The Groom (19 page)

By the time she reached the end
of the street, she began to realize how stupid she’d been for running off on
him, especially when he’d done something so nice for her by cooking dinner. Not
to mention, her self-appointed bodyguards had no idea she had left the
building.

She’d just made her mind up to
turn back when a gloved hand clapped over her mouth.

_____

Lyle paused when his feet hit the
pavement, searching left and right down the wide alley between his building and
another and listening for Katrina’s footsteps. He’d gone and put his foot in
his mouth, and now she’d possibly put herself in danger trying to get away from
him.

“Nice move, asshole,” he muttered
under his breath as he turned right, certain he’d heard the shuffling of feet
toward the end of the alleyway. This was so not how he’d envisioned his
romantic night with Katrina. He had rather thought it would end with her
agreeing excitedly to go with him to wherever Healing Hands took them, before
they ended up in bed for a few blissful hours. Now, he had a lot of kissing up
and apologizing to do for letting Katrina know just how far beneath her façade
he could see and for going about it all the wrong way. He hadn’t known it at
first, but it had slowly revealed itself to him.

She didn’t think she was good
enough, or that she had redeemed herself for the life she’d led before getting
clean. Lyle was determined that she know just how untrue that was. But first,
he had to find her.

“Katrina,” he called, squinting
to see through the gray haze of darkness as his eyes adjusted to the lack of
light. “Katrina, are you out here? Come back upstairs so we can talk.”

His foot made contact with a can
at the same time he heard another scuffle and what sounded like a muffled cry.
Before Lyle could figure out what was going on, a round, cold cylinder was
pressed to the back of his neck.

“Don’t move,” said a deeply
accented voice from behind him. “Don’t make a sound.” The barrel of a pistol
jabbed him between the shoulders. “Walk.”

Lyle had no choice but to obey.
As they neared the end of the alley, three shadowy figures revealed themselves
to be two men nearly identical to Alessandro’s crew, with a gagged Katrina
between them. She struggled in their hold and began mewling and whimpering from
behind the strip of cloth between her lips as she spotted Lyle. A lone tear
rolled down her cheek, and Lyle’s gut clenched as he realized what was
happening.

“The Pirellis, I presume?” Lyle
asked calmly as the one shoving a gun against his spine circled in front of him
and leveled it between his eyes instead. Lyle raised his hands, palms spread to
show he had no intention of arguing with the dark-haired, gun-toting Italian.

“Shut up,” warned one of
Katrina’s captors. He sported a jagged scar across his face and had the gleam
of insanity in his dark eyes. Lyle felt his jaw tightening at the sight of his
hands roaming a bit too low on Katrina’s anatomy. “Hurry up, Draco. Let’s clip
the bitch before her guard dog sniffs us out. Waste this jamook while you’re at
it.” He nodded toward Lyle with a sneer.

Katrina’s other captor, a tall,
wiry-thin man with a sallow complexion and sunken-in cheeks spat and cursed
viciously in Italian. “Let those mother fuckers come,” he said, his voice
smooth like silk or the hiss of a snake. “Besides, what fun is it if we waste
her without getting a little taste? The little puttana’s kind of sexy.”

Katrina squirmed and grunted in
rage as Scarface ran a hand up her thigh. “I’m with Felicio,” he said as he
leaned in close, pressing his face to Katrina’s hair and inhaling deeply. “I
wanna be able to say I had Victor Giordano’s daughter on her knees in a dark
alley.”

Lyle forgot the gun aimed at his
head and lunged, a low growl burning in his throat. He came up against Draco,
who pressed the barrel between his eyes.

“I said, don’t move!” Draco said,
punctuating his statement by tapping the gun against Lyle’s forehead. Lyle went
still but his eyes were angry slits, burning into Draco’s as his chest heaved
with rage. If he lowered that gun for a second he was dead. “Or I’ll turn them
loose on her, make you watch, shoot her in the head and then waste you, you
piece of shit.”

