Guns n' Boys Book 1 Part 2 (36 page)

Seth looked down at the countertop, unable to
look at Dom.

“Don’t act surprised. You seem to know
everything else about my sex life.”

“N-no. I didn’t know that,” Luigi muttered.
“When?”

Domenico’s breathing slowed. “Long ago. Only
stopped when I turned twenty.”

Luigi kept silent for a while. “I’m sorry. We
can deal with it. Maybe we could let go of him after all, give a
better job to Santo to keep
him
quiet and loyal.”

Domenico shook his head, squeezing his hands
into fists. “Doesn’t matter. I told you, I’m taking him, and we
disappear. That’s my final decision.”

Before Seth could even understand what was
happening, Luigi got to his feet and shot at him. It had to be
instinct that helped Seth duck fast enough, but when more bullets
blew through the kitchen island right next to him, he screamed.

Seth’s world narrowed to the horrendous
pulsing in his own head as he curled up to protect himself from the
falling debris. But there were no more gunshots. What he initially
took for his own heartbeat, was a rapid, bludgeoning sound from
behind the island.

Seth got on all fours and looked past the
corner of the cupboard with his heart throbbing like unstable
clockwork. His chest emptied. There was a finger lying at the edge
of the carpet, but it wasn’t nearly as frightening as Domenico, his
white shirt sprayed with blood, hand falling down to the pulp that
now was Luigi’s head. He was holding the gun in his hand and
smashed its grip into the corpse’s skull over and over again, even
though Luigi gave no signs of life.

Seth gagged at the sight of the open brain,
blood all over the carpet. He tried to take a deep breath, but the
air stank of blood making him even more nauseated. When Dom finally
stopped smashing Luigi’s head and slumped back to his ass, Seth saw
the full extent of the bloody mess and threw up over the kitchen
floor.

“Fuck,” muttered Domenico, watching the body,
uncharacteristically pale.

Seth wanted to crawl closer, but when he saw
more fingers on the carpet, and Luigi’s stump of a hand, he gagged
again. He wanted it all to end.

“We need to go.” Domenico slowly got to his
feet and walked through the room, but the earlier confidence was
gone from his gait. It might have been Seth’s imagination, but it
seemed that Dom’s fingers were shaking. “We need to go now.”

Seth got up on wobbly legs and poured himself
a glass of water. He needed to calm down. “What do I do?”

Domenico bit his lip and called him over with
a gesture. “We hide, wait two days, and then I’ll pick up our new
passports. I got this friend at this vege Indian place in
Williamsburg. He’s doing them for me, and then we go south, to
Mexico.”

“You… planned this?” Seth uttered, carefully
stepping over the body, while avoiding to look at it. He needed to
be hard. Be the man Dom needed him to be.

“Yeah.” Domenico quickly pulled off his shirt
and tried to clean himself up with it but only smeared the blood
all over. Dom looked like a butcher, there was no doubt about that.
A very sexy one, but a butcher nevertheless.

“Where will we go?”

Domenico looked back at him, closing his suit
jacket over his bare torso. “We’ll work something out.” He opened
his mouth to say something more, but a silent beeping made him
freeze. His eyes widened. “Shit.”

“Is that your phone?” Seth whispered, looking
around in panic. Domenico pulled the device out of his pocket and
ripped it open, dumping the battery to the floor. He was squeezing
and opening his hands.

“Someone just entered our apartment. We need
to go
now
.”

“Where? Talk to me!” Seth whimpered, grabbing
Dom’s hand.

Domenico bit his lip and opened a side
compartment of the suitcase, pulling out something that looked like
a bundle of straps, but Seth soon realized it was a climbing
harness. “Put that on,” hissed Domenico and tossed a pair of gloves
on the bed. “You know how to rappel?”

“Y-yeah, I did that with my climbing course,”
Seth uttered, and Dom nodded.

“Good because you’re gonna use those skills
now.” He was looking through the contents of the pocket when
another phone rang, this time by Luigi’s body.

Domenico pulled Seth into the bedroom that
didn’t even have a bed. The window faced a small alley, and Dom
opened it as wide as he could, getting plenty of cold air inside.
“I hope you trust me,” he said, pulling out a thick rope.

