Surrender (Careless Whispers #3)(69)

“I understand he’s going to kill you.”

“Not before he has some fun with you.” He races forward, turning the ignition and mumbling something in Italian while putting us in gear.

Ten minutes.

My mind races.

I still have a gun, but I won’t for long if I don’t use it.

Ten minutes.

That’s all Sasha has to save everyone.

It’s going to have to be enough, because Evil Eye applies here, and when I see Neuville I’m killing him. It’s what Kayden would want me to do, and I don’t let myself think about Gallo killing him the minute he saw him today. Kayden was nervous about him as it was, on edge, and ready for whatever came his way. He’s alive and Neuville’s about to be dead, right along with this piece of trash driving me.

“Why?” I ask, as he weaves through people walking the shared space, which buys time for Sasha to work her magic. “Kayden’s a good man.”

“Alessandro and I have something in common,” he says. “We both stole from the wrong person.”

“You stole from Neuville?”

“And Kayden,” he says. “Neuville found out.”

“You should have—”

“Gone to Kayden? He’d have sent me to Neuville anyway, but with no way to save myself.”

“All you’re doing is ensuring that Kayden kills you.”

“He won’t be alive to know I betrayed him.”

My gut twists. “You underestimate him.”

“But not Gallo’s hatred.”

Kayden won’t underestimate that hate, I assure myself. I know he’s alive, and he’ll stay that way. But if I get found with this phone on me, Neuville will kill someone to punish me. I slip it out of my boot and under the seat, hoping they figure out where I am and where that means I’m going next. Or that Matteo follows. Whatever the case, it ensures Matteo is found and pays for what he’s done.

The car jolts to a stop as a group of walkers step in front of us. “It was you who took those journal pages, wasn’t it?”

“You know the answer.”

“You were watching us in our tower.”

“He was watching you.” The announcement turns my blood to ice. “I couldn’t save you from that.”

“Did you even try? How did you get in there?”

He scrubs a hand through his dark hair. “I was over my head, Ella. I’m still fucking over my head. Maybe I should have gone to Kayden, but I didn’t.”

“You can now.”

“It’s too late for that,” he says, turning us around a corner that puts us in a pedestrian-and retail-free area, which means I’m running out of time. “I just need my payday and I’ll disappear.”

“From the necklace,” I say.

“For delivering you.”

I don’t have time to let the spike of anger this creates in me take hold, because he cuts right and we’re suddenly in an alleyway and then halting. “The party stops here, Ella.”

He’s right. It does, because my gun is already in my hand.

Matteo’s cell phone rings and he listens before handing it to me. “Neuville wants to talk to you.”

I inhale and take the phone. “So close,” he says, his voice meant to be pure seduction, but it cuts like a rusty nail. “If we open the doors and you resist, even slightly, someone dies. Kayden dies. And just in case you doubt I’m going to do it, watch Matteo fall.”

I suck in air and look up at the same moment a bullet pierces the front window and Matteo slumps forward. Dead, and he never saw it coming. “Party is over, Matteo,” I whisper.

Neuville laughs, a nail-biting sound. “That sounds like enjoyment. I’d better pick someone else.”

My heart races but my voice is calm, steady. “You made your point.”

“I like insurance,” he says. “You should know that, but you seem to need a reminder. Nathan’s at the hospital right now, and his current patient has a syringe in her pocket that would kill him in thirty seconds. I suggest you leave whatever gun you have on your person that Matteo missed in the car. Understood?”

“Yes,” I lie.

The doors to both sides of the backseat open almost instantly, and I react. I shoot the man to my left and then the one to my right, and step over him. But there are three more men, all pointing guns at me. And then there’s him, in the center of them all, tall, dark, and striking in a fitted black suit, so close I can almost see the evil in his charcoal eyes.

And my gun is aimed at him. “I am many things you didn’t realize I was,” I say. “Including a perfect marksman. Tell them to put their guns down. Because if they shoot or move you’ll be dead, even if I am, too.”

“I knew everything you were,” he says. “More than you did, and I could tell you things you burn to know—but not if I’m dead.”

My father. Those words rip through me and I know in that moment that Neuville is connected to my father’s death—and that’s all I need to know. “You have nothing to say that I want to hear.”

“Well, believe this,” he says. “If I’m dead, Gaston, my second, who I’m sure you remember, has been instructed to visit our friend Sara, which won’t upset him. He’s quite fond of her. He’s been watching her, you know.”