Before Lyle could form an
appropriate response, footsteps pounded down the alleyway and all around him a
cacophony of Italian curses rang out. He ducked and dodged Draco’s gun and dove
for Katrina, taking her to the ground just as Alessandro and three of his crew
opened fire on the Pirellis. Katrina’s screams were muffled by the gag, and all
he could think to do was drag her behind a dumpster and crouch, pressing her
body against the wall and shielding it with his, all the while praying that no
stray bullets found her. His heart hammered in his chest as he did the math.
The Pirellis were outnumbered four to three, but he didn’t know who all was
armed and who wasn’t. If he was lucky, they’d all kill each other, and he and
Katrina could run over the corpses and make a getaway.

Bullets flew and some bounced off
the trashcan, each impact causing Katrina to flinch beneath him. She’d gone
quiet, but was trembling from head to toe. Lyle held her closer and prayed for
it all to end.

_____

When Katrina poked her head from
behind the dumpster, free of her gag thanks to Lyle, the shots had ended. Yet
five of the seven men were still standing, each with a gun pointed at someone.
A scream ripped savagely from her chest as she realized that Alessandro was one
of the two stretched out on the concrete. The other was the one with the scar
that had felt her up. She raced to Alessandro’s side, not caring about the guns,
the shady men surrounding her in the alley, or the wail of sirens in the
distance. Tears filled her eyes as she looked down at the man she’d once loved.
It didn’t matter that their love had been toxic. He was her friend, and despite
their differences, she’d always cared about him.

Around her the others stood, guns
trained on each other. Draco had his pistol pointed at Lucca, one of
Alessandro’s soldiers. Lucca had his gun trained on Felicio, Draco’s remaining
partner, who had his pistol trained on another one of Alessandro’s soldiers,
who’s gun was trained on Draco. Lyle had taken up Alessandro’s pistol and had
it pointed at Scarface, who was still alive and crawling across the gravel with
a hole in his shoulder. He went still when he realized that he’d been beaten.

“The cops are coming,” Lyle said,
his voice calm as Katrina lifted Alessandro’s head into her lap. Her tears wet
his face as he stared unseeingly into the night sky, the twinkle gone from his
dark eyes. She stifled a sob as the sound of sirens grew closer. “You guys can
all kill each other now, or you can run but no one is taking anyone anywhere
tonight.”

“One of these mother fuckers shot
my brother,” Draco said from between clenched teeth, his eyes shooting from one
Giordano Family member to the next. “I’m not leaving here until every one of
them is dead.”

He made a move and guns were
cocked, the ominous sounds ringing out through the alley. Katrina held
Alessandro’s body close and watched, her heart pounding as her eyes fell on
Lyle. He didn’t belong here. Nothing about this situation was right. He should
not be here.

“I’m so sorry,” she groaned,
tears coming to her eyes anew and spilling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

Lyle shook his head. “I’m not,”
he whispered before turning back to Draco, his gun still pointed at Scarface.
“Listen to me, Draco, if you don’t stand down everyone will die, right here
right now. We will all die. Is that what you want?”

“Fuck you!” Draco spat. “Who the
fuck are you anyway? You willing to die for this Giordano trash? Huh?”

“I’d really rather not, and I’m
sure you wouldn’t either,” Lyle said smoothly, his tone still calm. Katrina
wondered how he was keeping his cool when it was clear he’d never held a gun
before. He was doing all right, she decided as he moved around into Draco’s
field of vision, holding his hands up and the gun along with them. “Look, see?
I’m standing down. The cops are coming, and we’ll all have some explaining to
do if we don’t get out of here. I’ll tell you what . . . I’m a doctor, okay?
I’m a surgeon. I can help your brother but only if we hurry. If we get him
upstairs, I’ve got my bag. I can fix him. Let me fix him, and everyone can go
home tonight. No one else has to die. You guys can go back to hunting us in the
morning. Just . . . please . . . everyone put down the guns.”

“Like hell!” shouted Lucca. “They
killed Sandro! I’m not putting down a goddamn thing!”

