Page 112 of Relapse

“Go!”

Another shot cracks dangerously close to her head.

Too fucking close.

Something inside me snaps violently.

I unload half the magazine toward the shooter and watch him collapse hard against the guardrail.

Noir shoves Blair and Mina toward his car, while she keeps trying to look back at me. Then he hesitates.

Like he’s thinking.

Calculating. Then he grabs Blair hard by the back of her neck and forces her into the car before peeling out of the parking lot.

Gone. Good.

Now I can fucking focus.

The fight turns brutal immediately afterward.

Close-range and fucking messy.

Saint catches one through the stomach and keeps firing anyway while Reaper laughs like a complete fucking psychopath unloading rounds through somebody’s windshield.

Knox buries a knife in one guy’s throat hard enough blood sprays across the side of a shipping container.

The air stinks like gunpowder, blood, and seawater.

Then I finally see Dante.

Standing near the far edge of the loading dock beneath the floodlights like none of this surprises him.

Like he expected us.

Expected me.

I start toward him immediately.

One of his men moves into my path and catches a bullet through the mouth before he can even raise his gun properly.

Another appears from behind a crate and fires.

Pain explodes through my arm instantly.

Hot and fucking violent.

The impact spins me sideways while blood immediately starts soaking through my sleeve.

Fuck.

The shooter fires again.

Misses.

I put two bullets through his chest hard enough he flies backward over the dock railing and disappears into the black water below.

Then I keep walking.