Mafia Princess by Kennedy Slope

Chapter Thirteen

Ibarely had time to react before bullets began flying. “Get down!” I yelled. I threw Sasha to the ground. We were out in the open with nowhere to hide.

“Where’s the shooter?” Marco yelled. He had his gun in hand and was looking around trying to spot the shooter.

“There’s more than one!” I shouted. It was difficult to see anything. The cocktail hour had been full of people drinking and eating. No one had expected a shoot-out in the middle of the Plaza. Now, they were running around trying to find cover.

A volley of shots rang out again. I grabbed Sasha by the arm, practically dragging her behind an overturned table.

“Did Lorenzo not pay for security?” I hollered. People were screaming and sobbing. Men were shouting, and the chaos of everything was making it difficult for me to get a handle on the situation.

“Cheap bastard,” Marco muttered.

I pulled my gun out of my waist holder and released the safety. The gunfire had ceased, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to be caught unaware again.

“Whoever was shooting is gone,” Marco said. He started to peek his head over the table, but I reached out a hand and pulled him back down.

“The first one to poke their head out of the foxhole gets it blown off,” I hissed out.

“We can’t just sit here,” Marco said.

He was right. We might be behind a table, but we were much too exposed for my liking.

I looked behind me towards Sasha, who had been as quiet as a mouse, much to my surprise.

“Sasha?” I asked.

She was doubled over, and her normally pale face was even whiter than a ghost. This is not the time for her to get ill, I thought to myself.

It wasn’t until I looked down at her stomach that I realized that Sasha wasn’t ill. Her hands were pressed over a red wound on her stomach, which was growing larger and larger across her gold dress.

“I think I’ve been shot,” she said. Her hands were shaking as she tried her best to press them against the wound, and I knew that she was going into shock.

“Fuck,” Marco muttered.

I reached out and gathered Sasha into my arms. She fell into them easily, the normal tenseness of her body completely absent as she succumbed to her pain. “I’ve got you,” I whispered into Sasha’s blonde hair. “It’s going to be okay. I’m going to get you out of her.”

Sasha released a small moan of pain. She reached up with a bloody hand and tried to grab at my shirt. “I have to tell you something,” she said. A small little dribble of blood came out of her lips, and I felt true fear freeze my heart as I saw it.

“You can tell me later,” I told her.

She shook her head, but I wasn’t going to hear it. I’d seen enough gunshot wounds in my life to know that this one was bad.

“Give me your jacket,” I said to Marco.

He was already taking it off as he scanned our surroundings. “Here,” he said.

I pressed the fabric to Sasha’s midsection as I tried my best to slow the bleeding.

“No one has shot in about five minutes,” Marco said. “I think we are safe.”

I breathed in heavily. “Something about this doesn’t feel right,” I said. “It was too quick, too open…”

I shifted Sasha in my arms as I tried to get to my phone.

“Maybe they did get what they came for,” Marco said, looking at Sasha. She hadn’t groaned when I shifted her, and I knew that time was running out to get her help. If we didn’t move, she was going to die, and while I had been willing to kill Sasha to get what I wanted, feeling her blood pour over my hands was affecting me more than I expected it to.

“Let’s go,” I said. I cradled Sasha in my arms. Her head lolled over my forearm and her breathing was wet and shallow.

“If she dies, Isaac is going to have our ass,” Marco said.

We both popped over the table, guns drawn, ready to kill anyone who kept us from getting Sasha out of the hotel.

But there was no one.

People were huddled around the room crying, hugging, and praying. Glass was all over the floor and furniture was overturned. There were also streaks of blood across the floor, and I knew that Sasha wasn’t the only injury.

“Cops are going to be here soon,” Marco said. He was leading me towards the front of the hotel. “I’m going to have to get rid of my weapons.”

I nodded. My focus was on Sasha. I was silently praying that she would make it not just because my brother was right about her father’s reaction if she died, but also because Sasha didn’t deserve to die on a ballroom floor.

