Page 79 of Ice & Steel

The problem was, his throat was still above water.

My brain screamed for oxygen and I ignored it. Still waiting just beneath his body.

Then he flipped.

I saw my next move in a bolt of inspiration. Tucking my legs, I vaulted off the bottom and brought the blade up in a short arc. Slicing through both of his Achilles’ tendons at once.

I heard his cry through the water and I burst to the surface. His eyes widened in horror and he thrashed like a wounded animal. Blood poured around him in a crimson cloud. Seeping out from our bodies as it spilled from his veins.

He thrashed back, using mostly his arms, and pulled himself onto the pavement. Rolling onto his side and scrabbling in the dirt. His arm came down and something glowed red beneath his palm. I scrambled onto the pavement and froze.

Fuck, he’d hit a panic button.

An alarm blared. The floodlights activated and lit up the yard until I could see Duran where he stood behind the guesthouse.

“Go, get out,” I shouted in French.

I didn’t check if he obeyed. Riccardo was at my feet, hobbled by his ankles pouring blood around his body. His dark eyes swirled with fear and hatred.

“I should have killed you,” he gasped. “Fucking snake.”

My mind and my body were quiet, like they always were before I killed. I knelt and took him by the hair, dragging his head back. He must have known he was finished because he didn’t struggle.

“I was never trying to be the hero,” I said. “If you had just stayed away, you’d be alive. But you kidnapped my wife and you left my children crying for their mother.”

His chest heaved.

“And you tried to take my birthright,” I said. “And my city.”

He gasped, eyes hazy with pain. “It was never yours—you were never meant to be the heir.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “The city doesn’t belong to men who inherit simply by being born, it belongs to the men who take it.”

He swallowed and his body shuddered. Before I could draw the knife across his throat, he gave a short, choking gasp and went still. I dropped his head and it cracked against the pavement. Whether from the shock or the loss of blood, he was dead.

The alarms blared on.

In moments, the ground would be overtaken by soldiers.

I’d intended on ripping his heart out and bringing it back to Olivia, but there wasn’t time for that now. Instead, I stood and moved silently across the yard to where my clothes and gun lay. Still wet, I pulled on my pants and shirt, my boots, and my thigh holster. My clothes stuck to me like a second skin.

The gates clanged. They scraped apart.

I flicked my eyes up to the rooftop. Right at the peak where the shadows of three heads rose over the edge. Ahmed, Cosimo, and Viktor.

Where was Duran?

I whirled, pushing my pistol into my thigh holster. In the distance, I could make out several vehicles pulling into the drive and screeching to a halt. Car doors slammed.

The forest behind me was the most logical method of escape. I melted into the shadows and ran, quickly and quietly, along the treeline to where the fence was cut from our arrival earlier. There was a shred of black t-shirt—Duran’s—hanging on the wire.

It looked intentional.

He was close.

I moved swiftly through the trees and spilled out on the edge of the road, a few hundred yards away. The crack of a gunshot split the air and I whirled, pulling my pistol free and searching through the shadows for the source.

Footsteps sounded and Duran peeled around the corner, spinning and emptying his gun without really aiming. From the corner of my eye, I caught the shadow of a man training his gun on my brother and I dove across the pavement and slammed into Duran. We tumbled into the ditch together.