Amadeo and Bastian walk along the line of kneeling men looking at each one, remarking on some. When one of them, the one who’d pulled the beer out of the cooler, spits at Bastian’s feet, Bastian backhands him so hard that the man topples backward, and a soldier has to haul him upright. The next time he spits, it’s more a drooling of a bloody tooth.
Amadeo starts at one end of the line. Taking his pistol out of its shoulder holster, he presses it so hard against the first man’s forehead that his neck is forced back at a painful angle. “Who ordered the attack?” he asks.
“Nobody.”
Without hesitating, Amadeo pulls the trigger. I jump as the man drops, and Amadeo moves to the next one like this is the most natural thing on earth to him. Bastian’s eyes burn into me, but I can’t drag my gaze from Amadeo’s broad back. His merciless justice.
He asks the next man the same question. The man looks terrified, and his eyes meet mine momentarily. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. He said—”
A gunshot cuts him off, and my heart beats double-time.
It’s the third one’s turn. Same question. This one looks at his two dead buddies, then up at the brothers and me. Then into the barrel of Amadeo’s gun.
“Who ordered the attack?” Amadeo repeats. I hear the impatience in his voice.
“I don’t know. He said... he said…” The butt of Amadeo’s gun across his temple stops his stuttering. He shakes his head, clearly dazed. “I don’t know. He said you did.”
Amadeo’s gun goes off again. Three down. Eight to go. Should I be feeling sick at this display of power and violence? This death? I don’t. I feel calm. Peaceful almost. What does that say about me?
Amadeo turns to me. “Do any of them stand out?”
I swallow as I scan their faces. Remembering the one who pulled me onto his lap and began tearing my dress, I point at him. Bastian goes to him, aims his weapon, and shoots him in the shoulder. The man screams as he falls backward. He’s righted almost immediately by one of their soldiers, and Bastian shoots the other shoulder before targeting his knees. He leaves the man moaning in agony on the ground.
“Anyone else?” he casually asks me.
Oh yeah. There’s one other. I walk up to that one. The one who called me princess. Who dragged me into that room and threw me down the stairs.
The brother’s watch, Bastian coming to my side as the kneeling man glares up at me. I look him deep in the eyes because I want to remember him. Remember men like him. They all have one thing in common. Every last one of them. Their eyes are flat. Dead. Like Sonny Caballero’s eyes.
Like my brother’s eyes.
I block the thought as soon as it manifests, and without a moment’s hesitation, I snatch the gun from Bastian’s hand and shoot. I aim for the kneeling man’s stomach, and I shoot and shoot and shoot until no bullets remain. I shoot until the weapon simply clicks, clicks, clicks.
The man lies at my feet, his body riddled with bullets, his blood staining my face, my clothes, my hands. It’s in my mouth, and I swallow it, taste his death. I stand watching until I’m lifted off my feet and dragged away from that barn, out of the room of the massacre that follows my departure.
And as I’m loaded into an SUV, my wrists bound, I think how Amadeo was right. I will never forget this day. This violence I’ve done.
5
AMADEO
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I climb into the driver’s side of the SUV. Bastian unlocks the cuff tethering her to the handle above the window. He locks it around her other wrist and takes the passenger seat. His phone is ringing, but he doesn’t answer it.
“Get these off me,” she says, tugging to get free of him.
Bastian easily keeps her bound wrists in one of his hands.
“Answer me,” I tell her, stopping just out of the gate to look at her. “Have you lost your goddamned mind?”
She turns her narrowed eyes to me. “I didn’t do anything worse than he’d have done to me. In fact, I showed mercy by killing him quickly.”
“Christ,” I mutter while Bastian remains silent. I try to read her and figure out where her head is. She’s under severe stress. Traumatized. But fuck, taking the gun and shooting holes into that man is not how I expect her to react. “You don’t understand, Dandelion.”
“I understand just fine. That man delivered me to those others to be raped.”
“It shouldn’t have been you,” I add.
She snatches her hands from Bastian’s grip, closes them over the steering wheel, and tugs.
“Are you fucking insane?” I yell over the screaming of brakes and honking of horns as I right the SUV in our lane and Bastian regains control of her. She struggles against him the whole way home, and once we get there, he lifts her out and carries her up the stairs to her bedroom. He sets her on her feet, and she stumbles backward to get away from us.
“Get these off me!”
Bastian’s phone rings again, and he walks out of the room to take the call.
I stalk toward her, taking her arm and walking her into the bathroom where I switch on the shower and force her under the flow fully clothed.
“What are you doing? Stop!” she yells, sputtering as water pours over her head and face. I tear at the clothes she’s wearing, stripping her naked.
“I’m cleaning the fucking blood off you. Look at yourself.”
“He deserved it! He deserved worse!”
“Oh, I know he did. And he would have gotten it. But it shouldn’t have been you. Don’t you understand that?” I shake her, pressing her into the wall. I keep her there with one hand while I strip off my shirt with the other. Her nipples pebble and press against my chest when I step closer, and the fingernails of her locked hands scratch my chest and face.
“I’d do it again in a heartbeat! And I’ll do it to you, too!”
“For fuck’s sake, you’re fucking mad!” I draw her bound arms over her head. We’re so fucking close, her naked body against mine, skin to skin, that I’m breathing in the air she exhales. But behind the raw fury in her eyes, I see the bruised pieces of the girl she is beneath. The vulnerable, broken thing. It’s not what I’m expecting. “It shouldn’t have been you, little Dandelion.”
“I had every right!”
I shake my head. Yes, she had very right. But it shouldn’t have been her.
She’s confused, angry, raging, blinking through water spilling over her face as that man's blood washes away, and I can see the damage in her. I can fucking see it clear as fucking day. It’s written on her face and in that electric blue of her eyes. I smash my mouth over hers, heat and rage burning like an inferno. Her teeth snap at my lips, and I take it. I want it, want her fury. Because it is the essence of her.
Water drills against our skin, and when I draw back this time, I see how dark her eyes have gone. See how she’s looking at me. I want her. Fuck, I want her. I need her. Need so much more of her. This furious woman. This vengeful, violent, broken thing.
I kiss her deeply, welcoming the sinking of her teeth into my lips, tasting her along with the copper of blood. Is it hers, the man she killed? Or mine? She moans against my mouth, sucking on the lip she tore with her teeth. I’m angry, fucking furious at her. At myself. Raging for not having seen what was happening or where her head was. She shouldn’t have been there at all. Shouldn’t have been the one to do it. To pull the trigger. Once your hands have blood on them, no amount of scrubbing can wash it off. That taint will follow her forever. Cling to her. Damn her.