I might not love my wife, but I had empathy for the situation she had been put in.

“I need help!” I screamed as we made it out to the lobby. Marco was right. The place was swarming with cops, EMTS, and frightened guests. “I need help!” I yelled out again.

Police swarmed us. Putting guns in our faces as they tried to access if we were friend or foe. I didn’t flinch. This was hardly the first time I’d had an AK in my face. That and the fact that I could feel Sasha’s breathing starting to falter made it so that I didn’t even flinch.

“My wife has been shot,” I yelled. “She needs help. She’s been shot.”

It only took a moment for the police to access the situation, and immediately an EMT was at our side. “What happened?” he asked.

I blinked slightly wondering if this guy was fucking serious. “She was shot. There was a shooting at the wedding.”

He placed a finger on her neck checking for a pulse, and I knew from the way he frantically gestured to his partner that things weren’t good.

“I’m going to need you to gently place your wife on this stretcher,” the EMT said. He was talking to me as if I were a minute away from having a meltdown. The sad thing is that I felt collected. My wife was likely going to die, which would start a war with her family, and I was barely fazed. I’d already buried most of my family.

“Sir?” the man’s partner called out. He stretched out, and he was trying to get Sasha out of my arms.

There was an urgency in his mannerisms, and I immediately moved Sasha to the stretcher, despite the fact that I wanted to hold her in my arms. I felt an odd sense of loss watching her thin body on the white stretcher. She was pale as the sheets and covered in blood.

The EMTs swarmed around her blocking her from my view.

I didn’t follow as they rushed her to the ambulance.

“You can go if you want,” Marco said. He placed a hand on my shoulder. The weight of it felt heavier than normal.

“I’ll follow,” I said before turning to my brother. He looked incredibly put together considering the circumstances. “We need to figure out what the hell happened. Most of the family is here, and there’s enough security that no one should have been able to breach.”

“Sasha said something before the bullets started flying,” Marco said.

My eyes narrowed in on my brother. “Are you accusing her of having something to do with this?” There was anger in my voice. I was covered in Sasha’s blood, and while I might not love my wife, I don’t think I could forget the way that her warm blood poured out of her as her body went cold.

“I’m not saying that she specifically had anything to do with it,” Marco said. I could tell that he was backtracking.

I raised a brow. “She’s got a bullet in her gut,” I told him. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive, and while I don’t like Isaac, I don’t think that he would put his own daughter in danger.”

I didn’t think that the Petrov’s had anything to do with this. Isaac would never put a hit out on his own daughter even if it meant getting a shot in at me.

Marco looked as though he didn’t believe me, but he was smart enough to keep his thoughts to himself.

“This was an inside job,” I told him. “There’s no one other explanation.” I took off my suit jacket and looked around. EMTs and cops were all over the place. Sasha hadn’t been the only one hurt, and I knew that there were men who were probably dead. I just wasn’t sure why one of my own men would shoot up a wedding.

“Get Lorenzo,” I said.

“He’s probably with Francesca,” Marco said. “I’ll have him meet you at the house…”

Marco trailed off slightly when he got a look at my face.

“I want him now. Bring him to the warehouse.”

Marco’ eyes grew wide. My brother, who was basically unflappable, was surprised by my request. He shouldn’t be. Lorenzo had made a last minute change to the seating, which placed Sasha in the line of danger. I was sure that she had been the target, not me. And everyone else was just collateral damage. Lorenzo had made it more than clear what he thought of my marriage. He had wanted to go to war with the Petrov, and Sasha dying would definitely start that.

“You can’t be serious,” Marco said. He dropped his voice. “He was dad’s second.”

I said nothing. I had learned long ago not to justify my decision, not even to my brother. Besides, I could barely focus.

“I’ll be at the hospital,” I said. “I want an update within the hour.” Marco simply nodded.

“I’ll call you,” he told me.

I nodded. I would get to the bottom of who had put a hit out on my wife, and they would pay, even if it was one of my own men.