Page 270 of Marcello

“If I’m right, then more shooting is heading straight for us, and I’d rather have plenty of armed men around us.”

She had obviously come to the same conclusion as me.

I tried several SUVs, but they were all locked, so I followed Lucrezia into the lobby.

Inside, Mignolino had forced all the civilians to squat on the floor behind the check-in desks. He held an assault rifle in one hand and a cell in the other, like he’d just made a phone call.

“What the fuck were those gunshots outside?” he asked.

I assumed he meant the ones the Swedish Enforcer had fired at us.

“A Cosa Nostra snuck out and shot Ciro,” Lucrezia said as she headed for the stairwell. “Romeo killed him.”

Of course she was going to blame it on me.

Mignolino looked over at me with one raised eyebrow.

I thought about hanging Lucrezia out to dry –

Then noticed her hand in her purse, a finger undoubtedly on the trigger of her .38.

I had no desire to meet the same fate as Ciro, so I just said, “Yup.”

“Oh – where are you two going?”

“To see my brother’s triumph,” Lucrezia said sarcastically as she disappeared into the stairwell.

I followed behind her, my pistol drawn –

And walked right into a warzone.

Three of our guys were sprawled out on the steps. Two of them had been shot in the head.

Multiple dead Cosa Nostra were on the third-story landing.

Down in the lobby, there was a gigantic CRASH of broken glass, followed by automatic gunfire that quickly turned to silence.

I was fairly sure Dario Rosolini and the Swede had just joined the party.

“They’re coming,” I said to Lucrezia.

She nodded and headed down the hallway.

It looked like a scene from a horror movie. There were bloody corpses everywhere – in the elevator, behind half-closed doors, sprawled out across the linoleum floor.

I counted our men as I stepped over their corpses.

Three in the stairwell…

Two more here…

Four in the elevator…

By the time we reached the end of the hall, I was up to 14.

The first living people we saw were our guys, and four of the worst assholes we had: Serpente, Mangiavatt, Guercio, and Cinghiale.

They were all watching something in the next room over, from which came muffled cries and angry grunts.