𝐕𝐈𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐂 ❶

𝟐𝟒. ✭ 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐈 ✭

After parking in the garage Brooks looks over to me, "listen, we're probably going to have to stay here for a while until your father backs off. Take everything you see with a grain of salt and, most importantly, let me do the majority of the talking." I fidget with my hands in my lap as I look around the garage for a sign of my father's men; for Torey. "I want to warn you that the people in this place are not safe people but you are safe around them here, especially if you stay with me, do you understand?"

"What kind of place is this?" I eye the one door off in the distance hesitantly.

"It's a place where people like me go to when we need a safe harbor. Sometimes you find yourself on the other side of a hit or sometimes you may just be in town and need a safe place to stay." He blows out a long breath. "I've been on both sides. Not so much fun to be on the former."

"What'd you do?"

"I killed the man who ordered my hit."

"How?" He shakes his head at me like he doesn't think I'd be too keen on just exactly how he'd done that. "I want to know." I didn't necessarily but I want to know about the man sitting next to me, the same man I'd shared a bed with for a year.

"Let's get inside and I'll tell you." He looks around the garage. "We still aren't out of hot water yet. We only will be once we're inside." As if the universe wanted to prove that point there's a loud screeching of tires in the garage. "Fucking hell. Come on, Dani, we gotta go. Head for that door as fast as you can."

Brooks jumps directly out of the car after that and shoots several times at a fast approaching vehicle. I sprint toward the door making my legs move as fast as humanly possible. I'm cursing myself in the back of my head at the lack of cardio I'd been doing previously. You never know when you're going to have to run as fast as a bat flying straight out of hell.

A scream tears itself from my lungs when a bullet zips past me. Brooks is returning fire directly behind me yelling, "we're almost there! Don't stop!" I see the door and lurch for it but when I go to open it it's locked. Which makes me let out a frustrated scream. Brooks punches a button I hadn't even seen where a camera focuses on him and asks for him to identify himself. "BTK 3139." After a nano-second the feminine robotic voice says 'identity confirmed' before the door buzzes open.

He rushes the two of us inside where we're met with two large men and an entirely more fancy space than I'd been expecting from coming from a shitty parking garage. The two men are looking over me and then eye Brooks. "She's with me. She's my companion."

"Is she part of the guild?" One of them asks.

"She's part by default. She's my significant—" The sound of men shuffling in behind us cuts him off. Both the security guards automatically take aim at the door.

"Mr. Kuraly," an older feminine voice comes up alongside us, "will you be seeking asylum?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you vouch for the woman by your side?"

"On my life."

"Then it is granted to you both. I suggest you men make your way out of here before things get complicated. As you know, things do tend to get ugly with non guild members breaking protocol." She eyes the group of my father's men that had piled into the space in a disgusted way. A large figure makes his way to the front of the group. Torey. "Mr. Riley, the Albanian mafia and the guild have long had an understanding."

He points a finger at me, "she is daughter to Agelos Dedaj." The woman doesn't so much as flinch. "It will have consequences if you do not hand her over to us. We don't care if you keep him. But she is ours."