Page 20 of Soulmate of the Mafia King (Kings of Philly #8)

KILLIAM

I slammed into the driver’s seat of one of the rented cars and took off down the street.

Carp had proven himself a good guy a handful of times, but Tommaso looked like he was on death’s door.

I didn’t know if a good guy would be enough.

So I raced through Cairo at night like a bullet, dodging and weaving through the endless traffic.

The hotel Paige was staying in was ten minutes away as the crow flew, and I tried to turn the bulky van into that crow.

Someone leaned on their horn, and I flipped them off as I jutted through another tiny break in traffic.

Diesel poured in through the air conditioner vents, thick enough to cut with a knife.

Months ago, I’d been rushing across my city to save Sera, and Tommaso had been there.

Now, he needed me. And I always repaid my debts.

I screeched around a corner. Especially when I’d been the one to stack the cards against us.

I shouldn’t have said a goddamn word about Paige coming with us.

Tommaso would still be bleeding out on some Egyptian floor, Paige would still be in lethal danger, but at least I wouldn’t have to deal with this fucking traffic trying to save both their lives.

I’d given him the advice I knew I would’ve needed in that situation.

Sera proved herself tougher than I’d feared, but the idea of riding into battle with her at my side was still laughable.

I rode out into the night, killed the thing that went bump, and rode back home to celebrate with her.

She made my house somewhere worth coming home to.

My whole life, my business worked better in the dark.

Somehow, Tommaso seemed to have become a different kind of businessman altogether.

And now, he’d gotten his dumbass stabbed in an artery by a feral woman he put his life on the line to try to save.

I knew just enough from Sera to understand that any wound bleeding that much meant he needed a doctor yesterday.

If I was a better man, I’d have stayed with him, made sure he got the help he needed.

But I’d never been a good man. I was a good fucking friend, and that meant saving his girl first, like he’d asked me to

I dialed Paige. It rang once, twice, then abruptly went to voicemail.

“Shit.” I slammed my hand against the wheel. Zahur had to already be there. She wouldn’t have ignored a call for any other reason.

But I could come up with a million reasons they didn’t have crows in Egypt. I squeezed the rental car into a tiny gap in traffic with a high, metallic whine. Nothing worse than the paint job. I slammed on my horn to drown out the angry Arabic that chased me and pressed the pedal down harder.

The contact was the trouble. I knew it in my bones. Any man you can buy can be bought again, even if you’re paying in blood. I didn’t trust the Egyptian from minute one. Tommaso should’ve buried his son back in Philly, and saved us the trouble of having to kill the little shit now.

“Fuck it.” I called Stan. I had no other goddamn way to save my best friend’s life.

“Finally,” his second said.

“What?” I spat as I wheeled through an intersection amidst a chorus of horns.

“Are you in a fucking parade?” he asked.

“I don’t have time for this.” Tommaso cultivated an organization of jokesters too, people you had to ask four times to get a straight answer out of. “Find the contact. Kill him. He betrayed us.”

Stan sighed like we had all the time in the fucking world. “I’ve been calling you to tell you the same thing. We have a handle on things down here, by the way.”

“Fucking Mostafa.” I screeched around two sharp corners. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Stan replied. “And Zahur isn’t at his house, either.

I swore colorfully in Italian. “Fuck him. Fuck both of them. Get everyone you can and meet me at the hotel.”

“But—”

“As long as they can pull a trigger, I don’t give a shit.” I took the final corner onto the hotel’s street on two wheels. “And get someone to kill his fucking son.”

Stan started to say something else, and I hung up on him.

All the security Tommaso bragged about when he picked the hotel stood between me and Paige’s life now.

I unholstered my pistol and checked the bullets.

Enough that I could shoot my way through security and Zahur’s men if I needed to. Tom’s dying wish came first.

I shouted the code into the intercom and rammed through the metal gate as it rose as a glacial pace.

More metallic screeching. More paint to repay.

Fuck, I hadn’t had more than three conversations with Paige in the months she’d been a part of Tommaso’s life.

I only knew her secondhand, through his glowing reports and Sera’s constant updates on her quest to win Paige’s friendship again.

I knew she was a thick-shelled woman, hard to crack, and I respected that about her.

I just hoped her shell was thick enough to withstand Zahur a little longer.

When I skidded up to the elevator into the building proper, the helpful bellhop and burly guard Tommaso had mentioned both lay on the ground in pools of their own blood, and the elevator doors showed obvious crowbar dents.

Motherfucker. I didn’t bother checking whether the men on the floor were alive or dead.

Zahur was smart enough to leave guards at the elevator door to ensure he had an exit, and that meant I needed to take the stairs to the penthouse.

I hadn’t been fast enough to stop Mattia. I hadn’t known Paige well enough to know she belonged on the raid with us. Now, I needed to repay some debts. I pulled my pistol out, flicked off the safety, and began running up the stairs.