, closed my eyes, bit down on my lip and squeezed the trigger with a prayer.
The recoil made me step back and I put a hand to my heart, but when I opened my eyes, the goon was on the floor and Malik was standing up holding his throat.