“With my life.” Seth kept close, looking at
the door in panic, but started quickly putting on the harness and
gloves.

Domenico swallowed and put the strap of the
suitcase over his chest before wrapping some of the rope around the
radiator. He then scooted down next to a thick metal ring, which
was screwed to the floor underneath and attached the rope, securing
it with a carabiner. There was a feeling of relief to giving
himself over to Domenico. Not a way in hell Seth would be able to
do all this himself under stress, with mafiosi going after him. Dom
was his ticket to life.

Luigi’s phone kept ringing in the room next
door, and cold sweat covered Seth’s back every time he heard the
sound. His stomach plummeted when Dom called him over with a
gesture.

“When you’re down, hide, and get the harness
off as quickly as possible. Have the gun ready,” Dom said, expertly
attaching the rope to a carabiner at the front of Seth’s
harness.

Even having done this so many times, Seth was
a bundle of nerves. Doing this with a group of friends was nothing
compared to a quick escape with people possibly willing to shoot at
him while he’d be at his most vulnerable. He swallowed, but the
rattle at the door made him take a few steps closer to Domenico.
“Fuck.”

“Hop on.” Domenico was like made of stone,
completely focused on survival, and it gave Seth the confidence to
climb on the windowsill. The first step was always the most
difficult, and he had never rappelled down a wall this tall, but he
needed to vacate the way for Dom to follow him.

In a moment of absolute dread when he thought
of Domenico fighting for his life while he was downstairs, unable
to help him, Seth hugged his lover as tightly as never before. All
muscle, all safety. Those wonderful lips lingered on his for just a
brief moment, and then Seth made the step into emptiness. His
stomach went up to his throat, but the gravity went back to normal,
pulling him down in a way that was familiar. The rope was holding
him as it should. Seth focused on getting down as quickly as
possible so he resisted the urge to look up at his lover and stared
at the wall, making big jumps with the rope secure in both hands.
Each time his feet left the safety of the wall, sending him into
empty space, he felt more confident about what he was doing.

He let out a sigh of relief when his feet
sank into snow, only to stiffen a bit when his landing was followed
by a hollow sound. It was as if joy was making his knees soft. He
leaned against the wall, realizing he’d ended up on top of a large
dumpster. A short laugh escaped Seth’s lips, but once instincts hit
in, he detached himself from the rope and made a few energetic
pulls to let Dom know he was free to use it. He looked to both
sides with his stomach clenched to the size of a raisin, but all he
could see was trash and two stray cats. He jumped off the dumpster,
ducking to hide at least from one side, and quickly pulled off the
harness. Only after kicking it underneath the container, he looked
up, and relief flooded through his body, making his limbs soft.
Domenico was close, sliding down almost without touching the wall.
It seemed he had himself entangled in the rope to create a
mock-harness. Even watching it had Seth’s heart in his throat.

When Domenico’s feet hit the dumpster, Seth
hardly restrained himself from climbing the container to join him,
but Domenico freed himself from the makeshift harness and joined
him, his face stiff like a mask of wax. As much as Seth longed to
hug Dom, there was no time for tenderness once they heard screaming
from the window upstairs. Seth’s eyes reflexively followed the
noise, but the moment he saw a gun, he threw himself toward the
nearest escape—a narrow walkway hidden in the shadow even more than
this one. He didn’t look back, but heard Dom’s steps behind him,
thudding on the asphalt. It was like hearing the cavalry come to
your rescue, but even Domenico’s presence wasn’t enough to stifle
Seth’s fear when a bullet hit the wall all-too-close to his head,
making it explode with dust and plaster.

Dom pushed him behind yet another container,
and just a split second later, there were several metallic clangs
from bullets hitting their hideout. Seth would have laughed at the
irony of being saved by trash if he weren’t so frightened, even
with his face hidden against Dom’s chest and a gun in his sweaty
palm. That dumpster was a steel shield protecting them from
bullets, but he had no idea how to get out of there. His brain was
scrambling. .

When the shooting stopped, he didn’t have the
time to take a breath of relief because Dom pulled himself up and
rasped, “Run.”

