Page 118 of Dirty Hearts

“Fuck!” he growled and moved with me to the other corner and shielded me as he fired back at the guys who were coming after us. “Doll, stay down,” he yelled.

I wished I could have kept my head down. Upstairs, I heard Raphael crying.

“The baby,” I wailed.

“Donny and Louis have him. Keep. Down.”

I stayed down. I did, but I kept watch, feeling completely useless.

Two men came at us, but then I saw Jude. He came out of nowhere and took them out before they could take another step.

Jesus. There were so many bodies on the ground. And blood everywhere.

“Come on, Doll.” Saul grabbed my arm but kept his shield up on me with his body. We made it to the corridor near the grand staircase, but there were three guys there.

Guns were pointed at us.

“Give us the girl,” one of them said.

“How about I give you my ass instead?” Saul smiled, revealing his frightful gold teeth. He shot one in the head but in return got another bullet. I didn’t see where it hit him, but he dropped to his knees. I bent down, crying and screaming, trying to help him, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t do anything.

One of the guys came at me and backhanded me across my face. Pain shot through my body, and my head felt broken, my vision blurred, and sparks of white light rippled behind my eyelids. I fell right next to Saul, who tried to help me, but another bullet took him out.

“Gone through a lot of trouble to get you, Angel Doll,” the guy sneered.

He raised his hand again, but a bullet smacked right between his eyes. I looked to see where it came from. It was Donny.

The other guy was just about to shoot back, but the front door burst open, and all I heard was bullets. They pierced the guy, messing him up like a rag doll. One to his head, a couple to the chest and stomach.

He dropped dead before me.

I looked to the door and saw Claudius standing there looking like the angel of death in his black clothes and hair whipping out against the gust of wind that blew around him from outside.

Numbness took me, although there was a tingling in my chest that made my heart hurt. Dizziness shook my brain from where I’d been struck, and the pressure that built in my chest made me forget to breathe.

Through all that, I was just so happy to see him.

He was at my side in a flash.

* * *

Claudius and I sat up in the bedroom. He’d cleaned me up, and I’d lost count of how many times he’d checked me over to make sure I was okay. Even after a doctor came to look at me. The same doctor who’d come with the paramedics to take Saul away.

Saul didn’t die.

Thank God, he didn’t die. I didn’t know how I would live with myself if he’d died trying to save me.

Claudius and I had sat up here in silence the whole time. Me allowing him to do what he thought he needed to do to see that I was okay.

Emotionally, I was drained, freaked out, and wiped out. Physically, I was the same, and I had a black eye. No one had ever hit me before.

Claudius moved to the bowl of cold water and soaked the cloth in it again. He came back and placed the cloth over my eye. Not quite looking at me. Guilt was all over him. It rolled off him in waves so strong it was stifling.

We sat like that for five minutes before he moved to get up again, but I caught his wrists and tugged him back.

“I’m okay,” I said breathlessly. My voice held a shudder to it that I couldn’t control.