Page 24 of Soulmate of the Mafia King (Kings of Philly #8)

KILLIAN

I shot one of Zahur’s men and ducked behind an overturned couch.

Either Zahur was even more paranoid than we’d thought, or he was scared of Paige.

Four men had been patrolling the hall outside the door to the fucking suite, and there were at least half a dozen behind the door when I’d stormed in.

I’d dropped several but lost a few in the suite.

Fuck being a crow; I needed something far more dangerous to get to Paige in time.

I reloaded my gun and lunged up from behind the couch to sprint for the one open door I’d spotted earlier.

Bullets rattled through the hotel room. One of them caught me in the vest like a punch to the fucking chest, and I dropped.

My breath wheezed in and out of me. Sera would be furious when she saw the bruise.

I grabbed a bloodstained throw pillow off the floor and tossed it up over the couch.

More gunfire. But this time, I listened.

The windows reverberated. One of them shattered.

The quick click of the trigger releasing came from the far corner of the room, behind a dresser.

I threw the next thing I could find—a bowl of decorative fruit—and leaned around the edge of the couch to fire when the shooter exposed himself.

As expected, he popped up from behind the dresser, and I shot him in the throat. He fell back, gurgling.

When that died out, quiet reigned like a queen in all black. If Paige was here, was fine, surely she’d be screaming. Out of things to throw, I waved a hand over the back of the couch, and no gunfire followed.

I leapt up and sped through the hotel room with my heart in my throat.

Blood coated everything, making me feel like I was running through molasses.

I caught sight of the new guy Tommaso had hired, Sam, with his brains spattered on the cabinets.

The rest of Paige’s guards dotted the overwhelming number of Egyptian bodies.

They had been good men. I’d honor them when I got home, if Tommaso couldn’t.

The door to the bedroom stood ajar. I nudged it open with one bloody shoe.

Inside, a small man in casual clothes lay on the bed in a puddle of blood.

Then, I spotted Paige’s legs between the man’s.

I inhaled as quietly as I could and crept through the room.

If the man—Zahur, I had to assume—remained alive, I’d make sure my face was the last thing he saw.

If I couldn’t honor Tommaso’s wishes, I’d at least dole out his revenge.

And if everyone was dead, I’d handle the bodies.

I wrapped my fingers around Zahur’s shoulder and yanked.

His corpse toppled off Paige and the bloody knife she clutched in one hand. For a breathless moment, I thought they’d killed each other. Then, she opened her brown eyes and began trembling.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Tears poured down her cheeks, cutting through the thick, red blood Zahur had spilled. Still, though, she nodded.

Tommaso was right. If we would’ve taken her with us, she would’ve survived.

“Great.” I nudged Zahur with my foot. More blood spilled from the couple of holes she’d put in him. Definitely dead. I holstered my gun and turned back to Paige.

Her shirt was split down the middle, and she hadn’t moved, other than the nod and the trembling.

For a long moment, we stood in a silent hotel room together.

I didn’t know what she needed. I barely knew her.

But I assumed she needed someone by her side, even an asshole like me, and stand by her, I could.

“T-Tom?” she asked eventually.

I blew out a long breath. “Hurt. Badly. But alive last I saw him.”

Her eyes widened, and her silent tears flowed faster.

I wished I’d had better news to give her, but she’d clearly proven herself capable of dealing with the worst of the worst. Hiding his condition from her wouldn’t help anything.

I just didn’t need to give her the little detail that he had been stabbed in the lung.

“Look, we have to get moving,” I said after another long moment. “I don’t know who’s going to show up first, Egyptian cops or Zahur’s clean-up team, but we don’t need to see either of them right now.”

She blinked a few times.

I grimaced. Even after meeting Sera, emotions like this were difficult for me to know what to do with. “I can call Sera if you think she’d explain it better?”

A beat of silence passed, and without a word, Paige sat up. All emotion had disappeared from her face. She still shook like a leaf in the breeze, and she hadn’t released the knife, but she’d flicked some switch in her head that let her do what she needed to.

“Passports are in the false bottom of Tom’s suitcase.” She stood. “I’m going to go get the supplies for the women.”

“Paige—”

Crunch.

Both of us whipped around to face the unmistakable sound of someone very carefully stepping on broken glass in the main room.

I put a hand up and drew my gun then snuck to the door.

She ignored my instructions and tiptoed behind me, the knife still in her hand.

Someone rounded the corner into the short hallway leading to the door, and I lifted my gun and aimed.

“Hey!” Salim, one of my men, whipped off his mask and put his hands up.

I lowered my gun. “I almost killed you.”

“I noticed.” Salim eyed Paige behind me. “Stan sent us.”

A few more men in all black piled into the hall. I’d requested everyone he could muster. I nodded crisply.

“We’re just readying to leave for the airport.” I holstered my gun. “There is a suitcase of supplies that needs to reach the women in…?”

“The third bedroom,” Paige murmured.

“The third bedroom,” I repeated. “Send a team with that to the house. The rest of you, organize bodies, strip identifying marks, and prepare yourself to be visible in public.”

I stepped back into the room with Paige and closed the door. She looked at me for a long moment. Her still expression didn’t move, but I realized she was wondering why we were in here.

“You need to change,” I said softly.

She looked down at herself, then quickly back up, like the sight horrified her.

While she gathered new clothes, I wrenched up the false bottom of Tommaso’s suitcase.

Passports, money, everything she could need.

Except the passports only covered her, Tommaso, and her security force.

If we ended up needing them, I’d have to return to the house or send her alone.

Was there a chance we could get out the way we’d come in? I had no idea.

“I’m going to rinse off,” she said from the bathroom.

I stood. Our escape was a problem for later. Without a word, I sat with my back against the bathroom door and listened to the water as knowledge washed over me. I’d been too late. By a hairsbreadth, but too late. Paige had saved herself.