Page 117 of Dirty Hearts

Ava

* * *

“Are you okay?” Amelia asked.

She’d joined me out in the sun room. I’d been out here since we got back.

Sitting around, watching.

She sat in front of me and brought her hands together, placing them in her lap.

She looked worried for me. Her hair was down today, and it gave her a younger appearance.

“I’m not okay, Amelia. I wish I could say I was, but I’m not. I can’t just sit here being babysat by you guys. No offence.”

“None taken. I know how you feel, and believe me, you’re in the right place. We don’t know what’s happening.”

“Is thatweas in a collectivewe, or just us as in you and me?”

Her shoulders slumped. “All of us. Luc is trying to reach Claudius.”

“Wait… so, he hasn’t heard from him? Amelia, this man… Goliath, he’s crazy. He kidnapped me and killed my sister. I’m sure you know the story.”

“I heard it, and it’s awful. It’s truly awful and heartbreaking.”

“It was the most terrifying experience of my life. His men grabbed me in broad daylight from outside my house. Took me and my sister to the docks and put a bomb on her. That is the man Claudius has gone after. This crazy person. I understand why he’s doing it, but damn the—” My heart jumped into my throat when I lifted my head higher to continue my tirade and saw a man standing in the garden. A man in a black suit with a scar running down the side of his face. He held a machine gun. “Amelia, get down!”

“What?”

I didn’t repeat the warning. I just leapt onto her, knocking her to the floor when the man raised the gun and started firing.

Bullets sprayed through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, sending shards everywhere.

Amelia and I screamed, keeping low and close to the floor.

There were voices, voices from inside and outside the house.

Something dug into my skin. It was glass. It was all over my hair and my shoulders.

Amelia shuffled from underneath me, trying to help me to move to the corner where the door was, but I was shaking so much I couldn’t find my feet.

Then in came the men.

Chapter 29

Ava

* * *

They seemed to be everywhere and came in all at the same time.

Amelia managed to get me over to the corner, and I cowered behind the vase, fearing for my life, wanting desperately to do something, anything, but I didn’t know how.

Amelia, on the other hand, whipped out a gun and went into what I would assume was her cop mode, from her previous life. She took down three guys without blinking, then sent some kicks and punches to two others.

By then, Luc and Maurice were at her side.

Saul grabbed me and heaved me over his shoulder, but someone shot him in the leg and sent him down.