Page 49 of Blood Lust

When the doors finally opened, we rushed to the door, but when Pietro put the code in, the door wouldn’t open.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I whispered as I backed up. They were trying to pick the lock when I remembered Gabriel’s office downstairs. With shaking hands, I hit the down button, and the elevator opened. I stumbled as I dashed in. Right as the doors were closing, Pietro saw me. He dove in after me. The doors closed, and we began to descend.

“Please tell me you weren’t going to go alone,” Pietro growled.

Eyes wide, I didn’t answer.

My heart was racing as my chest squeezed painfully. No matter how hard I breathed, I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs. My head swam.

We got off on the floor where Vittorio and Gabriel had their offices. Since it was a Sunday, there was no one there. The absence of sound was unnatural and had me looking over my shoulder. The sound of our feet hitting the floor echoed eerily until we hit the carpet, and then Pietro opened the door to Gabriel’s office.

Pietro jerked the heavy bookshelf back and the small elevator door opened when he pushed the up button. We piled in, and I nervously beat out a rapid tattoo on my leg as the stupid thing seemed to take forever. Pietro had his gun out, and I watched him pull back the slide to chamber a round. I wished I had a gun, but though my dad had taught me to shoot, he didn’t want me to own one.

Finally, the elevator stopped, and the door soundlessly slid open.

Pietro peeked through a peephole I hadn’t noticed during my previous ride, then pressed his ear to the back of the bookshelf. Holding a finger up to his lips in the universal “quiet” motion, he slowly pushed the bookshelf out.

Once he knew it was clear, he stepped out, and I was on his heels. “You stay here!” he mouthed.

I stubbornly shook my head, and he glared. “We don’t have time for this,” he whisper-yelled.

“I’m not staying here!” I mouthed back.

He either gave up or conceded, but either way, he moved forward with a stealth that told me he had to have had some type of special training. Which also made me realize I might be a hinderance. Though I hated to, I stopped and waited inside the office door.

A muffled shot rang out, and Pietro collapsed with his head at my feet. I slapped a hand over my mouth.

“Where did he come from?” I heard Mario shout. “I thought you checked all the rooms!”

“We did!”

I scooped up the gun that Pietro had dropped and ran as quietly as I could back to the elevator. It took everything I had to pull the bookshelf closed behind me as I tried not to pant too loudly.

My entire body shook with adrenaline. Holding my breath, I stood on my tiptoes and looked through the peephole. There were two men searching the room. When one came to the bookshelf, he rifled through the books, and I carefully moved to the side when he seemed to look right at me.

“No one else is here. He must’ve been hiding behind the couch. Let’s go before Mario trips the fuck out,” one guy said. The guy by the bookshelf muttered something, but I couldn’t make out what he said. Then they both left.

“Pull yourself together, Lia. You got this,” I whispered in a little pep talk to myself before I cautiously pushed on the wood back and swung the hidden door open.

Mimicking the way Pietro had moved, I crossed the room. By the time I reached the doorway, my heart was beating in my throat and my blood whooshed loudly in my ears. I tried not to look at him sprawled on the floor with some blood behind his head as I tried to see through the crack of the door, but it didn’t work. One step at a time, I moved around him, praying I wouldn’t trip.

I could hear voices coming from the living room, so I headed that way. Eyes wide and every cell in my body on alert, I stuck my head out far enough to see a guy lying crumpled by the front door. Then I saw Gabriel sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood.

My heart that had been racing stopped, and I pressed my trembling lips together to keep my cries in my throat. Tears poured freely, and I blinked them away. Slowly, anger seeped in and replaced my despair.

I’d lost my father.

Gabriel was dead.

Nothing mattered anymore. Coldly pulling to mind everything my dad had taught me during our times at the range, I stepped out into the room.

One man saw me, and his eyes bugged but he froze. Mario turned to face me, and his mouth fell open. Then he smiled in a placating manner.

“Alia, what are you doing? Put that down, sweetheart. We have everything under control. There was a traitor, but we got him,” he softly murmured as if he was talking to a feral animal, which maybe he was.

“The traitor is you,” I replied. He took a tentative step toward me, and I placed my fingertip on the trigger. “Don’t.”

Another step.