Scorpio's Eight
Chapter Twenty Four- Mad Love
Sonny felt the cold metal of a gun press against the back of his neck. His eyes went to Carly's and he saw she was as shocked as him that the man who must have been the one to hurt her was still in the house. He must have been hiding, Sonny thought, waiting for me to show up.
He felt extreme guilt, born from his Catholic upbringing, that he had gotten Carly into this mess. He might not be the reason those loan sharks from Miami were hassling her but he should have done a better job of protecting her. He had given his word, and that, to him, still meant a hell of a lot.
He was crouched on the floor of her bedroom, over her beaten up body. His gun rest loosely in his hand, between his body and hers. Sonny fingers tightened on it as he prepared to spin around and shoot the man who held them at gunpoint.
"Not so fast," the man said. "Toss the weapon away from your body."
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Carly knew it was about to get ugly in here and fast. If Sonny threw that gun away, they were both as good as dead. Whoever this guy was, he was obvious here for one reason: to kill this mob boss when no guards were around, thanks to her scheming, to stop him.
She couldn't let Sonny follow the man's instructions. Her hand slid against the floor and connected with the butt of the gun Sonny held.
The masked man barked out, "I said toss it now!"
"All right, all right," Sonny said quickly "I'm doing it." But he didn't move the gun even an inch. "We can make a deal, man. I could buy you a new life. How much one of those run these days? Five million? Ten? You can walk away from this low class buying a contract working man job of yours. Write your own ticket."
Sonny turned to look back at the guy, a fake smile on his face. While Carly's fingers wrapped over his on the gun. She could feel Sonny shaking slightly, but Carly was dead calm. She knew what she had to do in order to live through this and now it was just a matter of doing it. Like any job, the whole key was being able to go as far as you had to. She had always been able to without a moment's hesitation.
Sonny asked now, as he looked up at the masked man, "How that sound? You like that idea?"
"You know what?" the man said in an annoyed voice just before he bashed Sonny over the head with the gun, causing Sonny to collapse into a heap on the floor. "You talk too much."
The gun Sonny was holding was trapped between his body and the floor. Since Carly hadn't let go of it she was forced to pretend to huddle over Sonny, to keep hidden the fact she was holding onto the gun, and murmur "What did you do to him? I think you killed him."
Todd pulled the trigger, sending two bullets into Sonny's head. "No, now I killed him." Blood splattered up and covered the white slip Carly was wearing.
Carly whipped out the gun and shot a surprised Todd in the heart. He went flying backwards, hitting the wall, and the slid down to the ground. He was dead before he could blink another time.
"You just had to do this on my white carpet, didn't you?" Carly asked Todd as she stood up and ripped off his mask. "Whoever you are, you wasted your life on killing Sonny boy. Don't you know he was as good as ruined already?"
Sighing, she started to clean up the crime scene.
Her mind flashed back to the first time she saw a dead body. She was sixteen years old and in love with Jagger. He ran with a gang back then and one night a rival gang broke in and shot up the house where everyone hung out. It was killed or be killed time. Well her and Jagger were still here, so they hadn't been too slow or too scared to pull the trigger when need be. That time she was shocked by how quick a life could end, but that was fifteen years past now...these days there was not much that could shock her anymore.
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He stepped out of the panic room, gun in one hand and the painting in the other. It was of a naked woman with paint splotches over her body.
Robert, from beneath his mask, glared at Anna. She grinned at him.
The wall behind him was still smoking from where he blew a hole in it. He had 360 seconds to get back to the get away car that Skye was driving before the hired security company that worked for Sonny would be here to check on way his alarm was disabled and no one answered the phone to tell them the code word.
The Jackal could have hacked into the phone, diverted the call to a throwaway cell, and then told the company the code word (it hadn't been hard to get it out of Max, who Carly had wrapped around her finger, and he hadn't even known he gave anything away). But then Spinelli's voice would be on the security company's tape of the call and that could be used as evidence against them later. So they would have to get out before the company showed up.
Anna asked "You gonna keep pointing that gun at me like we aren't even friends anymore or move aside so I can have my painting?"
She stood up.
He said, "'Friad someone told you wrong. This here is my painting."
She said to him, "300 seconds left and you still have to climb down to the lawn, get over that big stone wall and out to the car...you'll never make it with your bad knees. Just give me the painting and I'll cut you in for 2 percent."
She knew what this part of the plan, for him, entailed because she had bugged his office and overheard him and Luke go over it only hours before. She thought she knew everything about this job, but she had started listening to their conversations only after the wedding and didn't know quite as much as she thought.
He scoffed, "Cut me in? A whole two percent. Wow, you are getting generous in your..."
"Do not say it," she warned right before he would have finished with the words 'old age'.
He smiled and headed out of the room with the painting. "If you wanted in then you should have just asked. Not hooked up with that bum and tried to make an end run around my loot."
"That bum, as you call him, is your brother, Robert."
"I don't have a brother anymore." He glanced at his watch. 175 seconds. Shit, he was running behind now.
But still he could not take his eyes off Anna. It had been so long since they worked together. They were at their best in these situations.
Both wore night goggles so they could see perfectly in the pitch black house.
"Just like you don't have a wife anymore?" Anna asked "You just have a painting. Bravo."
"Don't get rude because you showed up late to the party. You never ran behind when you worked with me. But then again, you aren't even supposed to be a thief anymore, are you? You wanted out of this life, our life, so..." he finally tore his eyes away from her " you are out."
He slipped out the window and climbed down to the lawn. She waited till he was running toward the wall before she scurried down and gave chase. Anna caught Robert on the other side of the wall, just as he was about to climb in Skye's car. Anna pulled out a syringe and shot him full of a tranquilizer that would paralyze him temporarily but not hurt him.
Bending over she whispered, "Sorry, dear, but you didn't leave me a lot of options. Maybe next time you will not think me unfaithful or unqualified quite so quickly. Because, you should know better than anyone, I am neither. I'll forgive you, if you forgive me. Think about it."
Skye opened the door, stood up, looked over the car at the scene of Robert laying in a heap and Anna taking the painting and asked "Couldn't you two do your foreplay on your own time?"
Anna chuckled. "Tell the crew Sorry, mates, better luck next time."
Then she was running away into the night with the stolen painting that held the numbers to off shore
accounts worth two hundred million dollars. The only problem was Anna had no knowledge of that little fact.
She thought the painting was wanted by her client Faith for emotional reasons. The woman was the ex-wife of Sonny and wanted to take something that was important to him- something that reminded him of his long lost perfect ideal of love, Lily.
But Faith could careless about who Sonny loved once upon a time, or who he was shacked up with now, or what he did with the rest of his life. All she carried about was money and power. The painting would give whoever got their hands on it both of those things.
And Anna was about to hand it over to a mad woman.