Page 164 of Savage Roses

For another second it seems the heavy silence is only going to give me another pass to keep taunting him, but then—

“MOTHERFUCKING COCKROACH!” Lucius roars. His explosion is sudden. It’s volcanic in its eruption. He whips around with his baseball mitt fists raised into the air and unleashes the extent of his fury in a long, guttural scream that’s rough enough to make ears bleed.

Everything spirals from there.

Lucius’s men take cues from him, demonstrating their loyalty even if their powerful boss has been revealed to be a puny, insecure, lying loser. They open fire on the rest of the room. The other Families aren’t taking that lying down—they draw their weapons, and the Wild, Wild West shootout begins.

I grab Delphine and wrench her to the floor. In doing so, the remote slips out of my grasp (and my fucked up hand doesn’t help, even with the cast and splint).

I grit my teeth and go after it. Brenda collets it first, giving me a reassuring wink.

The room is dizzying. People moving in every direction. Bullets flying and whizzing by. The voices of almost two dozen people competing. The five most powerful crime Families duking it out for supremacy.

That’s what this has become. A fight for the new crime king.

I search the fray, my eyes peeled for one person and one person only.

Lucius.

He hasn’t moved. He’s got several of his men shielding him from real harm, taking out anybody who dares come at him.

His eyes are for me only. No surprise there. He’s always hated my guts. But we’ve ascended to a new, demented level. Something in the basest element of who we are, obsessive and maddening and destructive.

Lucius will kill me even if it means killing himself.

That’s the kind of hatred living in his hard, beady glare and the subtle, evil twist of his fat lips.

I’m no different—I’ll gladly die if it means I destroy him. If he goes down too.

Before either of us makes a move, in the raging war that surrounds us, somebody else does first.

Cesar, the Handler, finishes off one of Saito’s security, and then beelines for a side door in the conference room.

It’s enough to snap me out of my stare down with Lucius for one reason and one reason only.

Cesar escaping means Delphine going after him. She spots Cesar dashing through the door at the same second I do.

“Phi, don’t!” I shout over the errant gunfire.

Too late.

Delphine being naturally nimble and my fucked up hand, even with the splint, not able to grip tight enough, means she slips away from me. Her thirst for revenge is as deeply-rooted as mine. A thirst that isn’t always rational, isn’t usually safe, and almost always dangerous.

“PHI!” I move to run after her, but then pause for half a second.

Lucius hasn’t moved, though if I leave and follow Delphine, he’ll take control over the situation—he’ll twist the chaos around us to his benefit or escape long enough to formulate a plan like he did with Leandro.

SHIT!

“I’ll go cover her!” Stitches yells from my other side. He opens fire at another enforcer from Lucius’s crew and lands a shot in his neck. “Cesar’s gutter-level, Psycho. He knew she’d follow. Hewantsher to follow.”

“No, I’m going after her. You and Fabio track Lucius. Don’t let him pull anything.”

Before Stitches can protest, I’m taking off in the direction Delphine went in. I leave the conference room behind unscathed, despite being shot at a couple times. One bullet comes close, piercing the wall behind me a split second after I pass through.

Occasionally, I fire back.

I sprint down the empty hall outside the conference room with my senses on alert. Where the fuck did Cesar go? Where did he lead Delphine off to?