Chapter Eleven
Priest noticed the red dot zigzagging on Cleo’s shirt only a moment before Target barreled forward, taking her to the ground. The windows began to shatter, glass shrapnel raining down on them.
“Take the stairs!” Boss shouted. He was on his back, firing between his legs.
Priest grabbed Cleo’s arm, pulling her to her feet as she struggled to breathe. He made eye contact with Target for seconds, but it felt like the entire world stopped for those brief moments. That asshole had stolen his revenge, made decades of planning, searching, and fantasizing all come crashing down around him. Priest deserved his vengeance, and now he’d never get it. Target also fucked over Cleo and now wanted a golden ticket back into her life. Fuck him.
He bent over as he ran, sheltering Cleo under his arm as he rushed to the door at the far end of the room. Every man was firing, and they had no eyes on the original shooter. Even Boss hadn’t anticipated this, so the situation wasn’t good. Priest had no clue how long they’d been tailed or how intricate the planning of this attack was.
Viper, Bain, and Gabriel stepped out of the elevator, their guns at the ready. They rushed into the melee just as he opened the emergency door into the stairwell. The power was killed as the door closed behind them, the generator-powered lights giving the stairwell an eerie blue glow. The building alarm sounded, and no party wanted the cops involved.
“Are we going to die?” she asked.
“Take my hand.”
They traversed the stairs, staying close to the walls. He trained his gun ahead of him, taking caution around every turn, occasionally aiming up to where they’d come from. The meeting place was only on the sixth floor, so there wasn’t too far until they hit the ground level.
“I’m scared,” Cleo said, holding his hand in a firm grip.
“Don’t think about it. Just another walk in the park,” he said.
She struggled to keep up. “Was my father trying to kill me?”
“He was trying to save you.” Priest didn’t want to give any credit to that man, but Cleo was probably alive because of his actions. He wouldn’t lie to her about that.
The subtle creak of door hinges brought Priest to a complete stop. He put his finger to his lips to keep Cleo quiet. Several sets of boots were coming up the stairs.
“Sit here.” He pointed to the stair near the wall. “Don’t move no matter what you hear.” Priest couldn’t send her back upstairs to that clusterfuck, and he didn’t want her getting shot in the stairwell once things went hot. He’d have to deal with things his way.
He moved down to the next level to put some distance between him and Cleo. He wouldn’t risk a stray bullet hitting her. As soon as the first man partially rounded the corner, he fired. The sound echoed in the confined space. Cleo squealed above. The men began shouting to each other now that they knew he was there, rushing up the stairs.
Priest focused his energy on the task, blocking out the alarm and everything else around him. Once he was in the killing zone, he was more machine than man. He fired at the next men before they could pull their triggers, hitting one in the forehead, the other in the heart, their dead bodies falling backward down the stairs. When one managed to get through, Priest holstered his gun and pulled a blade from his boot, flicking it forward. It struck the guy in the neck, and he clutched his throat as he joined his friends in the heap below. He waited for more, itching for some hand-to-hand, but all was quiet besides the alarm and the echoes of gunfire.
“Cleo, it’s safe. Come down to me,” he shouted.
She moved quickly, wrapping herself around one of his arms within seconds. “Oh, my God,” she said when she saw the carnage, blood splattered on the white walls and bodies strewn about at unnatural angles.
“Don’t look, just keep walking.”
The gunfight upstairs sounded like distant fireworks on the Fourth of July with the soundproofing in the stairwell. Two of the biggest underworld leaders were in the same room. Killer of Kings and The Circle of Monsters. But they weren’t fighting each other. Instead, they were on the same side, trying to take out an unknown enemy. There were many mafia crime bosses who had a beef with Viko. And there always seemed to be a contract out on Boss. That man was invincible.
Were the shooters trying to take out Cleo just to make her father suffer? To weaken The Circle of Monsters? Or was this revenge for the cop Priest had murdered? Was it something else entirely?
This had to be the anonymous asshole who’d put out a hit on Cleo, but why? Because of her bloodline? Target was a high-ranking soldier in The Circle of Monsters, a loner but lethal.
They got to the main floor. He had no clue what could be waiting in the foyer at this point.
He turned and looked at Cleo. She looked so scared, and he hated it. Priest leaned down and kissed her. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Priest pulled a smoke flare from his vest, opened the door an inch, and tossed it along the marble floors, briefly watching it skip and hop away.
A door above them opened. Fuck. He readied his gun.
“Priest, you alive down there?”