His Mafia Prince
Chapter 227: Something Isn’t Right

Chapter 227: Something Isn’t Right

(TYLER)

I’m leaning over Sasha’s shoulder to check on him, wheezing in his ear like some decrepit—pushing the weight of a wheelchair plus Sasha up a slope is quite a fucking work out—when there’s an explosion up ahead, the blast waves strong enough to flatten even Marco against the wall, and Sasha and I go skidding backward into Burgess.

If I hadn’t been leaning over him, I think I would have tumbled head over ass.

As it is, I just slam into Burgess, and both of us are pinned against the wall for a moment with Sasha’s wheelchair, which has careened sideways. Sasha is slumped to the side.

"Shit," Burgess spits.

I have to agree. We can hear yelling and screaming from up ahead, running feet, gunfire. Someone is trying to force their way into the tunnel, and I don’t think they’re friendly. But my first focus is Sasha. I manage to shove the wheelchair forward and slide out from behind it, coming around to crouch down and look at his face.

He’s gone dead white again, as pale as he ever was while he was in that god awful coma, but his eyes crack open when I shake him.

I can see the agony written clearly on his face, and his eyes can’t focus on mine. I’m worried he hit his head on the wall.

And worse, there’s a red stain on his hospital gown. If his blood has soaked through all those bandages, it means he’s bleeding really badly. They fucking mummified him.

"Sasha," I say urgently, pressing against the wound as hard as I dare.

His head rolls on his shoulders until he’s staring straight up at the ceiling. He takes a deep breath and blows it out.

"Gun," he says.

Burgess is already picking it up. "He’s in no condition to use this," she says, eyeing my husband like he’s just a specimen in a jar. I feel like punching her. But she’s right.

"Give it..." Sasha insists, trying to hold out a hand.

Burgess passes the gun to me instead. "Hope your Mob Boss husband taught you to shoot in between all those crimes and murders he was committing."

"For your sake, I hope I remember those lessons," I clap back. "I’ll try not to wing you, huh?" Marco and Darla have found an open door and are waving us into a room off the side. We manage to get in there before the invading army—that’s what it sounds like, echoing down the tunnel—makes it down far enough to spot us.

I leave a long smudge of Sasha’s blood against the door as I push it open to get the wheelchair through, but there’s no time to clean it off. And once we’re in the room, there’s not much more protection that I can see. The doors swing open both ways, in and out, and have no lock.

It’s an old abandoned kitchen area, I think, although most of the kitchen equipment has been ripped out, and all that’s left is an old oven and the open pipes and spigots sticking out of the floor.

Once the doors close, all we have for light are our cell phone flashlights.

"Can’t protect a goddamn thing in here," Marco says, echoing my thoughts.

Outside, the noise has died away, but the silence is more terrifying than the shouting.

"Over here," Burgess whispers, motioning to Darla, who runs over quickly to the doorway the detective is holding open.

But I pause. "Hang on—that’s a fucking walk-in freezer. Like that one in The Shining. Are you out of your mind?"

"It’s not working," Darla murmurs. "And it opens from the inside—in case anyone gets shut in." "I’m not going in there to asphyxiate with my husband," I say. "And there’s a lock on the outside. If people are coming for us, they could just lock us in there and leave us to die."

I might be very slightly claustrophobic sometimes. Like whenever some unknown enemy is trying to kill me. Like now.

"Move it,Tyler," Marco says, seizing me. "We don’t have a choice. Best we can hope for is that they don’t even notice us and go straight past that outer door."

I look at Sasha. I know he’ll see what a terrible idea it is—

Sasha is slumped in his wheelchair again. I run over to him, shaking his shoulders.

"Sasha, wake up!"

Darla comes over and Marco pulls me away, despite my protests. "Keep it down," he whispers harshly. "Let the nurse do her thing."

Darla feels at his neck for a pulse and I freeze in place for a horrible three seconds, maybe the worst of my life so far. Then she thumbs up one of his eyelids. "He’s passed out," she says softly, "and he’s opened up a few of his sutures." She looks over at me. "He’ll be alright as long as we get him back upstairs as soon as we can."

"Best way to do that is hole up, hope this shitstorm passes us by," Marco mutters stubbornly.

It’s so quiet out in the tunnel. Too quiet.

"I don’t want to die in a fucking box," I whisper..

"You and me both," Burgess says, holstering her gun and coming over to take the handles of Sasha’s chair. "But we have no other choice right now. It’s the best plan we have."

When I still don’t move, she nods at Marco, who suddenly winds an arm around my waist and lifts me bodily, dragging me across the floor to the walk-in freezer. I don’t fight. I think all the fight has left me, seeing that dark red seeping across Sasha’s middle.

Burgess wheels Sasha in after me and Marco, and Darla comes in last, pulling the door shut. There’s not even a lock on it.

We’re fucked.

I turn my attention away from the door to look at Sasha in the shaky light of my cell phone. There’s no reception down here, no way to call for help. I can only hope that the personal alarm on my keyring, which I pressed as soon as the alarm upstairs went off, and then several more times before we got into the elevator, reached Giulio or MIles.

In the meantime, I concentrate all my concern on Sasha. He’s not quite as pale as he was before he passed out, I decide, although it’s hard to tell one way or the other in the stark light from my phone.

And then we hear noises outside, feet shuffling, muffled talk echoing down the tunnel, loud enough to reach us in our hiding place. I turn off my phone light.

"We should just wait up at the top," says one. His accent is immediately familiar to me. Irish bastards.

"We got told to search, so we search. The asshole’s not in the ward." A new voice, and this one is a rich Irish brogue.

"Probably got evacuated."

"No sightings yet," says the second man. "We have the other team up there looking, just like we’re supposed to—"

"Hey—"

The voices go silent and I picture them whispering. Something’s caught their attention. The answer occurs to me even though I’d rather not know it: that smear of Sasha’s blood that I left on the door when I was pushing it open.

I feel around for Sasha’s hand, holding it tight. For the first time, I hope he doesn’t come around, not yet. If he makes any involuntary noise...There’s a loud bang as they kick the doors of the kitchen area outside open, and all of us jump—except Sasha.

Darla lets out a soft whimper. I have no idea where I put my gun—Sasha’s gun.

I’d probably just shoot the wrong person, anyway.

We hear the footsteps out in the kitchen shuffling around again.

"We should just shoot the place up," mutters one voice.

"We need him alive," hisses another, and it’s answered by a dissatisfied grunt.

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