Page 94 of Debt to the Mafia King

On the far wall, I saw a small door. “What’s this door?” I shouted to one of the salesladies and pointed.

“It leads to the alleyway.” One called back, and something must have shown in my tone because she stepped forward. “Is everythingalright, sir?

Eyes glued to the door, I edged forward, my gun already in my hand and pressed against my leg.

The door was slightly ajar.

“Sir?”

I nudged the open door with my toe, and it only moved halfway, like someone had stuffed something behind it.

“My God, is that a gun?”

I didn’t turn to her, “There’s a man out front called Ivan. Bring him to me. Now.”

“Leah?” I called out again and again. There was no answer. But there was a small gargling noise from behind the door. A wet choking kind of sound.

My stomach bottomed out. Keeping a tight grip on the gun, I rammed my shoulder into the door and forced it open.

Gun pointed, I swept it around the litter-strewn alley with its piled-up trash and red pooling water. Red pooling water?

Blood. There was blood mixing with the melting snow puddles. Holding my breath, I looked down and prayed not to find Leah because if I did, I didn’t know what I would do. Set the world on fire and watch it burn.

It wasn’t Leah. It was her guard, Stephen.

He lay on his back, his mouth working as bubbles of blood splurged from his lips and stained his chin. There was a hole in his chest, and a pool of blood spreading around him.

Dropping to my knees in that blood, I pressed my hands over his chest wound, and that thick hot, liquid bubbled up through my fingers.

So much blood.

Too much blood.

“What’s—” Ivan skidded to a half stop, his weapon in his hands. “Shit.” Tearing off his coat, he passed it to me so I had something to staunch the blood with. “Shit, what happened? I didn’t hear a shot.”

“I don’t know. But he needs an ambulance.” I pressed down harder. “Hold on, Stephen. Just hold on.”

Fuck, there was so much blood. How could anyone survive losing that much?

Unless it wasn’t all his blood.

“Leah?” I asked as the wail of sirens hit my ears. “Did Leah get hurt?”

I knew my wife. If she had been here, she would have been helping.

He gargled and shook his head. “She—”

My eyebrows shot up. “She did this to you?”

There was no way I was going to believe that. Leah was a fighter, but she wasn’t a killer, and the man in front of me was going to die.

I knew it, and so did he. That’s why he was trying to talk to me. So he could tell me what happened.

“Manda.”

My heart sank. If Manda had been here, then Leah could be in real trouble.

“Piotre,” his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he didn’t say anything else.