Chapter 490 You Can Leave Now
“Down!” Voss barked, shoving Tony behind a pillar.
Tony screamed anyway. Before Voss could get a clean angle, men emerged from the shadows. Five of them.
Black clothes. Guns steady. Luca’s men. Voss knew it without needing introductions. One of them moved to the injured agent quickly.
“Don’t!” Voss shouted.
The man ignored him and struck the agent hard enough to knock him out cold. That small mercy did nothing to calm the rage burning through him.
He scanned their faces. None of them was Luca. “I’m not going to let you take him,” Voss said, stepping in front of Tony. Voss raised his gun, eyes moving from one man to the next. He counted distances. Weapons. Angles. If he fired first, he might drop one. Maybe two. But Tony would be exposed. The agent was down. Backup was unreachable.
Still, he held his ground.
“You move a step,” Voss warned, voice hard, “I drop someone to the ground. Who is it gonna be?”
A beat of silence followed. Then a voice came from behind him.
“How about me?”
Voss’s blood chilled. He spun around. Tony was already in front of Luca, rigid with terror, Luca’s gun was aimed at his temple.
“Hello, Detective…” Luca smiled.
Voss wanted to put a bullet through his head.
“You can leave now,” Luca said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“The hell it doesn’t.” Voss kept his weapon trained on Luca, though the angle was useless with Tony in front of him. “What? What’s your plan? Kill him? Kill me?”
Tony made a strangled noise.
“Why would I kill you? Detective, no one will believe you if you tell them I was here. You have been trying to pin something on me for years. It’s your word against mine.”
Everything clicked.
Son of a bitch.
He saw it now. The artistry of it. Veronica had dragged him out of the precinct, isolated him, fed him just enough truth to activate every instinct he had. “You son of a bitch…You tricked me.”
Voss took one angry step forward, and immediately all five guns shifted toward him.
“I told you to give me his location without involving you,” Luca said. “You refused.”
“I am an officer of the law.”
“Yes,” Luca said. “And very committed to making things difficult.”
“My job is to keep him alive.”
“And my job is to keep my family alive.” Luca ignored Voss after that, his attention lowering to the man trapped against him.
Sweat clung to his hairline. His eyes were swollen with fear, darting everywhere.
“Hey, weasel,” Luca said. “Long time no see.”
“Luca…” Tony’s voice cracked. “Please… please…”
“You have ten seconds to tell me all I need to know,” Luca said.
Tony shook so hard Luca could feel it.
“Or I am going to pull the trigger,” Luca continued, the gun still pressed against him, “and the detective here is going to watch.”
“Luca,” Voss said sharply, “you really think killing him will make it all better? Damn it, listen to me.” he took one careful step. “I have been trying to get him to talk. He won’t budge. He is afraid of someone even worse than you are.”
Luca’s mouth curved. “Really?” he asked. “How would he know how worse I am?”
Tony shut his eyes tight.
Luca leaned closer, voice dropping near Tony’s ear. “You don’t know anything about me, do you, Tony?”
“Please…”
“The police just used you as bait to get to me.” Luca’s gaze flicked briefly to Voss. “You really think they care about what you have to say? They care about what you can help them prove.”
Tony shook his head quickly. “I swear I would tell you if I could! You don’t understand.”
“You hurt my family.”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
Luca cocked the gun.
“Luca!” Voss shouted. “Think about this. You do this and there is no walking it back.”
“I have walked through worse things, Detective.”
Voss’s grip tightened around his gun. “Do not make me shoot.”
“Tony, start talking…” Luca said.
Tony trembled in Luca’s grip, eyes huge, face pale. His breathing came in short, frantic bursts. “He’ll kill my family,” Tony choked out. “My girlfriend.”
“I will kill you, your family, your girlfriend.”
Voss snapped his head toward him. “Luca, just hang on! Let me talk to him, goddamnit!”
There was panic in the detective’s voice. Fear that this was about to fall apart in the worst possible way, with a dead witness, an injured agent, and Luca Genovese walking away from another disaster once again untouchable.
Luca’s jaw tightened. “Talk?…You have had him for days.”
Tony squeezed his eyes shut. “You don’t understand. None of you understand.”
“Then educate us,” Voss snapped. “Who is he?”
Tony shook his head, tears slipping down his face now. “I can’t. I can’t.”
Voss took a cautious step forward. “Tony, listen to me. If you give us the name, I can protect—”
A shot rang out. For one frozen second, no one understood what had happened. Voss thought Luca had fired.
Luca thought the same. His hand jerked slightly around the gun, confusion flashing through his eyes before his body corrected itself. Tony went limp in his arms, the sudden weight of him dragging forward.
The garage exploded into movement only after silence took that terrible first breath. Luca looked down.
Voss looked too.
Both men stared at the wound in Tony’s chest and the dark stain spreading fast across his shirt before the truth slammed into them then Tony’s body dropped forward.
The shot had not come from Luca.
“Shooter!” one of Luca’s men barked.
Every gun turned at once. Voss spun toward the stairwell. Luca did too. The bastard had waited for the perfect second.
Luca ran. His men followed immediately, boots pounding across concrete as they tore toward the stairs, weapons raised.
Voss dropped to his knees beside the agent, pressing hard against the wound, teeth clenched as chaos thundered up the stairwell behind him.
Just as he was pulling his tie off, Voss felt the cold muzzle of a gun press against the back of his head.
(600 power stones)