Page 111 of Mercenary

“Tsk, tsk, Franco. No cause for profanity,” she taunts.

My jaw couldn’t have hit the floor harder. Who is this person?

Certainly not my sister, who can drop the motherf---ing f-bomb like nobody’s business. Ironic, right? How this is what’s running through my head. And not the in-my-face fact of how Kylie terminates people for a living.

Holy shit.

“Pin her to the bed so she can watch what I do to her sister.” He shoves me hard, sending me crashing into his men’s backs. They step aside and I fall down onto all fours in front of them.

“Remember the time you came home with two scraped knees and a cut lip?” Kylie quietly asks me. “What I taught you afterward?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

Too late. I remember. Play the weak-female card. Then, when he relaxes, aim for his balls.

Yeah, I’ll do it. It’s not like I can say to Franco, “How about we sit down and talk things over?” Still, I glance over my shoulder at Franco, whose cheeks are brighter than a fire truck and the gun in his hand cocked and ready to hose us down.

“Please. Don’t hurt us,” I whimper in my most desperate voice, in an effort to draw their attention down to the floor. Ten men. Not counting the three dead ones.

Can’t we discuss this situation in a peaceful way?

My answer comes in the form of three more shots Kylie fires with perfect precision. Three more men, who fall to the floor on both sides of me. Now I whimper for real.

A bullet hits the carpet close. I feel a burn on my right hand.

“Ah. That got your attention,” Franco says. “One more shot and your sister is dead.”

No need to turn around, it’s clear his gun is aimed at me.

Kylie tosses her pistol on the carpet. Close enough that if I crawl forward . . .

She shakes her head.

Our eyes connect. Then her gaze lifts to Franco, then slides off to his right. “Six down, one to go,” she calmly states like she’s counting daisies instead of dead men.

Franco whistles. I hear his men’s footsteps behind me.

Kylie stands, drawing their attention toward her.

Now’s my chance. I inch forward, closer and closer still. Until my fingers wrap around the handle of her pistol.

A shot is fired. I flinch as my thigh is suddenly on fire like a hornet’s nest’s landed on my leg. A bullet. “It’s a graze . . . just a graze . . . no need to worry,” I say, for Kylie’s benefit as well as my own.

“The bastard shot her,” Kylie says.

For a moment, everything except the burn to my thigh seems to cloud my ability to think. Then holy mother-loving chaos breaks out inside the room.

“Oh, shit,” Kylie says before she slams her body into my back and pins me to the floor. Protecting me for the hail of bullets ricocheting around the room.

Somehow she’s convinced Franco’s men to . . . shoot each other?

“I love you, Madelyn,” she shouts into my ear. “I don’t know how this is going to end. Follow my lead and do as I say. Okay? No matter what.”

We lie like this for what seems like an eternity. Her curled over me, her heart racing in unison with my own. Blood, death, destruction is all around us.

Then I feel her stiffen.

“No. Don’t you dare,” she bites out.