“You motherfuckers think you’re so slick.” The way he spoke to Tiara, she barely recognized him. “I should have known that little motherfucker wouldn’t get the job done. I’m glad I hadn’t paid him yet.”
She’d heard that money changed people, but she never thought that Vincent would be one of those people. He laughed at the way she was looking at him.
“Cat got your tongue, niece?”
“What happened to you, Vincent? You promised to protect me.”
“Money happened to me, Tiara,” Vincent said. “Any other man in my position would have done the same thing.”
“But to kill your own family? Your own flesh and blood?”
“If you remember, your dear father tried to kill me years ago. We were family back then too.”
“And I saved you!” Tiara jerked her gun in his direction.
“Your first mistake,” Vincent said icily to her. “Your second mistake was coming in here and forgetting that I, like your father, was raised on the battlefield.”
Keys didn’t know what hit her when Vincent moved with the speed of a man two times younger than what he was. He grabbed her wrist and made her drop her weapon into his hand. Her arm was straight, and Vincent hit her bone upward at the elbow.
“Aw!” Keys screamed when her bone cracked.
Stevelle tried to get a few rounds off, but Vincent shoved Keys in front of him. One of Stevelle’s bullets caught Keys in the shoulder and instantly he drew back. He would forever regret that because Vincent used that as his chance to fire Keys’s gun at him.
“Ahh!” Stevelle grunted and clutched himself as he dropped his gun and fell to the ground.
Tiara couldn’t tell completely where he’d gotten hit. All she knew was that he was lying still on the ground. She turned back to Vincent and tried to get a clear shot, but she didn’t have one, not without hitting Keys again. Vincent head butted Keys with an animalistic grunt, knocking her out cold, and then threw her into Tiara. Tiara dropped her gun, not wanting to let Keys fall to the ground and hurt herself any more than she already was. She tried to set her on her side gently, but before Keys was fully on the floor, Vincent charged at Tiara.
“Thank you for making this easy for me, Tiara,” Vincent said, grabbing her by the neck and kicking her gun away from her hand’s reach. “I needed you dead, and you came straight to me! With as strong of a vengeance that you have right now, I can only assume your stupid-ass little boyfriend told you everything.”
Vincent spun her around and put her into a choke hold. Tiara tried to say something to him, but she couldn’t. Her hands flew to his muscular arms and his face in a futile attempt to poke out his eyes. Her eyes fell on Keys and Stevelle, regretting that she had even let them come on the mission with her. She reached out for her friends. She was afraid that they were dying. She was overcome with guilt.
“I’m going to kill them,” Vincent whispered so closely in her ears that Tiara felt the moistness from his breath. “But you won’t get to see that. I’m gonna kill you first.” He squeezed a little harder, and she gasped, trying to get air, but her airway was completely blocked.
“It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this, you know. I never planned for any of this to happen. You are my niece, and I loved you like a daughter, but you see, I have my own daughter. She has your old room actually. I have responsibilities, and honestly, this is the way that Blake Rogers can truly pay me back for what he did to me all those years ago.”
Everything around Tiara seemed to fade away, and she knew she was losing her grip on life. Her eyes shut, and she was about to succumb to her death when she heard Vincent grunt in pain behind her and felt his grip on her loosen.
“Get off of her!”
Tiara collapsed on her side and gasped for breath. Her throat felt like it was on fire with every breath she took, but her lungs were happy to be filled with oxygen again. She rolled on her back and felt gentle hands touch her face tenderly.
“Oh, Tiara, I knew I heard your voice,” Stephanie said, turning her back on Vincent and kneeling beside Tiara. “I thought you’d never come home.”
In her hand, she was holding a bloody broken vase. Behind her, Tiara saw Vincent struggling back to his feet. Tiara tried to warn Stephanie, but it was too late. Vincent sent one of his fists crashing into the side of Stephanie’s face. He hit her a few more times before standing up straight. Tiara looked around and saw that she was within arm’s reach of the gun that Keys had dropped.
“I never liked that bitch!” Vincent grunted and went to finish Stephanie off.
“And I’m sure the feeling is mutual,” Tiara said, holding the gun up.
When Vincent realized he’d made a big mistake turning his back on Tiara, he tried to lunge for her, but she was too quick for him. She let one shot off and caught him in his right shoulder. She tried to fire another round, but he jumped out of the way just in time. Right then, she heard an array of gunshots going off in the lower level and knew that could only mean one thing: the guards had realized there was a breach in security, and they had sent backup.
“Boss!” she heard a gruff voice yell from the entrance of the bedroom, and she jumped to the side just as automatic rounds went off and tore the room up.
She hid on the side of the bed and fired aimlessly, hoping she’d at least hit one person. Realistically, though, she knew she most likely wasn’t hitting anybody. That stuff they showed in the movies wasn’t real. The chances of
