Dark Shadows (Gia Santella Crime Thrillers Book 11) by Kristi Belcamino (best motivational novels txt) 📗

I’d hurt him, but he still managed to pummel my head a few times with his fists.

Reeling from the blows, I tried to remain focused on my own attack.

As soon as my right foot hit the ground, I lifted my left one and smacked my heel down on the man’s ankle.

Meanwhile, Django tore at the other leg, his teeth sunk in deep. The man turned his attention away from me and toward my dog and started to rain blows down on Django’s head to loosen the dog’s death grip.

By the time my heel came down on his foot, he’d managed to strike Django’s nose hard enough for my baby to yelp and pull away. That pissed me off.

I wound up for another attack when something struck me so hard I saw stars and began to fall backward. The last thing I remember was hearing Nico roaring in rage.

When I woke, I was still on the floor. Nico was holding me in his arms.

“Look at me,” he said. I did and he held a flashlight to my eyes.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to decide if you are concussed.”

I shrugged and sat up.

“How do you feel?”

“I have a headache.”

He laughed. “I bet.”

“Was I out for long?”

“No, thank God,” he said. “A few seconds.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone,” Nico said. “It was chase him or check on you.”

“You should’ve chased him.”

He didn’t answer.

“Rose?”

“She’s fine. I texted her.”

“I think we should get her. Bring her back here. If someone is after us, they might know where she is.”

Nico sighed loudly. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Let’s go.” I stood up.

I felt a little wobbly. Nico reached for my arm.

“I will go get her. You stay here.”

I swallowed. It had to be asked.

“How did that man get in here?”

Nico led me to our bedroom. There was a rope hanging outside.

“Holy fuck.”

He’d rappelled down from the roof. Into our bedroom window.

“He won’t be back tonight,” Nico said. He pointed to the ground. There was a large pool of blood there. That’s when I noticed a thick trail of blood from the hall where we had fought to this window. I leaned out. The rope fell all the way to the street below.

It sent a shudder down my spine.

Something about the man’s rubber suit and silence gave me the fucking creeps.

I went to find my phone and dialed Eva.

“I’m on my way. I’ll bring Rose back here. We’ll call it a spontaneous vacation,” she said. “But don’t freak her out by grabbing her from her sleepover. I’ll have someone over to watch that house within the hour. You guys sit tight. Nico should stay with you.”

I agreed and hung up. Eva had connections everywhere. Rose would be safe until Eva arrived.

After, when Rose and Eva left for their “vacation,” Nico and I managed to track down the attacker.

He’d had to seek treatment for the stab wound from the poker. But he had left Barcelona to do so. I had to call on an old friend to track him down.

My pal Danny in San Francisco was a world-class hacker.

He managed to narrow down exactly which hospital a man had sought treatment for a stab wound to the left side. It was across town.

Once Danny had a name, he had an address. Then he had hacked into the man’s cell phone and texted us a current location—a house outside the city.

At first, Nico told me to wait at home. I just looked at him and laughed.

We waited until he went out for the night and snuck into his apartment.

When he returned, Nico was sitting there in the dark, smoking a cigarette.

“What the fuck?” the man said.

He reached for the gun in his waistband, but I was right behind him and held my own gun to his head. “Easy now, sailor.”

It took a few hours with him tied to a chair, but he eventually confessed that he’d been hired on the dark web by someone calling themselves AnthraxKing. Our guy was only the hit man hired to kill us. His plan was to regroup and come back for us using Rose as bait. When I heard that, I wanted to kill him. Immediately.

Nico persuaded me to wait.

We needed to find out who had hired him.

Danny helped us do that. It turned out to be one of Nico’s old enemies—a cartel boss in Mexico.

Rather than have him killed, which is what we both wanted to do, we decided to reach out to an old friend of Eva’s—Detective Jay Collins in the LAPD. We gave him the cartel boss’s location. He passed that on, and Nico’s nemesis ended up in an American prison.

At the last minute, Nico decided not to maim our would-be assassin.

“Gia, we don’t need another enemy out there,” he said. “If we cut off his hands…”—which had been my idea—“he’ll spend his entire life trying to get revenge.”

I reluctantly agreed.

Instead, we paid him off. It wasn’t how I usually did business, but it would work. I had more than my own well-being to consider. I had to think of Rose.

“And now you owe me,” I told him before we left. “I may call on you one day, and I expect you to respond.”

The man had nodded. He might have been a killer, but he was also apparently a man of honor.

Other than that one attack, Nico, Rose, and I lived a relatively quiet and peaceful life in Barcelona. Until the Alzheimer’s appeared. Before long, I had to be the one to take charge again. Now, being in charge was my life.

I wondered if that assassin would still keep his promise if I needed to call him.

11

Down on the patio, Conner stood and held up his glass. Everyone grew quiet. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I could tell he was making a speech, probably a toast to Lucas.

He stopped speaking and the rest of them raised their glasses and they all drank

Suddenly, Hannah leaped up and ran away, swiping at her face