“Lucca Fabiano Giordano!” Katrina
wailed, jumping to her feet and glaring at the young soldier who was also a
second cousin. With their Capo dead, he had assumed the position of head
soldier in charge. “You do what he says. All of you. Guns down, now, unless you
want to get arrested. When the cops come, I’ll tell them each and every one of
you attacked me and Lyle in this alley. You think they won’t believe me?”

That seemed to get them all
thinking and, as one, they all lowered their weapons slowly, eyes still trained
on each other.

“Help me get him up,” Lyle said
to Felicio, who was still glaring at Alessandro’s crew as if he expected them
to attack at any second.

“Do what he says, idiot,” Draco
commanded.

Lyle shot her a glance, and his
lips pinched grimly. “Katrina. Get upstairs. Now.”

Katrina hesitated, her eyes going
to Alessandro. “We can’t just leave him here, Lyle. Please.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I
can’t help him Kat, he’s dead. And if we get caught with his body we have to
explain what happened. Better for them to find his body here than in my
apartment. We’ll find a way to claim his body later, okay? I promise.”

Katrina swallowed past the lump
in her throat. She knew that what he was saying was true, but she still hated
to do it. Stepping over Alessandro’s body and leaving it in the dirt was one of
the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Before she could start toward the fire
escape, Draco had her arm in his grasp and his gun to her head.

“Insurance,” he said when three
guns were pointed at him. “That bastard is carrying my brother. This is to
insure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Then you won’t mind if I take a
little insurance of my own,” said Lucca, calmly pointing his pistol at the back
of Draco’s head. “No sudden movements.”

Draco shrugged. “Fair enough.”

As one very odd and twisted
group, they made their way to the fire escape, moving quickly in case someone
decided to poke their head out of their condo window. While the guns used in
the fight had silencers on them, Katrina knew that the shouting had been heard,
leading to the police being called. They didn’t have much time to get out of
sight, and even less time to get Draco’s brother patched up before the police
discovered a dead body and started combing the building for a clue as to who’d
done it.

Once upstairs, Lyle and Felicio
laid Scarface out on the massive, stone coffee table as the others spread out
around the room, guns still held close. Scarface squirmed on the table but was
otherwise silent, his eyes shooting from one person to the other as if waiting
for his chance to strike. Katrina edged toward the kitchen, hoping to get her
hands on a knife or other useful kitchen utensil before someone got too jumpy.
There was no way this could end well.

“Everyone just relax,” Lyle
commanded, his voice still calm. “I need to go into my room and get my bag. I
need someone to go into the kitchen and find some towels and bring me some
water. Someone else should probably guard the door, right? We need a lookout in
case the police show up.”

Lucca snorted. “A lookout?
Someone’s been watching too many crime movies. Where’d you find this guy,
Gattina?”

Katrina shot him a glare. “
Don’t
call me that. Ever. And do what he says, you moron. He’s right.”

Lucca’s mouth tightened at the
corners, but he inched toward the door, his narrowed gaze taking another turn
about the room before he disappeared into the hall, shoving his gun down into
his belt. She might not be a Capo, but being Victor’s daughter had its perks.
He wasn’t going to argue with her.

“I’ll get the water,” Felicio
volunteered. He grabbed Katrina by the arm and hurled her onto the couch. There
went her plan of getting her hands on a weapon. “Don’t you move. Draco, she
moves, waste her.”

Draco leered at her, letting her
know with his gaze that he wouldn’t hesitate to do just that. “You,” he spat at
one of Alessandro’s soldiers. “Get the fucking bag. And no funny business. I’ll
put a bullet between her eyes, I swear to God.”

“It’s in the master bedroom
closet, through that door,” Lyle told him as he knelt beside the coffee table.
“All the way in the back on the floor, behind the jackets.”

Silence fell over the room as he
disappeared to do what Lyle had said. Draco watched him closely as he poked and
prodded at Scarface’s wound. Scarface hissed in pain but did nothing more than
glare at Lyle. When Lyle’s bag was brought out, he promptly began removing
instruments and slipped on his gloves under Draco’s watchful eye. Felicio had
returned with the water, one bottle of which he handed to Lyle. The other, he
drank greedily from after popping a pill from a prescription bottle produced
from his pants pocket.