Lexi stood behind the alcove wall waiting for the guardsmen to come around its corner. She remembered what her brother said, "Breathe out." And so she did. She felt it. Their looming presence. She could even see their shadows like ghouls closing in on her.
But something stopped the men from coming around the corner. Outside, Dom had just heard one of the men say that they'd go balls deep in Mia while they shot him in his stupid face. Dom lost all sense of self and charged through the door.
Behind Anthony's back were Enzo and Andrei running into the front yard when the gate opened and they slipped through. "Check the guards. We're meant to have nine" Enzo shouted to Andrei and they split up.
Enzo rushed to the right. When he came around the corner he immediately saw two of his guardsmen laid out on the ground. He checked their breathing. It was shallow but there. No blood, he noted. How'd they go down? What'd Pepper do to them?
Andrei rounded the left hand side of the one story home and saw two idiot guards passed out on the ground. He nudged one with his foot, but held little interest in them. Instead he moved past them. He breached the backyard and saw more guards knocked out on the ground. Or dead. He didn't care.
He quickly did the math in his head. They'd be paired in twos except for the monitor guy. That's who Andrei wanted to spot and he did. When bullets started popping off from somewhere inside the house the 9th of the guardsmen cowered behind a flower bush.
Andrei spotted him and ran when he saw the man's eyes go wide and reach for a gun, possibly. He didn't wait around to find out. But Andrei realized the man wasn't looking at him, he was looking towards the right of the house. The hidden man had spotted Enzo, not him.
That's all he needed to know. Stealthily he rounded behind the 9th man, and as the man went to let a shot off at unsuspecting Enzo, Andrei lifted the butt of his gun and CRACKed it into his skull. The man toppled forward.
Enzo watched Andrei drag a man out from behind a bush. The man's skull was bleeding, but he still looked alive. Enzo realized that that was Andrei's intention. He wanted to catch a live one.
Before Enzo could go to help Anthony and Dom, he saw Andrei pull a single flower from the flower bush the guard had been hiding behind, and like a madman he tucked the flower behind the guardsmen's ear.
"I'm not doing all the work here. I caught mine. Go get yours" Andrei waved Enzo away.
Inside the house, inside that bin, all Mia could hear was guns going off. Voices shouting. There was a buzzing so sharp in her ears she almost couldn't hear anything at all. She felt perspiration bead up at the back of her neck. Her long strands of brunette hair clung to it.
It was so hot inside that laundry bin. She felt suffocated inside there. Her heart was beating so fast she felt like she couldn't breathe, and then she did stop breathing when she heard Dom.
He practically growled, but still she knew it was him. She heard all these sounds like a wild animal and shouts from someone else. She heard Anthony's voice in the distance shouting, "LEXI RUN!" And more gunfire. "LEXI."
Mia squeezed her eyes shut and prayed to a God she doesn't believe in. "Please let everyone I care for be the one to walk out of this alive. Protect Dom, Lexi, and Anthony. Please." She thought. Mia wasn't thinking about her own safety at that moment. Lexi had set her up to hide, to keep safe, and she felt guilty now. Why should she be safe over anyone else? People are fighting for their lives out there and Mia was hiding.
"I've been running from bad men my whole life" she thought.
Outside of the laundry bin Dom had chased the second guardsmen out from the first bedroom, but the man tried for the bathroom. When Dom tussled with him in there the guardsman tried for the second bedroom.
Dom didn't want to kill the man. Not so easily. Not after what he said about Mia. So he continued to chase him until he cornered the man in the second bedroom. The room where he didn't know yet that his girlfriend was hiding in.
In the heat of the moment, and with fear gripping this unnamed guardsmen, he tried to do anything to keep Domani De Luca away from him. Dom disarmed the man in the bathroom already. Granted he didn't fight back very hard. He felt like a coward.
But Pepper had told this guardsman that he'd be safe. He wouldn't have to face the mobsters. He said all he had to do was help him grab the girls. "Two scrawny things," Pepper had told him. But that's not how this turned out.
In a lame final attempt, the unnamed guardsman reached for whatever he could grab and started trying to toss things at Dom's head.
Domani De Luca looks terrifying when charging forward. He's got a reputation. The guardsman knows that, but he'd let greed and the prospect of big money get in his way. He wasn't thinking clearly, and now he was regretting it. He's going to die here. He just knew it. And he was afraid.
Dom slapped away the short lamp this rat tried to chuck at him. It crashed at their feet and then Dom's hands were around the man's throat. He growled out words that almost didn't sound like words. His hands were tight around the man's throat and he squeezed.
Lifting so the man had to come up on his toes to try and manage not having his head popped right off his neck.
