I hit the top floor just in time to see a door swinging shut at the end of the walkway.
Gotcha.
I sprinted for it, slammed my shoulder into it as it was about to click shut. I threw myself at White just as he spun around, gun in hand.
He fired.
The bullet tore through the air, nicking my earlobe.
Close. Too close.
But I didn’t care.
Pen in hand, I charged him. I swung the pen’s pointed tip into a savage arc aimed straight for the exposed side of his neck.
He flung up his arm in a frantic block. It was enough to throw my strike off target. I recouped, ducked the wild haymaker he threw at me, and drove my fist up into his stomach. Followed it up with another to his jaw. A side-kick to his stomach. A turning kick to his temple.
He collided off a chest of drawers, waving the gun around, and pulled the trigger again.
The bullet sliced through the air. My hair ruffled.
Fucking prick.
“Goin’ to kill you for that,” he wailed.
Uncaring, I launched off the floor and threw myself into a jumping reverse back kick, crunching my foot into his nose.
He might have more money than the Vatican, but he couldn’t fight for shit.
Groaning, he staggered backward, blood spurting from his nose, arms thrown wide.
I followed him, swinging the pen down toward his now unprotected, vulnerable, soft neck. Ready to kill him. End him.
Then a hand slapped around my wrist, stopping the fatal strike, and I jerked around, furious. “What the f—”
The snarl died in my throat.
Ronnie stood behind me, her eyes locked on mine, her fingers squeezing my wrist. “Don’t, babe.” She shook her head, voice soft but calm. Calmer than I was. “This is not what I meant when I said deal with him.”
In the open doorway a few feet behind her, Fluffy appeared, a Glock in his hand—belonging to one of the disarmed grunts?
“I can’t let him live.” My grip on the pen grew tighter as I stared at Ronnie again. “I just can’t. Not after what he did to you.”
She smiled, the action slow, warm, and full of love. “Yes, you can, Lucas. Because you’re better than him.”
Her belief in me, so powerful and absolute, robbed the murderous rage broiling through me. I gazed into her eyes, aching on a level I couldn’t fathom. Not a physical pain, but an emotional awareness.
“You are better than him,” she repeated.
“You’re all dead,” White shrieked, veins popping in his neck. A neck that should have a pen sticking out of it right now. “Every single last one of you pathetic pieces of low-life sh—”
Fluffy fired the gun, and White screamed, cowering into a half-crouching half-standing ball.
“Shut the fuck up,” Fluffy ordered, exasperation thick on his flat drawl.
The sound of plaster falling onto the carpeted floor danced on the air. I didn’t need to look for the bullet’s entry point in the wall to know Fluffy had missed White’s head by mere inches. The Marine was the best shot I knew.
Something heavy slammed against the wall outside, followed by the distinct thud of a body dropping to the floor, and then Tac appeared in the doorway behind Fluffy, almost bouncing into the room, grin wide. “G’day. Sorry I’m late. Just had to deal with a tosser out in the walkway who refused to fall down when I shot him. What’d I miss?”