Chapter 3 - A Gunshot That Destroyed the Disguise
“Drop something?”
I jumped, whirling around.
I hadn’t heard the door to the bay open.
A man I didn’t recognize was standing inside my bay.
He wasn’t Dante, and he wasn’t one of our mechanics.
He wore a heavy wool overcoat, his face scarred and weather-beaten.
One of his hands was buried deep in his coat pocket.
“Shop’s closed,” I said, pitching my voice low, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“Customer entrance is around front.”
“I’m not a customer,” the man said, stepping further into the light.
His eyes darted around the expensive cars, then settled on me.
“I’m looking for a guy named Tony.
Heard he runs this chop shop.”
“This is a legitimate restoration business,” I said, stepping backward, subtly reaching behind me toward the workbench.
My fingers brushed the cold, heavy steel of a crowbar.
“You need to leave.”
The man smiled, revealing stained teeth.
He pulled his hand from his pocket.
The overhead fluorescent lights gleamed off the suppressed barrel of a 9mm pistol.
“I ain’t leaving, kid.
My boss has a message for Moretti.
Tony’s gonna deliver it.”
He leveled the gun at my chest.
“Where is he?”
Time slowed.
Adrenaline, pure and blinding, flooded my veins.
This was a hit.
A rival outfit sending a message to Dante.
“I don’t know,” I lied.
The man stepped closer, raising the weapon.
“Wrong answer, grease monkey.”
“Hey.”
The voice came from the catwalk above.
The gunman flinched, looking up.
Dante Moretti stood at the top of the steel stairs, a silencer-equipped pistol already drawn and aimed with terrifying casualness.
His face was a mask of absolute, terrifying calm.
“You’re in the wrong bay, friend,” Dante said.
The gunman didn’t hesitate.
He swung his weapon up toward the catwalk and fired.
The
pfft
of the suppressed shot was followed by a spark of metal on the railing near Dante.
I didn’t think.
I just reacted.
I grabbed the heavy crowbar, lunged forward, and swung it with everything I had at the back of the gunman’s knees.
Bone crunched.
The man screamed, collapsing, but as he fell, his finger spasmed on the trigger.
The gun went off a second time.
A line of white-hot agony tore across the top of my left shoulder.
The force of it spun me around, and I hit the concrete floor hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs.
Above me, two more muffled shots rang out in quick succession.
The gunman slumped forward and didn’t move again.
I lay on the floor, gasping for air, clutching my shoulder.
Warm, wet heat was rapidly soaking through my flannel shirt and the thick canvas of my coveralls.
Footsteps clattered down the metal stairs, fast and heavy.
“Eli!”
Dante slid to his knees beside me, kicking the dead man’s weapon away.
His hands were on me instantly, his cold, composed demeanor fractured by something that looked entirely too much like panic.
“I’m—I’m fine,” I gasped, trying to sit up, but the pain made the room spin.
“It just grazed me.”
“Shut up and stay still,” he snarled, pressing his hand hard over the wound on my shoulder.
I hissed in pain.
“You stupid kid, why did you rush a man with a gun?”
“He was… going to shoot you,” I managed to say, my vision blurring at the edges.
“I had him.
I always have him.”
Dante’s jaw was clenched tight.
He looked over his shoulder toward the main garage doors.
“Tony!
Get in here!” he roared.
“Don’t,” I panicked, grabbing his wrist with my good hand.
If Tony came in, if they called a mob doctor, they would take off my clothes.
They would see.
“Please, no doctor.
I can patch it.
Just a scratch.”
“You’re bleeding through three layers of clothes, Eli,” Dante said grimly.
Without asking permission, he reached for the collar of my coveralls and grabbed the heavy brass zipper.
“No!”
I shrieked, batting his hands away, scrambling backward like a cornered animal.
“Don’t touch me!
I said no!”
Dante froze.
He looked at my terrified, wide eyes.
He looked at how desperately my hands were clutching the front of my clothes, shielding my chest, despite the blood pouring down my arm.
The air in the garage seemed to stop moving.
Dante’s eyes narrowed.
The panic in his expression slowly morphed into a dark, razor-sharp realization.
He looked at my face, really looked at it, stripped of the slouching posture and the shadows of the cap that had fallen off when I hit the ground.
He looked at my jawline, the shape of my eyes, the lack of an Adam’s apple beneath the oversized collar.
“Tony,” Dante called out, his voice deathly quiet now, echoing through the empty shop.
Footsteps approached the frosted glass doors.
“Boss?
I heard—Jesus Christ!”
Tony yelled as he saw the body on the floor.
“Lock the front gates,” Dante commanded without taking his eyes off me.
“Kill the security cameras.
And do not come into Bay Four.
If you open this door, I’ll put a bullet in you myself.
Understood?”
“Y-yes, Boss.”
The heavy deadbolts of the bay doors clicked into place.
We were entirely alone.
Dante stood up slowly.
He holstered his weapon at the small of his back.
He reached to a nearby workbench, picked up a pair of heavy trauma shears from a first-aid kit, and walked back to me.
“You can take the coveralls off yourself, or I can cut them off,” Dante said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion.
“But you are bleeding out on my floor, and I am going to stop it.
Choose.”
I pressed my back against the tire of the Range Rover.
I was trembling so violently my teeth were chattering.
May you like
The game was over.
The lie was dead.
