Riding The Edge - Elise Faber Page 0,45

from inside, and then the panel was pulled open.

And then we were face-to-face with Frankie Toscalo himself.

Ava’s spine stiffened, tension invading every part of her body that was touching mine.

“Bella,” Frankie said.

Ava shifted slightly in my arms, and I got the message, carefully setting her down, not liking the way her cheeks went even paler, nor the fragile way she held herself. But her voice was steady. “What do you want, Frankie?”

The man was plump and balding, the buttons of his white silk button-down slightly bulging, the remnants of his hair nearly white. He leaned against the wall across the room from us, arms casually overlapped, smile unaffected by the disdain in his daughter’s voice.

“I’m your father, daughter.”

“You stopped being that a long time ago,” Ava spat.

He strolled toward us, goons at his back. “Ah, you wound me, bella.” He stroked a hand down Ava’s face then cupped her cheek. She jerked away and stumbled several paces away.

I stepped closer—or tried to anyway. Hands gripped my arms, wrenched me back.

“I cared for you. I provided food and love—”

She laughed darkly. “You never loved me.”

I didn’t expect him to move so fast.

One second he was standing a foot in front of Ava, his eyes darkening, and the next, he had burst forward and punched her in the stomach.

She crumpled to the floor, a cry of pain escaping.

I tore my arms free from my captor’s grasp and jumped forward, moving between them, blocking her father when he would have kicked out at her, and earning a blow from the goons behind us for my trouble. I pushed Frankie back then spun, knocked one of the fuckers on his ass, reached out for another, but I couldn’t do more than that because—

Click.

“Don’t fuck with me.” Soft, deadly words that nonetheless easily reached my ears.

And sent a cold chill down my spine.

I slowly rotated back.

Frankie didn’t lower the gun from where it was pointed at Ava. “How did KTS know about the hotel?”

Silence. From both me and Ava.

A gunshot rang out.

I lunged forward again, trying and failing to put my body between her and the bullet.

But I couldn’t outpace gunpowder or a piece of metal flying three times the speed of sound, and the sound it made sinking into Ava’s flesh was fucking sickening.

Then I heard the click again.

“How?” he repeated.

Ava spat.

The gun never wavered, Frankie’s finger tightening—

“We had a source,” I said.

“Who?”

“He’s dead.”

Click.

A bullet exploded from the gun, hitting the stone floor next to her shoulder, sending chips of rocks flying up into the air.

I straightened from where I’d thrown my body over Ava. She’d gone quiet and deathly still, and panic was tearing through me. “You can put as many bullets as you want into me,” I said. “Into your daughter, but that won’t change the fact that the man is dead.”

Silence.

Frankie stepped closer, pressed the gun to my temple. I could disarm him in an instant, but I held my ground, knowing the other men in the room had weapons that could be drawn before I could do anything to get us to safety. “Our source told us that something big was going to go down at the hotel on that date,” I said. “We had no other information besides that.”

Frankie’s eyes were so much like Ava’s.

A deep chocolate brown.

Except where Ava’s had a warmth I could sense, even when there was ice on the surface, Frankie’s were like looking into a black fucking hole. There was no soul inside, no caring.

He’d end us without a second thought the moment we weren’t useful.

Silence filled the space, no one speaking, the only noise breaking the quiet Ava’s rasped out breaths.

The sound both frightened and calmed me.

She was still breathing.

She was having a hard fucking time breathing.

Frankie kicked Ava’s ankle, eliciting a sharp cry from her. “What is the name of—”

A rumbling shook the floor.

For a second, I thought it was an earthquake. I hadn’t felt too many of those growing up on the East Coast, but I’d been through a handful while visiting my sister in California and several more on various deployments.

Frankie frowned, glanced at the door, the floor.

But unlike the earthquakes I’d be through, this one didn’t go on, a wave of movement with a slowing end. This one stopped abruptly, the shaking cutting off.

Right before more rumbling began.

Only this time, closer and sharper.

And . . . I knew the cavalry was coming.

I launched myself forward, knocking Frankie to the ground. The older man dropped the gun and it clattered