Chapter 9 - The Final Gambit
The cold steel of Dominic Russo’s gun bit hard into Vivien’s throat, cutting off half her air as he dragged her backward toward the open cargo bay of the airplane. His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps, smelling of sour whiskey and blood.
"Back off, Matteo!" Russo snarled, his eyes darting frantically between Matteo and Dario, who had circled around the tarmac with weapons raised. "Tell your dogs to lower their guns, or I paint this runway with her brains! You think you're untouchable? You let yourself fall for a little secretary with nice hips and a sharp tongue! She’s your death warrant, Bellini!"
Matteo slowly lifted his foot off Marcus’s chest. He stood completely upright, lowering his weapon until the muzzle pointed at the tarmac. His face was entirely devoid of fear, his posture relaxed in a way that made even the frantic Russo hesitate.
"Let her go, Dominic," Matteo said, his voice flat, dangerously quiet. "You walk onto that plane, you fly wherever you want, and I won't shoot it out of the sky. But if you scratch a single hair on her head, there isn't a hole on this continent deep enough to hide you from me."
"You expect me to believe you’d let me walk?" Russo laughed bitterly, his arm tightening around Vivien’s windpipe until spots of black danced across her vision. "I know you, Matteo. You don't forgive debts. But right now, she’s my ticket out of this city."
Vivien looked at Matteo through the haze of her fading consciousness. In the dim light of the runway lamps, his dark eyes locked onto hers with absolute, unwavering intensity. He gave the faintest, almost imperceptible nod—a signal they had used a hundred times in negotiation rooms when a client was about to make a fatal mistake.
*Trust me,* his eyes said.
Vivien stopped fighting the arm around her neck. She let her body go completely limp, slumping against Russo as if she had lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen.
The sudden dead weight of a curvy, adult woman caught the injured, off-balance mobster entirely by surprise. Russo stumbled backward, his grip slipping as his foot caught on the edge of an industrial grounding cable pinned to the tarmac.
For half a second, the gun barrel shifted two inches away from her head.
That half-second was all Matteo Bellini needed.
Two deafening gunshots cracked across the tarmac in a single, overlapping roar.
Matteo fired twice from the hip. The first round struck Russo cleanly through the right shoulder, shattering the collarbone and sending the heavy pistol spinning out of his hand into the dark mist. The second round tore through Russo’s left knee, dropping the rival boss to his hands and knees with a guttural scream of agonizing defeat.
Vivien scrambled forward on the wet concrete, coughing and gasping for air. Before she could even stand, Matteo was there. He slid onto his knees, pulling her violently into his arms, his strong hands cradling the back of her head, pressing her face against the warm wool of his chest.
"I have you," he murmured, his voice shaking with a raw, desperate relief that silenced the entire airfield. "I’ve got you, Vivien. It’s over."
Behind them, Dario and three armed enforcers moved in, kicking the groaning Russo flat onto his stomach and securing heavy zip-ties around his bleeding wrists. Marcus Vance was already weeping against the pavement, begging for mercy that would never come.
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Vivien clutched Matteo’s shirt, her tears finally spilling over onto his collar as the sound of distant police sirens began to echo from the highway miles away. "You shot him from the hip," she whispered weakly, laughing through her tears. "That was completely reckless."
"I told you," Matteo murmured, kissing her forehead, his eyes blazing with a fierce, possessive warmth that would never fade. "Nobody touches what’s mine."
