doubt with guns drawn ready to shoot me down the moment I showed myself.
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes as I listened to their approaching footsteps before throwing myself around the left side of the machine and whipping the chain out as hard as I could. The thick steel links smacked the man there in the chest, knocking his gun from his hands and sending him crashing to the ground with a curse.
I whipped back around just as the other guy rounded the corner, somehow managing to dodge another bullet as he swung his gun around too fast in alarm and misjudged his shot. Before he could take another, I swung the chains at him with every inch of strength in my limbs, my grip on them tightening as I whipped them down on him again and again, blood flying until his screams of pain cut off sharply.
I turned back again, bellowing a challenge as I raced towards the last guy who was crawling towards his gun, his fingers reaching out to grab it half a second before I wrapped the thick chains around his neck from behind and pulled them as tight as I could.
He scrambled and flailed beneath me as I drove my knee into his spine to keep him still, firing the gun wildly as the position I held him in made it impossible for him to aim accurately. After the third bullet, the chamber rang empty and he was left twitching and gasping beneath me as he tried to fight off the grip of the chains with ever weakening muscles.
I grunted in pain as I held him there until he stopped moving, my arm burning from the bullet lodged into it and blood coating my tongue from all my other injuries.
When I was sure he was dead, I unravelled the chains and stalked back to the leader whose head had been caved in by the falling beam, the rattle of the metal chains snaking across the concrete behind me the only sound in the wake of all that death.
I dropped down and checked his pockets until I found the key to the cuffs around my wrists and his cellphone. I made quick work of removing the chains from my arms then used his thumb to unlock the phone.
I keyed in Frankie’s number from memory, catching my breath as it started to ring.
“This had better be good news,” Frankie barked as he answered and I sighed my relief at hearing his voice.
“That bastard Hernandez took Winter and tried to kill me. Is everyone else alright?” I demanded, not wasting time on giving him the full version of events.
“Nicoli! Thank fuck for that, we’ve been going out of our minds. Everyone else made it back just fine but his guys weren’t fooled by Sloan’s disguise for long. We figured he’d come back for you but by the time we got back there you were gone and we were all beginning to fear the worst.”
“Like I said, he tried to kill me. But he also made the mistake of letting me know where he’s heading. He’s getting on his boat, La Belleza Rosa. You think Fabio can track that down?” I walked towards the metal doors as I spoke, nudging them open and taking in the view beyond. The tang of salt caught on my tongue as I inhaled and I recognised the huge cargo ships that docked at the far west of the city, outside of the picturesque centre of the bay. It wasn’t the kind of place that I would have visited by choice but at least I knew where I was.
“He will if he doesn’t want his ass kicking,” Frankie said, barking orders at Fabio who must have been there with him.
“Good. Then I need you to come get me. I’m down at the marina, I’ll text you the location from this number when I hang up. Bring a hacksaw, a cooler and something to get a bullet out of my arm and patch it back up again. I’ll take a shot of morphine for the pain too. And guns. Lots of fucking guns.”
“Just call me the cavalry, fratello. I’m on my way.” Frankie cut the call and I looked down at the motherfucker beneath me.
His face had been fucked up by the wooden beam caving it in, but his hair was similar enough to mine that the ruse would probably work.
I texted Frankie the location from the GPS on the cellphone and spat