Page 37 of Kill Shot

Long Time Coming

Nico

“Alone? You came alone ?” Lucas asked incredulously, his gun pointed squarely at Nico’s chest. “Why? What the fuck is wrong with you? You would do something this stupid for that little slut of a twink?”

Nico listened to the tirade, willing himself not to react.

What mattered now was buying time for the others.

He couldn’t give in to his murderous desires and do what he wanted.

He couldn’t put a bullet in Lucas, not when his men would then immediately gun Nico down and step over his body to hunt down Pablo and Seb.

Every second Lucas spent ranting and raving was one more second that the two men had to escape. Nico could only hope that Lucas had an awful lot to say on the subject.

“Sir?” one of Lucas’s men asked cautiously. “The target is—”

“The target is right fucking in front of you,” Lucas snapped. “Once I’m done here, then we’ll go after the boy. And we’ll make him suffer more than you could even imagine, Nico. Do you understand?”

The soldier looked from Nico to Lucas, clearly a little unsure of just how stable his boss was. But not unsure enough to lower his gun.

“And I’m sure you can imagine a great deal, can’t you, Nico?

” Lucas sneered. “I’m sure you have a pretty good idea of what we already did with him.

Bolero did most of it, but I got to have my fun too.

Does that make you tremble with rage? Though our time together has been short, we got to know each other very well.

I think he might have made sounds and shown faces that you never even got to see. ”

Nico didn’t say anything. It was the hardest thing that he’d ever done in his life, but he kept his expression as neutral as humanly possible. He knew he didn’t succeed, not completely, but he at least refrained from pulling the trigger and starting a firefight.

Not yet. Just a few more minutes, then he could end all this. He just had to wait until Pablo and Seb were in the clear.

“Sir, we really should—”

Eyes wild and practically frothing at the lips, Lucas spun on his subordinate, swinging his gun in an erratic arc as he went. It would have been the perfect opportunity for Nico to start shooting, but he still forced himself to wait.

“I told you to shut the fuck up, didn’t I?” Lucas hissed. “I’m the one in charge here. Me. I’m the second in command after Bolero, so why don’t you—”

“Actually,” Nico cut in, “I believe that I’m still Bolero’s second in command.”

His words had the intended effect. The men may have been under Lucas’s command, but they had clearly been assigned to him by Bolero.

They weren’t his truly loyal followers. Bolero hated any bonds of loyalty that weren’t to him and him alone, which had served well to keep him in power, but also allowed Nico to exploit the natural fault lines of distrust between them.

To these men, hardened criminals that had more than their shares of experience with gang warfare and the way tides could shift at a moment, this probably looked like nothing more than another civil war.

They just had to decide who to support if they wanted to come out on top, and right now, Lucas was making the decision pretty easy for them.

The poor bastards had no idea that Nico had no intention of actually assuming leadership of the Black Cobra, but they didn’t need to know that yet.

“How fascinating,” a new voice mused from all around, mocking condescension dripping from every word.

Bolero was on the intercom. That he didn’t even show his face didn’t surprise Nico at this point. He’d always been a man who preferred to operate from a position of power, but Nico was only just now finally coming to understand the true depths of his cowardice.

“I'm surprised that you came all this way just for that boy. Don’t you have any loyalty to your dear Uncle Mattias? What would he think of you protecting the son of his killer?”

Nico said nothing, nor did he take his eyes off the enemy in front of him.

Bolero wanted to play his mind games and pit people against one another like they were his little playthings.

It had always been like this, hadn’t it?

Hell, he couldn’t stop himself from manipulating other people, not even if his life depended on it.

“You do know what’s going to happen next, right?” Bolero asked, sounding almost bored, but there was an undercurrent to his voice that Nico could recognize. The bastard was afraid, but trying to hide it.

“What’s that?” Nico called out.

“I won’t have Lucas kill you, obviously,” Bolero laughed.

“After all, you’ve been such a loyal son of the Black Cobra.

No, we’re gonna help you though. We’re gonna help you accomplish the mission that you’ve been pursuing your entire life.

We’re gonna go capture that little Altamirano shit and his father, then we’re gonna put you in a room with them, and have you all kill each other.

Last one standing wins. How does that sound? ”

Bolero didn’t understand. He didn’t realize that his penchant for indiscriminate violence and torture had inured the men around him, and Nico had been the closest of them all. He could not be shocked or cowed by Bolero’s threats, not after he’d already seen so much worse.

But he didn’t have to know his weakness quite yet. If he wanted to hear Nico crack, then so be it.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Nico snarled. “Come out and face me, you fucking coward. Come say that to my face.”

Bolero laughed, a deep and terrible sound. Lucas was still staring intently at Nico, but the rest of his men were exchanging uneasy glances. Allegiances were clearly being considered.

“Tell you what,” Nico called out. “I’m guessing that some of your men might be questioning your leadership skills, letting the compound get fucked up so easily by just one guy. Do you think all these men will follow you if you pull the trigger?”

It was a gamble, but probably not the one that Bolero suspected. Nico held his breath, sweat beading on his brow, as he waited for the answer.

“But I’ve got you now,” Bolero said at last. “The storm has passed, just like all the others that the Black Cobra have endured.”

Nico had to resist the urge to sigh in relief. Bolero had always been a terrible liar, at least when telling the truth would allow him to gloat. So he really didn’t know.

“Lucas, you really should have cut your losses when you had the chance.”

Even from this distance, Nico could make out just how bloodshot his ex-lover’s eyes were. Lucas’s entire body was stiff, and he clearly couldn’t read the room around him.

“That doesn’t matter now,” he said, licking his lips. “You’re gonna be mine again. Bolero’s gonna make sure of that. You’ll be mine forever.”

“Yeah, about that,” Nico said slowly as he scanned the room, meeting the eyes of each of the men that were reluctantly pointing their guns in his direction. “I told you: no means no.”

Lucas advanced a step, but no further before the world erupted once more.

Nico had his gun trained on the man, but it wasn’t him that pulled the trigger.

Nor was it the men that were reconsidering their loyalties, though they likely would have tried it if they had to think for a few more moments.

No, it was one of Pablo’s men who triggered the bomb that exploded right next to Lucas, turning him into a cloud of red mist, splintering bone, and screaming death.

At the same moment, Nico leapt for cover, curled up into a ball, covered his ears and eyes, and opened his mouth as wide as it could go to brace for the shockwaves.

The entire compound shook with such violence that Nico would have thought it the end of the world if he hadn’t known the plan ahead of time.

He probably would have reacted like Bolero, screaming profanities into the intercom, unable to even form coherent sentences as he watched his life’s work go up in smoke.

Instead, he just took what meager precautions he could and hoped that it would be enough to survive the series of detonations that Pablo’s men had been preparing while out of Bolero’s sight.