"It's suicide, Nico. You shouldn't go. You should?—"
"I have to." I looked at Aria and then back at the warehouse. I hadn’t even realized we’d walked outside, but I was closer to my car now, and when Damian saw me approaching, when he saw the look on my face, he understood without a word. "I don't expect you to come with me, but if something?—"
"Of course I'm coming with you, you idiot. I need to meet this mysterious woman of yours." She smiled before pulling back. "I'll gather the squad and follow you, okay?"
I could only nod before I started running toward the car. Damian opened the passenger-side door immediately before moving to the driver's seat.
I just fucking hoped we weren't too late.
14
AJLA
The soundof bullets coming from the outside started just two hours after Nicolas had left, and maybe it was the fact that I believed this house was like a little fortress, or maybe the fact that I believed no one would dare attack the head of the mafia at his own home, but I didn't react until the sound of one bullet being shot turned into two, three and then too many to count.
But instead of ducking under the table like I did in the restaurant, I ran out of the living room, where I've been mindlessly watching Supernatural for the hundredth time, and into the hallway—straight into Gio.
"What the hell is happening?"
"We're under attack.," He said it so matter-of -factly that I wouldn't have even believed him had I not seen the gun in his hand. "I need you to hide."
"W-What?" But Gio didn't wait to answer any of my questions.
He hauled me upstairs, straight into Nicolas's room, and slammed the door shut behind him. "I can't stay here with you. I need to get out and help the guys, okay?"
I stared at him wide-eyed, opening and closing my mouth like a fish on dry land. What was I supposed to say?Sure, buddy. You go ahead and kill some bad guys while I sit here and wait like the damsel that I am.
I didn't consider myself to be the damsel, but right now I felt like one. And I didn't like it one bit.
"Here," he pulled out another gun from his belt, or wherever the heck he kept it, and pushed it into my hands. "I can't stay with you, but Nicolas wouldn't want you to be unprotected."
I looked at the gun in my hands, then at him, then back at the gun, feeling its cold surface against my hands, and almost started laughing. Hysterically, probably, but what the actual fuck?
"Gio," I started, keeping my voice as calm as possible, "do I strike you as some kind of badass assassin?"
He glanced back at me after checking the door,his eyebrows scrunching. "Uh… is this a trick question?"
"What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?!" This being a fucking gun sitting in my hands as if it had any business being there. Yeah, I knew what to do if I ended up in a minefield, but no one had ever taught me how to shoot a gun. It wasn't like we had it on a regular curriculum in school back in Bosnia—How to Shoot a Gun 101.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Gio's eyebrows rose on his forehead, and it would've been funny if we weren't in a situation that required me to stay calm.
"You never shot a gun?"
"I’ve never even held a real gun, Gio!" Was I panicking? I was definitely panicking. "I'm not counting that one time I used a plastic one to spray water on my friends when I was ten fucking years old. But a real gun? Gio, really?"
"Fuck." Yeah, fuck seemed to be a suitable word for the current situation. "Do you know anything about guns?"
"Gio," I huffed, "I know we're in a shit show." I could still hear the shouting and shooting coming from outside. "But unless you show me how to use this quickly, I don't think we’ll need to worry about somebodyelsekilling me. I might do itmyself trying to look down the barrel and shoot myself straight in the face."
"For the love of God." He holstered his own gun at his chest, and took the one from me. "I don't want you shooting yourself, because I'm pretty sure Nicolas would then do something worse than shoot me in the face. Here." He turned the gun toward me. Well, the backside of itn or whatever the fuck it was called. "This here," he pointed at a mechanism at the very end of the gun, right at top, "is safety. You need to flip it before trying to shoot."
"Understood," I said automatically, but understanding definitely wasn't coming. Not even a little.
"Okay." He handed the gun back to me. "I know it looks easy when they shoot guns in the movies, but it's not. Aim for the head, Ajla, or the chest. Bigger targets. And most importantly—" He stepped closer, closing my fingers around the grip. "Do not fucking hesitate."
"I, uh... Got it." Yeah. I just hoped no one would even come to this room.