Chapter 8: Room 14

I walked back into the dining room and every head at the long table turned.

"Kirill. The second shooter's in Atlantic City. A motel off Pacific Avenue, room fourteen. Vin's men left twenty minutes ago."

He was already standing.

"Twenty minutes is nothing," the grumpy old man said.

"Twenty minutes is everything," Kirill said. "We have a card room on New York Avenue. Three of my men are four blocks from that motel right now."

He spoke Russian into his phone for ten seconds and hung up.

Then he looked at me.

"You're staying here."

"No, I'm not."

"Simona."

"He was paid to kill me. I want to look at him."

"That's a reason for you to stay here."

"It's a reason for me to go," I said. "If he lies to you, you'll hurt him and he'll keep lying. If he lies to me, I'll know."

The table went quiet.

Kirill looked at me for a long moment.

Then he held out his hand for my father's pistol.

I gave it to him.

He checked it, put it back in my hand, and closed my fingers around it.

"It pulls left," he said. "Aim right."

Room fourteen smelled like cigarettes and the ocean.

The shooter was sitting on the end of the bed with his hands zip-tied in front of him and two of Kirill's men leaning on the wall.

He was younger than I expected.

Twenty-five, maybe, with a bad haircut and a gold chain and a face that had been crying.

When I walked in behind Kirill, he went grey.

"Oh, God. Oh, no."

"You know her," Kirill said.

"I don't, I swear to God, I never..."

"You had her picture on your dashboard."

The shooter stared at me.

At the bandage on my arm.

At the cuts on my cheek.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don Shielded Her. So I Became Bratva Queen. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.