Chapter 19 - The River

The first thing to draw Roulette’s attention was the overturned dining table; not due to its sheer size or the wealth of empty floor space left open in its absence, but because of who lay pinned beneath it. Three of the guests–men she now understood to be plainclothes officers–had been mashed up against the wall by the table’s edge. One was still struggling to get free. The other two looked to be unconscious or worse.

The rest of them stood across the room from her, staring down the hulking man responsible. To her surprise, they didn’t have their guns out. Many of them seemed afraid. Others looked to a squat, solid-looking man near the window as if awaiting a call to action.

“LET HER GO!” Marka shouted, gun trembling in his hands. His back was turned to her, and only by craning her neck to peek around him was she able to see the object of his demand:

The man by the window held Beretta–who, to her credit, was straining against his iron grip for all she was worth.

“Fine! Fine. We are not hostage-takers,” the man declared, releasing her without further hesitation. “But I recommend you come quietly–”

“What are you doing?” Diallo interrupted. He clapped his hand around the girl’s arm, holding her firmly in place. “The girl is good leverage! Without her, he will kill us all!”

“We cannot resort to such tactics. You know that!”

Diallo rolled his eyes. “Cops.” He tugged Beretta into the crook of his arm and produced Morgan’s revolver, pressing the muzzle to her temple. The girl froze.

“F-Father…” she gasped.

“Berry…! Damn you, Diallo,” Marka fumed. “You bring police into my home, and now this? How could you?”

“It is only fair, cousin.” He spoke with an unsettling hollowness to his voice, heedless of the way his niece had begun to tremble. “You have taken everything from me. And yet you complain, now that I am in a position to return the favor…”

Roulette looked on helplessly. She felt a certain kinship with the man she’d pegged as the chief of police. He stood there, stock-still, just as she did. How were they supposed to proceed? How could they possibly get involved, knowing that it would almost certainly lead to chaos and bloodshed?

She thought back to her past; a moment she’d done her best to forget. A moment that mirrored this one all too well. That time, she had been in Beretta’s shoes: she’d been the powerless one, caught between two men in a conflict she couldn’t understand. But then, in a stroke of pure insight, she realized that the particulars didn’t matter. The complexity and the aftermath didn’t matter. All that mattered was, back then, she’d wished with all her heart for someone–anyone–to save her.

Nobody had. But there was no reason the same thing had to happen to Beretta.

Roulette planted her feet and swung Lady Luck into position. She centered the barrel on Diallo, taking advantage of he and the Blunderboss’s ongoing exchange to achieve the level of precision she needed.

“All this time, you have been plotting against me…” Marka was saying. “Why? I never wanted to lead the family. If you had asked, I would have stepped aside without a second thought!”

Diallo laughed coldly. “At one time, long ago, that would have been enough. But I must confess that your stupidity and carelessness have worn on me over the years.” He pulled back the hammer on the revolver, then, looking down at his niece with obvious distaste. “Now? Now I believe the only thing that will make me whole… Is your suffering.”

A shot rang out. The chief and his officers finally drew their weapons, spurred to action by the possibility of a homicide…

…But the only casualty was Diallo’s welt-riddled hand. The revolver he’d been holding clattered to the floor, and his grip on Beretta’s arm weakened. For a heartbeat or two, every eye in the room came to rest on Roulette.

Then all hell broke loose.

“KILL HER!” Diallo roared, pointing toward her with his good hand. To her surprise, some of the cops obeyed, opening fire on her as zealously as if their own boss had given the order. She dove behind a nearby pile of crates just in time, though, narrowly avoiding their scattershot assault. The sounds of shouting and scuffling ensued. Despite her recent act of heroism, Roulette found that she was shaken to the core. If they chose to come after her, she’d have nowhere to run!

After a few seconds had passed without any sign of pursuit, she chanced a look between the boxes. She saw that the chief had recovered a degree of control over the situation: he held Diallo’s arms behind his back while his men struggled to bring down the Blunderboss. They hung off his thick limbs like kids on a jungle gym, trying without success to wrest the gun from his hands. Beyond them, she could see Beretta quivering in the corner. The girl met her eyes unexpectedly; had she been watching the boxes, looking for some sign that her savior was alright?

Beretta smiled at her. Roulette smiled back. And, for a moment, she felt as if everything might just turn out okay in the end.

That’s when Diallo wriggled out of the police chief’s hold, pulled a knife, and stabbed the man in the gut.

Roulette’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. She watched in horror as the slender man shrugged out of his dying captor’s clutches with a twisted grin on his face, his attention returning to his true target: Marka.

“This did not go quite the way I planned,” he purred, closing the distance between him and his squirming cousin with taunting slowness. “But killing you like this–helpless and restrained, with a blade in my hand–is a pleasure to be savored.”

“Diallo…Please…!” Marka gasped in a warbling voice. The men engaged in wrangling him were relentless; one of them had him in a headlock, applying pressure to his windpipe in an effort to make him less resistant. They’d managed to maneuver his gun-tip lower and lower, too–as it was, he’d have no hope of defending himself from Diallo’s blade.

“Stay back, sir!” one of them grunted, “We almost have him! We can put him away for life, just as you wanted!”

“Nobody else needs to die!” said another.

“Looking back, I do not think I could have settled for seeing you arrested…” Diallo mused, now nearly within arm’s reach of Marka’s unprotected chest. “I suppose all this planning was unnecessary, then. Oh well. I suppose this is goodbye, cousin–be sure to apologize to our fallen brothers in the afterlife!”

Roulette screwed her eyes shut despite herself, unwilling to watch a helpless man be murdered in such a brutal fashion. She nearly jumped out of her skin when another voice–a familiar one–called out from somewhere just behind her:

“HEY, ASSHOLE!” it said, “GUESS WHAT: I STOLE YER DAMN PANTS!”

Roulette blinked. She saw Diallo pause and turn his head to regard the newcomer, so she did likewise… And found Morgan standing just behind her, fully-clothed, with a rusty old artifact clenched in his fist.

“AND GUESS WHAT ELSE?” He pulled back his hand and wound up for a devastating throw. Only when his improvised projectile had been fully primed did he finally arrive at his point:

“THEY FIT GREAT!”

With that, he launched the ovular hunk of metal directly at Diallo’s head. It was a direct hit; the artifact collided with his forehead, stunning the man so effectively that he teetered back a step or two. Before she knew it, Roulette was on her feet–hell, it took everything she had to keep herself from cheering! She shot a glance across the room at Beretta, expecting to find that the girl was as jubilant as she was…

…Instead, she found her looking between Morgan and the fallen revolver with a look of determination on her face.

“Honey, no!” Roulette shrieked, all too aware of the fact that the battle wasn’t over. Sure enough, the prospect of pressing the advantage gave Marka a second wind: he began lifting his gun little by little, bent on overpowering the pesky cops who’d been trying so hard to manhandle him into submission. They wrenched at his arms and clawed at his face, but to no avail–the Blunderboss refused to be contained.

“DIALLOOO…” he bellowed, sounding for all the world like some kind of avenging ghoul. His cousin cowered, falling back away from him, and Beretta made her move. She dashed out of the corner and into the center of the room, grasping for Morgan’s gun, too committed to her plan of action to realize that she was right in the line of fire.

Roulette cried out again, but it was no use; the sound of a powerful gunshot beat her to the punch. The muzzle of the Blunderboss’s weapon flashed, filling the room with a brilliant, blinding light.

By the time Roulette opened her eyes again, the girl was gone.