Savior (26 page)

"So you think you're somehow... better than me?" she asked, eyes going a little dark.

"I think I didn't build my life around my father's approval when I claim to hate him so much. Christ, El, do you not see it? You're just like him now..."

The sound of the smack echoed up and into the metal room above and around us, the quick sting of pain smarting across my un-bruised cheek. Now, again, we were sisters. As such, I'd felt her smack more than once in my life, no matter how well we generally got along. One time it was over something as stupid as me borrowing her hairbrush and not cleaning my hair out of it afterward. Her anger had a quick trigger. But it burned hot and fast and was gone.

"The truth hurts, El," I said with a shrug as she dropped her hand to her side and balled it into a fist.

"I'm
not
like him."

"You know, you're right. No matter how pissed Dad has gotten with me, and he's gotten pretty pissed..." Like when I refused to go to his alma mater after he made a call to the dean to square away a donation and assure my place. Or when I once took my spring break senior year in high school to 'rough it' by staying in a hostel in Amsterdam instead of taking him up on his offer for a lavish French Riviera vacation. "He never put a hand on me."

"It's different," she snapped and I could see the tiniest trace of guilt.

"You're right. Because the only people who can manage power right, El, are the ones who can control themselves. This," I said, waving a hand out, "is going to blow up on you one day. You think you can just haul off and hit one of these... these... gang members and they won't do anything? They obviously have no problem hitting women," I said, gesturing toward my face.

Was she really that dumb? I mean, my sister was smart. She had always done well in school, at work. She was knowledgeable. But, at the same time, she was always rash and impulsive, never stopping to truly analyze things. It was one thing when what she was rushing into was an ill-advised affair with a married English aristocrat who was only in town for two weeks. It was a whole other to decide all willy-nilly to become a drug kingpin. I mean... what could have been going through her head?

A slow, almost evil smile spread across her face. "Oh, they'd never put a hand on me, Else."

She sounded so sure that I felt a cold creeping across my skin, making goosebumps form on every inch, making a sliver of ice slide into my heart. "How can you be so sure of that? It's not like you have some reputation of being..."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Else. I haven't been the sister you've thought in a really, really long time. You were just too clueless to see it."

The door to the warehouse opened, making me flinch.

But then there was commotion.

And not the good kind.

Elana tensed as the door flew open and Trick came in wide-eyed. "Trouble," he barked at her, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a gun. A
gun.
I mean I knew they were gang members, but still, it was one thing to know it, it was a complete other to see evidence of it.

"How many?"

"Six," Trick said as he moved back out.

Then something happened that, even if I had a lifetime to consider the possibility of, I never would have been able to come up with. My sister swung around and in a blur, she was no longer in front of me, but behind me. Her arm locked around my center. Now, we were both about the same height, but she had the slight advantage of heels, making her head several inches higher than mine. The arm that wasn't around my stomach, pressing into the spot where D had kicked me and sending a wave of pain through me that made me seriously worry I was going to throw up, went behind her for a second. When it came back, I saw the flash of silver. Then I felt something cold, round, and metal press into my temple.

I didn't have to see it to know what it was.

A gun.

My sister was holding a gun to my temple.

"El..." I heard my voice gasp and plead at the same time.

"Shut the fuck up," she hissed, pushing me forward. "Walk," she growled when I tried to plant my feet. And, well, I was too freaked, too shocked, and too scared to do anything but what I was told. I had been able to stand my ground and argue with her because, in my mind, she was just my sister. She was my sister who was playing a really stupid real life game of cops and robbers. That was all it was. She was still the girl who used to get my hair into wicked knots when she tried to braid it when we were in elementary school. She was the one who cried her eyes out with me when we went to see
Les Mis
on Broadway when we were seventeen. She was the woman who got so tequila-drunk at my housewarming party that she started taking all her clothes off. She'd been reaching for the strap of her bra when Rome rushed up, cocooned her in my throw blanket off my couch as she bitched that she was too hot for clothes.

