Chapter 155 The rescue
Ryder's POV
I braced for the impact from the shot that was fired. Every muscle in my body tensed, waiting for the bullet to tear through me. Waiting for the pain, the shock and ultimately the end.
But it never came.
Instead, Dante collapsed to the ground.
His gun clattered to the grass as he went down, his hand clutching at his stomach. Not his ribs this time. His stomach. Where a fresh blood stain appeared on his white shirt, spreading fast and dark against the fabric.
For a half second nobody moved. The whole yard seemed to hold its breath.
The two men who had been pointing guns at me spun around, trying to find the shooter. Their weapons swung wildly, searching for a target they could not locate. One of them barked something to the other, urgent and low, and they shifted back to back, covering angles.
But they never got the chance to fire.
Two more shots rang out in quick succession, clean and precise, like someone who had done this before and had no interest in wasting ammunition. Both men dropped where they stood, their guns falling from their hands before they hit the ground.
The yard went quiet except for the sound of Dante's and Jaxon's ragged breathing and the distant noise of movement from the other side of the property.
I turned around fast, my own weapon raised, ready to face whoever it was that was shooting.
What I saw made me lower my gun.
Diego stood at the edge of the porch, a smoking pistol in his hand. He was dressed in a full suit, complete with tie and vest. Obviously that was what he was supposed to wear if he married Sage an hour ago. He looked polished and composed in the way that men who had grown up in this type of life never managed to look. But to us, violence was just another item on the day's schedule. There were a few spots of blood on his sleeve though.
Beside him came Elena, also armed, her expression fierce and focused. She wore tactical gear over what looked like it might have been a dress at some point, the lower portion raised up above the knee to give her room to move. She was already scanning the yard with the kind of cold efficiency that made me glad she was on the right side of this.
Behind them were at least six other men, all heavily armed and all scanning the yard for threats without needing to be told.
"Spread out," Elena ordered, her voice sharp and commanding. "Comb through the backyard. Check for any more men. Shoot on sight if they're armed."
The men dispersed immediately, fanning out across the yard with military precision, their weapons up and their movements tight and coordinated. Whatever Elena had assembled, she had not grabbed it together in five minutes. Someone must have reported the attack to them while they were on their way here for the wedding.
Diego's eyes found mine across the yard. "You good?"
I let out a breath that had been sitting in my chest for the better part of twenty minutes. "Yeah." I rolled my shoulder, checking it was still working the way it was supposed to after keeping my arm raised for so long. "Thanks for the save."
"Don't mention it." His attention moved past me to where Sage was still kneeling on the ground. His expression shifting to care. "Is he alive?"
"Barely," I said. "He needs a hospital as soon as possible."
Elena was already on her radio before I finished the sentence. "We've got casualties. A lot are critical. Send the medics to the back of the property immediately." She listened for a response, gave a sharp nod, and clicked off. "Four minutes," she said.
"He does not have four minutes to spare," I said.
"Then we keep him breathing for four minutes," she said, and turned to direct two of her men toward Jaxon without another word.
I could finally breathe. The two men who had been pointing guns at me for the past twenty minutes were dead. Dante's other men were either down, scattered through the property, or about to be. For the first time since this whole nightmare started, the immediate threat of death had lifted enough that my body did not know what to do with itself. My hands were still steady. That was training. The rest of me was working through it.
I walked over to where Dante had fallen down.
He was on his back in the grass, one hand pressed hard against his belly where Diego's bullet had found him. Blood was seeping out between his fingers just like it was with Jaxon and it was spreading across the white shirt. His legs were not moving. His breathing was labored, each inhale shallow and quick.
He was dying and he knew it.
His eyes found mine as I stood over him. There was raw and unguarded pain in them. And fear. And beneath both of those things, something that looked almost like disbelief. Like even now, even lying in his own blood in the backyard of a house he had brought an army to, he could not quite accept that it had ended like this.
"Help," he managed to gasp out. "Please."
I looked down at him. At the man who had built this entire disaster from the ground up. The man who had set Jaxon up to become a federal informant and then used that to squeeze every last thing he could out of the situation. Who had blackmailed Vincent into a corner he could not get out of. Who had stood ten feet away from me less than five minutes ago and pointed a gun at my chest with every intention of pulling the trigger.
I squatted down beside him. Close enough that he could see my face clearly. Close enough that he could hear me over the shouting of orders and the reports coming in from around the yard.
"You foolish piece of ass."