He scratched at Dom's clutching hands, and made odd unfamiliar sounds from his crushed throat. Dom watched the man's eyes as they pleaded with him for mercy. They were wide, frightened eyes. They started to bulge the longer he choked the man.
Dom's hands were shaking with the force of it. The blood vessels in the man's eyes were about ready to burst, and the veins in his neck and face were engorged.
Lexi had just run out of the bedroom Anthony had shouted for her to run from. She couldn't make it to the front door without pause. "I can't leave him," she thought.
Meanwhile, inside the bedroom Anthony fought hard against Pepper who wasn't a small man. He was much larger than his accomplice the guardsman had been, but he wasn't thinking of that when he charged him. He was only thinking of Lexi.
Now that Lexi was safely away he could just go for it. No matter the cost, if it be his life or Peppers. That's why he bit the man's nose almost clean off.
He's a skilled fighter. He knows when to use fists. He knows when to avoid fighting on the ground if a man is good at subduing with arm and leg locks. He knows when a man is just simply too large or too armed. When all that means he should fight dirty.
Blood filled his mouth and Pepper's eyes. He had him now, and then suddenly his eyes momentarily blurred. Where the two men had been fighting along the ground they'd knocked into the nightstand at some point. They didn't pay much attention. In Pepper's writhing of pain when his nose was being severed he absentmindedly knocked his head and shoulder on the edge of the table.
He didn't even notice it with all the other things going on. But it was just what he needed to gain his escape. They bumped the table and something fell over, knocking Anthony Rizzo right on the hairline and temple.
It momentarily made his eyes blur and his head go dizzy, but as soon as he felt Pepper slipping away he did the only thing he could. He took the clip of the man's gun.
Instead of standing over Anthony and shooting him dead, like he thought the man intended, Pepper instead ran out of the room. Anthony gained his senses fast enough to jump up and scramble after him. Even if his head did feel a whoosh at the motion.
"Game over. I'm gonna kill him now" Anthony thought as he came out of the room towards the front hall where Pepper was standing still, gun drawn. If he felt dizzy before, he could barely keep his mind right now that he saw it was Lexi who was on the opposite end of the hall.
"But you took the clip from his gun," he reminded himself. When he heard the click sound of Pepper trying to Actually shoot Lexi, and the lull that followed when he realized the gun was empty, Anthony held up the clip. But that was only secondary to what was really on his mind.
Because at the same time his gun came up. Anthony was going to shoot Pepper. And then two guns went off and Anthony froze as it all clicked into place.
"Mia! Mia" Dom started to shout from the other room. He'd killed the man and wanted to find his girl now. He was startled when she popped out of the laundry bin. He rushed her and lifted her up to get her out of there.
Silent tears were rolling down her face. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight. There was a man dead on the floor beside them, but Mia's used to more than she ever thought she could. She's seen things. She knows things. A dead man isn't as startling as it once might have been. Unsettling, but she had Dom now and that's all she wanted.
They both noticed the double gun shots. Dom quickly dragged her behind him and reached back for his gun.
Outside Enzo heard the double shots fired and started for the front door, as he'd been doing anyways after Andrei waved him off. He slid into the doorway and looked around him. Lexi fell backwards and slammed into the ground hard. Pepper's head splattered the wall beside him and his body dropped too.
There was a scream, but he almost didn't recognize it to be his cousin's. He's never heard Anthony scream like that before. "LEXIIIIII," Anthony's body came flashing forward. He dropped to his knees still shouting her name. "LEXI, Lexi."
How could Anthony have known that Pepper had another handgun on him. Or he swiped it in his escape. He didn't know where it came from, but he saw Pepper scream like a madman and swing his arm up. That's when he let off a shot pointing right into Lexi's chest. Anthony's gun went off at the same moment and Pepper's head went boom.
Two guns, two different shots.
Anthony had seen the jolt in Lexi's thin body. He saw her drop backwards with a loud thud. When he ran forward he didn't even realize it was Enzo at the door watching him shout and grab at Lexi. Pulling her up into his lap.
He didn't think about the fact that Enzo was rightfully going to be her husband. He didn't think about the fact that he wasn't technically supposed to know her. He didn't think and he didn't care. He screamed for her and pawed at her chest to find the bleeding so he could stop it.
But there was no blood.
"Anthony. Hey man, look" Enzo's voice finally registered in his head. Anthony's eyes snapped up then back down. What was this shirt? What was Lexi wearing? And then he saw the insignia. In all this chaos, with the fast pace of the shoot out and trying to save Lexi, Anthony never really looked at Lexi for long enough to register that she wasn't in a normal shirt.
He doesn't know when or where or how, but Lexi had been smart enough to slip on the very expensive, very effective kevlar he'd left in the front hall.