She was my
sister.

I could argue with her.

Because she would
never
hurt me.

But all ideas of sisterhood and family loyalty went right the hell out the door when you suddenly found yourself at gunpoint by someone you thought you knew every nook and cranny of.

There were yells from the main room and I felt my body go ramrod straight as I was pushed out into the commotion. Because I realized another thing: I was being held at gunpoint, but I was also being used as a human shield.

All the action that had been going on at the tables had stopped. The people who had been working there were all cowering under the tables and I realized that, maybe, they hadn't all been gang members. Maybe they had just been like... workers.

In front of the tables were D, Trick, and three other men I didn't recognize all yelling, all with guns raised.

My eyes snapped toward the other side of the room and I felt two things at once: relief and bone-deep fear.

Because there was Paine, eyes locked on D and I saw the intention there, the desire to cause some serious damage and I knew, I
knew
that he somehow knew what happened to me. Fanned out around him was Shooter, who had a weird little amused smirk, Breaker, who had a coldness in his eyes that made me shiver involuntarily, Sawyer who looked almost... calm, Tig, the big guy who told me to ice my neck the night I was strangled, who seemed tense but unconcerned about the gang members yelling at them and aiming guns. There was one last man, someone who had the buzzcut look and stiff stance of someone in the military. He seemed calm like Sawyer. Suddenly I wondered if maybe they had both been military, if they had seen things much worse than a warehouse with a handful of gang members and that was why they were acting like what was happening was no big deal.

"Move," El hissed in my ear again, slamming her knee into the back of mine and making an involuntary cry escape me. At the sound, Paine's eyes flew in our direction. It wasn't easy to read him then. A muscle was ticking in his jaw which was a pretty universal sign of anger. There was a tension around his mouth that I took for anxiety. But his eyes, those light green eyes I wanted to get lost in, they looked downright horrified.

El kept pushing me along the side wall and I knew she was trying to make it around the group of my saviors and get toward the door. To hell with her men, I guess.

Paine pivoted with our motion, eyes following every step we took. I tried to convey a message with mine:
I know this looks really bad, but I'm pretty sure she's not going to kill me.

As we closed in on the door, Elana jerked me hard, her arm crushing into my center and almost making me double over. If she wasn't holding me so tight, I would have. Her back was to the open space and she was walking both of us backward into it.

Until she collided into something that made me collide into her.

Unable to see anything, I looked to Paine's face for some kind of explanation. What I found there was uncertainty and surprise. Which, well, weren't exactly good things to see given the circumstances.

"I fucking dare you to move, bitch," a deep, smooth, threatening voice said. Whoever it was made my sister stiffen hard. Her hand holding the gun to my temple was shaking and I felt my stomach start to churn. If there was one thing you definitely didn't want, it was someone with a twitchy hand holding a gun to a part of you that would never survive a bullet wound.

"You won't shoot," Elana said in my ear, but she didn't sound as sure as I bet she wanted to. "You and your buddies aren't smart, but you aren't that stupid either. It'd be a suicide mission to open fire in a meth lab."

My eyes went again to the scene in front of me, everyone with guns raised, but no one who seemed all that willing to pull a trigger.

God.

I was an idiot.

Of course no one would shoot.

The reason there were task forces meant just for finding meth labs was because they were unstable. As in, they were known to blow up. All the time. Something as small as static electricity could send the already unstable materials a-blazing. Hell, meth lab explosions could decimate entire apartment complexes.

So, yeah, no one was going to shoot a gun, which was a small explosion itself, in a meth lab.

Everyone was at a standoff.

Except, apparently, whoever was behind my sister.

"Hey honey," he said, his voice still deep, but softer so I figured he was talking to me and not my sister. "Funny thing... know what is really hard to hold onto?" He asked, and I knew that whatever was to follow would be really important. "A completely limp body," he finished.

