SHOT

DANTE'S POV

We get to the club and everyone is in position. Liam and the other men are in vehicles stationed not too far away from the club and I walk in easily once I present the membership card that I stole. The bar smells of everything wrong in the world. It smells of booze and vomit and sexual sins.

As soon as I walk in, a bunch of women are all over me, trying to get me to drink some weird concoction and swallow some pills. I walk past them, fighting the urge to scrunch my nose in disgust. I walk around the club carefully and look to find areas that are closed off. If there's an area where they bring little girls to, I'm sure it must be upstairs or underground.

"I need someone to check outside and around the club. Let me know if there are any entrances that lead to an underground club." I say as I make my way towards the bar.

"On it." A man from our group I have grown accustomed to calling shadow says. He can get in and out of anywhere without being caught and while we were practicing with him, I saw it in action. I don't know how he does it, if he uses some sort of magic or whatever. The important thing is that he can deliver. He can be useful and that's all I need.

I stand at the bar and order a drink. I'm not going to drink it though because I don't trust anyone here not to try and drug me. I just want to blend in and not look out of place.

After about fifteen minutes, Shadow's voice attacks my earbuds. "Noting out here boss." He says.

"You haven't touched your drink." A girl slips herself beside and stands so close to me, you would think she wanted to get under my skin. She has an empty look in her eyes, the kind of look that tells me she's high on drugs.

"How about we get out of here handsome? What's a hot man like you doing all alone in a place like this?" She grabs my drink and downs it in one go without even flinching. Yep, she's definitely high.

"Dante, some real sketchy men just walked in. They have gins that they didn't even try to hide and they look like they're on a mission. We'll stand guard outside, but be careful." Headshot says to me and I go on alert. I turn my body and face the bar, completely ignoring the girl at my side who can't seem to keep her hands to herself.

"Come on…" The girl urges. "Don't be so uptight. Let's just have some fun, huh?" She forces herself in front of me and wraps her hands around my neck, then she shoves herself up an takes a set on the bar counter right in front of me. I let her. I can already tell the me Headshot was talking about are in here already.

I know no one here is supposed to know who I am, but I have to be careful anyways. I look at the girl in front of me and all I feel is pity. I wonder what went so wrong in her life that she had to resort to drugs to make her feel something. She doesn't even look human. People like her always end up in a ditch somewhere.

When I come across people like her, I have this urge to help everyone in the world who's in the same situation. But sometimes, not everyone needs saving and at the end of the day, some people know exactly what they're getting themselves into. They paint their own pictures.

"Hey, you!" I feel a hand on my back. My body tenses. I calm down two seconds later. The hand on my back presses hardly on my shoulder and that's how I know he's not here to talk. I gently shove the girl in front of me away and spin around.

"Shoot him." A man orders and my eyes widen. A gun is aimed directly at my face but I dodge it just in time and grab my own gun from my suit and put a bullet through the skull of the man who was just about to shoot me.

What the actual fuck?

"Dante!" I hear Liam's voice. "What the fuck? Was that a gunshot?"

"I've found myself in a bit of a situation here." I say and I try to run away and evade the men coming my way. I punch my way through them and avoid the tips of their guns until I reach the entrance where the very people who let me in, block my way and strop me from going out.

"We need to get out of here as soon as possible. Ready the cars and meet me at the entrance." I bark out orders over the loud music. I get confused because I don't know my way around this place. Guards come for from different directions. I'm trapped. I raise my gun at the same time they do theirs, but before I can pull my trigger, the two guards in front of me drop dead and behind them, I see Liam and Headshot.

"Out!" Headshot screams. "Now!"

The other guards coming from my left start shooting hysterically and a bullet grazes my shoulder as I make my way out of the club.

"Shit!" I swear. I run along with Liam and Headshot and we get into our bullet proof car. The other men shoot aggressively at us but our car is moving already and I'm bleeding and Liam is hyperventilating.

"Fuck! They're following us!" Headshot says.

"A gun. Where's my gun?" I ask, ignoring the pain in my arm. Liam hands me my gun and I put a window down and see two cars coming at high speed behind us. They shoot at us and I have to dodge bullets coking straight for my head a few times. I aim for their tires and after countless tries because of our car swerving like crazy, I finally make the shot. The two cars spin out of control and bump into each other.

"Lost them." Headshot says.

"The others?" I ask.

"I sent them ahead." Liam answers. Couldn't risk any of them getting caught.

"There's a garage at the end of route 21." I say to Headshot. "We'll exchange cars there. Liam call the other men and let them know."

Liam does as I say and at route 21, all seven of us abandon the cars we went to the club with, burned them and then drove a different car to my house. Liam is shaking the entire ride back home but all the other men seemed unfazed.

"Why the hell is everyone so calm!?" Liam asks as soon as we reach home.

"The real question is how the fuck and why the fuck were they targeting Dante? These people are not supposed to know who you are remember?" One of the men says.

"Maybe thy figured it out." I say, flexing my shoulder as I try to stitch shut the wound that bullet left on my arm.

"Well that puts a but of a strain on the mission. You can't be seen in public anymore." Another man says.

"You're all so calm. We almost died today!" Liam says.

"But we didn't!" I say strongly. "Calm the fuck down! This is normal. Things like this are bound to happen. I thought I kept my identity hidden well enough but I've killed too many people. Probably caused enough trouble for the organization already. They know who I am now but they don't know where I live. We're fine!"

"Okay. Okay. So what's the plan now?" Liam asks, looking at my shoulder with a twist on my face. I finish stitching my wound and then stand up and pace around the room.

"Not going to lie. This pisses me off." I say honestly. "But we carry on like we have been doing so far. As long as they don't know where this place is, we're fine. We can still work from here. I have all the tech and gadgets we need to find useful information. We do that while we wait for the meeting with Veronica, but for now, I think it's best that we keep a low profile."

I look to Liam with a serious look on my face. "I hope you know Liam, they must have seen your face. They must have seen all our faces. If they know who I am, they must know who you all are too."

I say this referring specifically to Liam. The other men here, they all have fake names and identities that they have made up over the years. They have completely cut themselves off from their families so that nothing that links them to the people they care about, but Liam. He has Naomi. He has parents.

"Naomi…" He says with realization and falls to a chair. "Fuck."

"You could always bring her here." I propose.

"And have her see all this…" Liam says gesturing with his hands around the room.

"She'd be safe." I insist.

"She'd lose her mind." Liam says.

"You didn't." I object. He shuts up and contemplates. Then he wakes up, grabs his things and leaves without anther word.

"He shouldn't be all alone." Headshot says. "I'll go with him."

My arm hurts. It's a throbbing pain that I am not used to because I've never actually been shot before. In all my ears of doing all this it comes as a huge surprise to me but things are getting way more serious now. So I suppose I should be prepared to many other gun shots in the future.

"Let's get to work then!" I say to the other men.