Yes, Lexi was shot, but Lexi wasn't dead. The material took most of the impact. Had it been the AK, the force of that bullet would have been strong enough to penetrate Lexi's attempt at armor, but the handgun from a long hallway down...it was just enough to save her life.
From the impact Lexi lost all her breath. It felt like she'd been hit by a truck when the bullet hit her. She passed out right away from the impact, and she fell pretty hard, but she wasn't dead. Anthony felt the blood from the back of her head though. He saw the red on his palm and his momentary relief turned his veins cold all over again.
"Lexi, wake up. Come on, wake up Lexi" he palmed her head and checked again. Not pouring blood, but there was a decent amount. Enough to coat his hand.
Suddenly Lexi sucked in this long dramatic breath like she'd had the wind knocked out of her. And that's because she did. She sucked in again and again trying to get air into her lungs. Her head was pounding and her chest was on fire. She was momentarily confused.
She saw two faces over her and she realized it was Anthony and Enzo. They were saying stuff to her but her ears were still ringing. She couldn't hear them clearly.
"Oh fuck, Lexi, thank god" Anthony released his own long held breath. He moved her hair out of her face and told her he'd help her sit up when she was ready. He just kept murmuring, "Breath, I know it's hard, but breathe Lexi."
He knew she felt the wind knocked out of her. Like when you fall on your stomach or slam your back and your breath is gone. The world stops when your body is searching for air. It's all the body can think about. Air. It needs air.
Anthony didn't realize when Dom came out of whatever room he'd been in. He didn't notice Mia until she dropped down beside him and took Lexi's hand. "Oh my goodness, I thought you were dead" Mia gulped back her unshed tears.
When she heard Anthony holler for Lexi, and saw her laying on the ground, she just assumed...she feared...but Lexi's okay. She thinks. She did start to notice the blood on Anthony's arm where he held her, staining her very light, very blonde hair.
"The fuck you all looking at? Get her to a hospital" there was a sudden deep voice that snapped all of them out of this moment in time. Andrei was standing in the doorway looking down at his sister with dare they say, 'worry' in his eyes.
But then they also saw their guardsman, the man who usually runs the monitors, with his arms tied, his mouth taped round and round his head. The knot from his bound wrists also went around the man's neck like a leash. Andrei had been dragging him along like he was a pet that needed keeping.
The safehouse was destroyed. Windows, walls, and doors sprayed with bullet holes. Smashed glass. Blood painting a wall. Two dead men inside. Guardsmen laid out along the yard only now stirring awake, but barely.
Anthony scooped Lexi into his arms and carried her past the gates to the cars. She was alive, but she could have broken ribs or a cracked skull. Anthony needed to be sure she'd be alright. They all left the safe house in its disarray.
Dom was on the phone calling one of his goons to round up the guards who worked here today. He thought he might kill them all for how incompetent they've been. He won't tell Mia that, but heads will roll, he thought.
Andrei dragged the guardsman along beside him and the man stumbled and tried to keep up. His leg was bleeding. Andrei may have shot him once. Just to get a point across. No place where he could bleed out and die. That'd end his fun too soon.
When they got to the car Andrei popped the trunk and shoved the man inside it. "He's gonna bleed all over the place and I'd have to clean it. No way' he thought.
Andrei turned to Enzo and thumbed at the trunk. "Can you watch him for a bit? I should probably go with my sister" he told Enzo. Enzo opened and shut his mouth. "This guy's insane" he thought to himself. He knows Lexi is supposed to be under his care, and yet he thought it should be Andrei and Anthony who take care of her.
He noticed his cousin's reaction to Lexi's almost death and he felt like a fool. How did Enzo not think sooner about the fact that Anthony had a 'Lexi' he was seeing. A model. He didn't put two and two together until today. Until he saw his cousin's reaction. He was confused, but he knew that his Lexi was also Anthony's Lexi.
He knew he'd have to ask his cousin about this, but not now. Not while Lexi's still in danger.
Enzo just nodded to Andrei and agreed he should go with his sister. He looked down at the trunk and heard the banging of the man flailing around in there and ignored it. He went to the drivers seat so he could get the fuck outta here.
Dom had the same thought. He held Mia tightly against him and brought her to his car. And when all the others departed one by one he finally felt like he had a second alone with her. "I'm putting an end to all this tomorrow, baby. I won't put your life at risk again" he promised her. Those green eyes, that face, her scent. He loved this girl.
And Mia was looking back at him thinking all the same things. His eyes, his handsome face, his protectiveness. She just wanted to be in his arms for the rest of the day and night. "Will you?" She asked Dom. And Dom said yes.
Minutes later a goon pulled up to the safehouse. Dom nodded to the man and that was all he had to do. His goon knew what came next. Dom drove off, and the goon walked inside past the gates and closed them.