The second the words were out of his mouth and they registered, I let my legs buckle and the entire force of my weight pulled downward, making Elana's arm lose my middle and allowing me to slide completely to the floor.

I hit with an impact that shot into my stomach and I curled onto my side, sucking in a breath. I was vaguely aware of my sister yelping and I twisted my head over my shoulder to see her lifted off her feet and disappear out into the dark outside. But not before I got a look at the man who had saved me, who had threatened my sister, who had made Paine look both uncertain and surprised.

There was no mistaking it. It was in the matching caramel-colored skin tone. It was in the insane, chiseled bone structure. It was in the height and width of their strong bodies. And, lastly, it was in the identical shade to their eyes.

Enzo.

Paine's half brother.

The only real difference between them, other than their voices, was the fact that Enzo's face was swollen and bruised like he had taken a very recent, very brutal beating.

It didn't really take much for me to realize that my sister was the one who had, in some way, made that happen to him.

I turned back and Paine's eyes were on mine for a second and I saw the split feelings there: the need to come to me, and the need to handle his business.

I waved a hand at him, hoping he took it to mean 'do what you need to do, I'm fine'.

The next second, his gun was tucked away, and he was flying, positively flying across the room toward D. Full force, his body slammed into D's, sending them both spiraling into the table behind D. Their impact landed with a slam and grunt from D as Paine pushed up, swung an arm back, and started hitting.

I watched for all of ten seconds, seeing his fist collide with D's face at least three times in that span, making a spray of blood fly up and spatter across his shirt and face.

That was about all I could take.

The rest of the men seemed to reach an understanding at that point, all of them tucking their guns away and realizing that this was not their fight. Shooter and Sawyer turned back to me and both started to move in my direction.

"I can't bend down, but I can pull you up," the deep, smooth voice of Enzo said behind me, making me visibly flinch as I rolled onto my back. He stood towering over me, one arm reaching downward, offering to help me up. Where was my sister? Had he actually taken her outside and... shot her? No. I hadn't heard a gunshot. So what... "She's gone. Told her ass to get the fuck out of Jersey 'cause if she don't, I'll find her. Come on, let's get you up, honey," he said, shaking his hand a little, encouraging me to take it. There was something about the way that he said honey that made me feel like maybe he wasn't quite so scary after all. I reached upward, forgetting about my raw hands and arms until he shrank away. "Fuck," he hissed, shaking his head.

"We got her," Shooter said as he and Sawyer moved down at my sides. "Always loved a good damsel in distress, darlin'," he said, reaching out and booping my nose before he slid a hand under my left shoulder. Sawyer did the same with my right (minus the booping, obviously) and then I was on my feet.

"Someone needs to stop him," I said, not bothering to look behind me, but hearing the unmistakable sounds of fighting still going on.

"Break will stop him when D's had enough," Shoot assured me.

"I think he's had enough."

"Babe," Sawyer said, shaking his head. "Look at you. Your face, arms, hands, and the way you're arching to your side, I'm guessing you got bruised or busted ribs too. He hasn't had enough yet."

I sighed, figuring I really had no say in the matter. "I'm fine. Really. A little soap and water, some triple antibiotic, and a couple ibuprofen and I'll be all better."

Okay. I felt like crap. I felt worse than crap. My stomach and side was screaming. Shock and anger wearing away, taking with it the adrenaline that kept me from feeling the searing sensation of road burn on my arms and the sting of the cuts that were caked in dirt and who-knew what else, it was really taking all that I had in me to not just fall into a puddle of tears on the floor. But I couldn't do that. Call it pride, but I had seven big, strong, fearless, badass men around me and I didn't want to fall into waterworks over a few boo-boos.

"Babe," Sawyer said, shaking his head like I was an idiot.

"She needs the hospital," Tig said, walking up. He reached out slowly, touching me under the chin to angle my head up. "I'd like to see you not-bruised sometime."