Page 77 of Primal
Fiora keeps her eyes on me, her gaze sharpening when I catch it again. She mouths something I can’t make out, but she isn’t able to try again before Marco jerks her into his chest.
“Maybe I should have tried to get into the Frost family’s good graces,” the bastard muses.
He looks decently fucked up himself. His hair is all over the place, he’s got scratch marks on his cheeks, and there’s a little bruise near his jaw that might be gross stubble. Fiora fought back. And based on the look she gives me when she stares again, she isn’t ready to give up yet.
I shrug, placing my hands in my pockets. “We don’t have any women you can use to fuck your way to the top.”
“Put your hands where I can see them!” Marco yells, flashing the gun at Fiora’s temple again.
Shit. His finger on the trigger means he’s serious. One wrong slip and she could be joining Jasper. I pull out my hands to show Marco I don’t have anything in them. I’m going to have to play along with his game until the right moment.
“I don’t want to get to the top of your organization,” Marco spits. “Assholes like you are ruining the country. I’ll be perfectly happy watching you all rot in prison. A blowjob or two is just icing on the cake.”
Fiora doesn’t react to his crude comment. She makes the smallest gesture—a jerk of her head toward Marco’s chin—and mouths something again. What the fuck is she trying to tell me?
“If a blowjob’s what you want, you should have just asked,” I joke. “Though I can’t promise you’ll get it before I kill you.”
“You think you have the upper hand here, Braken?” Marco nudges Fiora’s temple with the barrel.
I must take a few deep breaths to keep my anger in check. It will be good to hear Marco scream for mercy—mercy I won’t fucking give him. Fiora and I aren’t as helpless as Marco wants to believe. Because men with the upper hand get big heads, and people with big heads make even bigger mistakes.
Fiora’s glare at me grows even sharper. She jerks her head again, accidentally knocking the top of her head against Marco’s. He pushes her slightly and smacks her across the back of the head with the pistol. I take two steps forward, but Marco flashes the gun at me, and I stop. I’m close enough now that I can charge him. Well, if I had a few seconds, at least. All I need is a slight distraction.
A distraction. When Fiora looks up again, it clicks. That’s what she’s offering. She will throw herself back against Marco togive me that window. Shit. Will it be enough time? If she does and he recovers too quickly, we’ll both bleed out on this rooftop. But if it works…
Fiora mouths something to me again and I finally catch this one.
Ready.
She’s ready for whatever it takes to make it out of here alive.
That’s my fucking girl.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I question, attention bouncing from Marco to Fiora. I need to give her a signal somehow. If she moves too early, she’s fucked. If she moves too late, I’m fucked. But if we don’t do anything, we’re both fucked.
These aren’t very good odds, but it’s better than a bullet to the head.
“Why would—Why wouldn’t I?” Something about my question must have triggered him, but Marco starts ranting, drawing his gun up in the air as he does so. “This is what’s wrong with you fucks. You always think you’re better than everyone else. That you get off scot-free. Newsflash, you fucking don’t. I knew full fucking details of Mason’s shit, and I still couldn’t pin anything on him. So, you know what I did? Hired someone to fix that for me. It’s that easy.”
Even with his rant and his gun, Marco looks fucking pathetic. If he had any guts, Fiora and I would have already been dead. Dead men don’t tell tales and all that. But Marco lays it all out like we’re on some TV show, and this is his moment to shine.
Dumbass.
Fiora motions down with her chin toward Marco’s bottom half. I glance down and see that she’s positioned between his legs at the perfect angle to kick him in the balls. That would certainly buy me more than a few seconds. Fiora gestures with her head like she’s lolling forward, then slightly jiggles her leg again to show me she’s ready to kick.
Then she slowly and clearly mouths:Three.
Damn, she’s got more balls than Marco. No wonder I chose her.
I nod once but cover it up by stretching out my neck.
“So what, you’re just gonna cover everything up with murder?” I ask. I signal a “one” to Fiora with my pointer finger then stretch them by my sides.
“Why not? I’ll take one out of the Godwin’s playbook.”
“Maybe you should take two.”
At my signal, Fiora takes a quiet but deep breath. Marco’s face scrunches up in confusion.