Mafia love

A really tall ex-military-looking guy rushed me, and I kicked out at him, but he whipped out a kick to me too, throwing me off balance. I fell, and he grabbed me. I sent a knee to his balls, but it did nothing. Claudius was fighting, giving his best, but there were too many of them.

The hulk of a guy holding me pulled out a gun and held it to my head.

He laughed. “Lucian Morientz, people will remember me for killing you.” He pulled the trigger.

That click-clack sound pierced through me because I thought this was my last moment.

Amelia

I love you…

My last thoughts. I’d love her with my last breath. It was like slow motion. I was sure I saw him release the trigger, but his hand blew up.

Something pierced his hand, and blood spurted all over my face.

I fell to the ground and looked ahead in disbelief as I saw Maurice come in guns blazing. Beside him were Sinclaire and a guy I only knew by picture to be Max. Max, Amelia’s old partner back in LA.

Holy fucking hell.

They came in like vengeful gods firing shots. Shooting until all the goons were dead.

CHAPTER 12

Luc

Sinclaire walked up to me as I stood and landed a fist straight in my face.

He would have done it again if Max hadn’t held him back. Maurice just shook his head.

“Fucking asshole,” Sinclaire cried, looking at me with death-filled eyes.

I didn’t say anything or retaliate because he was probably right to do that. In his book, I’d stolen his girl and put her right in the arms of danger.

“Cool off, man,” Max told him. “The last thing we want is to get in trouble here. More trouble. The kind that could get you benched from the precinct.”

“Cops, Maurice?” Claudius asked with narrowed eyes and a deep scowl.

He hated cops worse than me.

“They’re not just cops; they’re Amelia’s friends.” Maurice was right, and these were possibly the help I needed. They loved her and had her back.

They may hate me, but they loved her.

Having them here gave me hope.

“Still cops.”

“Cops that came to your rescue, asshole,” Max retorted. He looked to me, and a lock of his dark hair fell over his eye. “Where is she, Luc?”

“Taken,” I replied, looking at Maurice, whose shoulders fell on hearing that.

“We’ll get her back,” Maurice said, sounding positive. I had to admire him for it.

“Taken!” Sinclaire cried now looking feral. “You! This is your fault, you fucking gangster. All you did was mess everything up. Why couldn’t you just leave her alone?”

“I don’t have time for this, Sinclaire. I need to focus on getting her back. We can argue all you want then. Not now.”

“She called me and gave the code. I knew she was in trouble.”

I didn’t know she’d done that. I’d heard her speaking to him, but I didn’t know anything about a code.

“What code?”

“Golden eagle riding a horse. It means I’m going through deep shit, but I’m dealing with it.”

“You came based on that?”

“Of course I came. I had my bags packed and got Max back when I heard about the shootout at Amelia’s place.”

“Then I got involved and asked them to come,” Maurice said with a nod.

Didn’t matter how they got here. They were here, and they’d saved our asses.

I looked from Sinclaire to Max. “Help me get her back.” Maybe it was the way I said it, but it seemed to throw Sinclaire.

The last time I saw Sinclaire, I practically had my hands around his throat.

Now, I’d take help wherever it came from. Anything to get Amelia back.

“If anything happens to her, I’ll kill you.” He pointed at me.

Claudius tensed.

All I did was look at him, then proceed to walk through the door.

He didn’t know that if anything did happen to Amelia, I wouldn’t want to go on living.

When we got back to Raphael’s place, there was a rather interesting woman waiting for us inside.

She was an addition to the team that had come from LA. Her name was Cora, and she was a high-tech hacker. Max explained that the LAPD had used her for a number of special secret projects.

At first, I didn’t think much of her because she had purple hair and seemed more at home in a cyber bar at college, but she surely put me in my place from the minute she opened her mouth.

Apparently, she thought she could track Victor’s location from the number that was on Amelia’s phone. The number he’d sent the text message from with Gigi’s picture. Thankfully, Amelia’s phone was still in her purse and hadn’t been taken with her.

I tried to tell Cora that we’d already tried to locate him this way, but she was still of the belief that she could do it.

It gave me some hope. Hope I hadn’t felt since this whole nightmare took off.

We all sat in the living room, and tension was thick in the air, to say the least.

Cora sat near the coffee table with a laptop in front of her. Sinclaire and Max stood side by side behind her. I sat opposite her with Maurice and Saul. At least we were near them.

On the other side of the room were Raphael, Pa, Claudius, and The Four. They kept to themselves, and the looks they cast this side was enough to kill.

Cops and mobsters. Cops, mobsters, and one tech hacker.

Maurice had brought him and Max up to speed with what was going and who Amelia really was.

Neither of them had asked me about it. While Sinclaire was very vocal, I noticed Max said very little. I’d never spoken to the guy, and knowing him for the hour or so I’d known him, I didn’t know what to make of him except that he didn’t like our kind. I guess I had to understand since Raphael had threatened him to take his family and uproot to Florida to make room for me to slip in as Amelia’s fake partner.

I’d become a cop, a thing I hated most. Back then. My tolerance had grown substantially over the last few months.

“I think this should work,” Cora a

I didn’t mean to look the way I did with the harsh expression on my face. And quite frankly, I didn’t care how I looked. My concern was

whether or not she could help.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“More than you,” Sinclaire muttered under his breath.

Fucking asshole was working my last nerve. He kept dropping remarks like that the whole time. Like this was all my fault.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I looked him straight in the eye, and the fool looked back at me. It didn’t help that he was standing and I was sitting down. It made it look like he had the upper hand over me. Authority.

“Go figure.” He smirked.

I glanced at Claudius, who leaned forward with a grin on his face. It wasn’t a grin of amusement; it was the expression he wore right before a fight.

Of the two of us, I was considered the more even-tempered brother.

Claudius wouldn’t stand for this shit.

“Go figure?” Claudius challenged. His voice reverberated across the walls.

Sinclaire looked at him. I felt jealous of the wary look that washed over him, because he seemed to be more afraid of Claudius than me.