Seth crouched as he sprinted, holding his gun
for dear life, as if it were an amulet preventing him from getting
his brains blown. He stopped at the end of the alleyway, shaken
when he heard a loud thud behind them, followed by heavy footsteps.
One of the mafiosi was already on their track, and Seth had no idea
where to go. Domenico straightened up and shot, making the shadow
on the other side of the alleyway stumble to the side. There was
shouting, sounds of rubber soles squeaking against metal, but all
of Seth’s focus was on Dom.

“Where?” Seth screamed to Dom, for once not
trembling in the slightest. An empty stomach after vomiting was
actually helping.

His lover gestured to the same narrow passage
Seth had initially rushed for to the left and stepped back,
shooting into the sky. It was a signal for Seth to go.

He made a run for it, listening to his ragged
breath as his whole world narrowed down to the exit of the
alleyway. They would surely be safer in a larger street. But his
hopes died when the open space ahead was blocked by a car that
pulled up with a screech of wheels. Before Seth knew it, someone
fired at him. He fell back against a group of trash cans and
shrieked when pieces of cardboard and plastic exploded all around
from a pierced trash bag. But this was no time for fear. Domenico
was depending on him.

A heartbeat later, he looked out and shot at
the car a few times. The kickback from the shot ran through his
arms, but he ignored it and started reloading.

“Seth, cover me,” shouted Domenico from
behind him.

Seth didn’t even look back, drenched in cold
sweat. He acted immediately, going back out and shooting at the men
again. One of them got hit in the chest and fell back against the
car. Blood rushed in Seth’s veins, and he hid from the onslaught of
bullets from the one man left standing. The sound of bullets
bouncing off the metal made his hairs bristle. Even with the
suppressors, it was hard to miss the noise so where was the fucking
police? Was no one worried there was a gun fight going on in the
neighborhood? He turned his head back when the rain of bullets
turned into a storm, just in time to see his lover stumble into the
alley with a low groan. In one horrifying moment, Seth saw him
twitch and jerk, holding onto his thigh.

“Fuck...”

“Come over!” Seth gestured to Dom, but the
moment he said that, Dom stopped the shooter with one bullet. They
were safe for now, but who knew how many men were here? They had to
assume they were trapped from both sides. He needed to clear the
way, so without another look at Domenico, he peeked out from behind
the trash and trusted his hands to do the work. He could barely
believe how steady they were, and he had Domenico’s training to
thank for it. He would never complain about being forced to visit
the shooting range in the morning ever again. The one shot he’d
fired earlier had gone straight into the target.

Domenico pulled on Seth’s collar, already
running toward the car blocking their way. Adrenaline rushed
through their veins like a waterfall, but just as Seth was ready to
take the plunge, a strong pull threw him down. His body turned into
ice when the car that he would have been climbing over by now
acquired at least ten holes that hadn’t been planned in the
design.

Seth hissed when he fell to the dirty
asphalt, but there was no time for thinking about pain because Dom
was busy with two men chasing them from the other end of the alley.
One fell with a scream, thrown back by the impact, but the second
one got a chance to shoot. In the blink of an eye, Dom pushed Seth
on the hood of the car, making him tumble over to the other side.
One gunshot later, Seth stared at the back of Dom’s head, as his
lover stumbled, breaking his fall on the hood. He looked up,
wide-eyed, with his face covered in red.

Catching his breath, he managed to roll over
the hood, leaving a wet trail on its body, and pressed against
Seth, looking around as if he expected someone to attack from
above. And this was when Seth heard police sirens.

“Fuck. We can’t go to the hospital.” Seth
tried to find the amber of Dom’s eyes in the bloody mess on his
face, but there was no time for it. They couldn’t walk around like
this, they couldn’t get themselves arrested, and even in the
labyrinth of back alleys, someone would eventually spot them. With
Dom’s body becoming an increasingly heavy weight on his shoulder,
he looked around, frantic with panic. It was only when his gaze
stumbled upon a round manhole cover a few steps away that Seth’s
chest filled with hope. Even though he had no idea if picking it up
was doable, Seth ran over to it and hooked his fingers into the
hole on the side of the cover. Hair bristled on his body when
Domenico slumped to the ground and hung his head with a moan. Seth
tensed his whole body in an attempt to raise the cover, but it was
no use. The metal kept sliding off his sweaty fingers. Why wouldn’t
the fucking thing budge?