As they both turned to look at me, I balked in horror. Cage pierced me with a glare. Romeo looked at me, a smile on his face, one that was not nice at all. Cage shifted so that I was out of Romeo's view. "November has nothing to do with this." He growled. "You've made her suffer enough! Leave her out of this. This is between you and me-"

"Excuse me!" I snapped at Cage. "You heard him. He didn't come here for you, Cage."

"She is correct." Romeo pointed out.

"I am correct." I parroted back.

Cage looked back and forth between us, bewildered. "Whose side are you on, November?"

"Oh, I don't know." Anger had a way of giving me a sarcastic tongue. "Maybe I'm on the side of the man who killed my parents. You know, the one who came here to kill me tonight...you stupid piece of stale bread! I'm on your side, Cage! What kind of question is that even?"

"Do not call me a stupid piece of stale bread, November." Cage growled.

"Oh, excuse me." I cleared my throat. "You're not even good enough to be a stupid piece of bread. You know what you are, Cage? You're a stupid piece of stale wheat bread!"

"How the fuck did bread get involved in this?" Romeo snapped.

"I don't know." I said. "But I want some now. Maybe some of those breadsticks from Olive Garden-"

"We make homemade ones." Romeo sniffed.

I stared at him. "You know, I never understood the flour to egg ratio-"

"Enough!" Cage barked. "November, shut up."

"Don't tell me to shut up." I snapped.

"Never tell a woman to shut up." Romeo added unnecessarily.

Cage all but rolled his eyes.

Romeo went back to his cold, detached evil villain persona. "We have had our differences in the past, Cage." He said, delicately stepping over the pilot's dead body. They killed as if people had no value. as if they weren't people. Cage did it too. With his upbringing, it shouldn't come as a surprise. But it still made me cringe. Gunfire was terrifying and so were they.

Cage stood back, his stature tall and unintimidated. I saw the gun clasped behind his back, out of sight from Romeo's view. As Romeo paced slowly around the rooftop, I began working on loosening the handcuffs. I got out of one set. I could get out of another.

Cage's attention was on Romeo. He watched him carefully, dark green eyes inspecting and meticulously articulating every movement for a signal of when things might go sideways. It was fascinating to watch, truly. They were both criminal kings. One just had more power at the moment. But if I learned one thing from being around the Crows, it was that power can shift in the blink of an eye. Cage knew that. He survived for this long because of that knowledge.

The water pipe I was connected to had a ring that was kind of loose. As Romeo and Cage exchanged heated words, I tugged harder on the cuffs. If I could just twist the ring of the pipe around, I could slip the cuff out of the small space it provided.

Romeo fixed Cage with an expressionless look. "But now, the vendetta has shifted, has it not? We have our share of problems, Mr. Vickers. For the time being, what your little darling and I have to discuss does not include you. Protecting a teenage girl, Cage? Really? I thought you did not care for others. After all, you must not if you turned to my daughter."

I stopped messing with the handcuffs for a second, distracted by the mention of Vivian Barsille. If Romeo knew about that, did that mean when Cage went to Italy, he met up with Romeo as well? After all, they knew each other a lot longer than I knew either of them. I was still trying to get a sense of what Cage was capable of, and that line didn't seem to be stopping anywhere soon.

Cage kept a steady voice. "That was a business arrangement, and nothing more."

"Good luck convincing your little bitch of that."

I could hear the quiet, dangerous edge to Cage's voice when he spoke. "You were right about one thing." He dropped his hands to his side, letting Romeo see the gun in his hand. "I didn't come here alone."

Romeo chuckled. "Good thing I didn't either."

There was a clattering noise and the creak of a door pushing open. From the other side of the rooftop, near one of the emergency exits, poured out five big and bad men, armed with rifles of all sorts. Suddenly, the pounding of footsteps from the door I was standing next to cut through the air. The door was pushed open from the inside. I didn't get to see who it was. The door swung open with a heavy force and smacked me straight in my face. I couldn't get out of the way because I couldn't go anywhere.

Cage was gone when I regained my composure. So was Romeo.

The fighting began with the horrifying sound of bullets whipping through air. Romeo's men were enormous, but Cage's men weren't so little either. Through the commotion, I saw Nick and Heath somewhere in the mix. They weren't alone. I never got to meet the rest of the Crows (don't know why I'd even want to) but I had no doubt the ten men accompanying Nick and Heath was barely a fraction of the army Cage had.

Guns fired in every direction. Punches were thrown, bodies flew everywhere, and blood poured out. It was a glory of the display of egos and power. All in all, a terrifying scene to play out in front of the girl who was handcuffed to a damn water pipe.

Two men were fighting. They were too into destroying each other for the upperhand that they didn't see the edge of the roof coming closer with each movement. However, one of the men noticed it before the other. Right in front of my eyes, he stumbled over the ledge.

And fell fifty stories down. Screams rose up from the bottom with a faint, sickening thud.

I was too horrified by what just happened that I didn't notice Cage appear from wherever he had gone. Keeping a careful eye on the fighting, Cage pulled a key out of his pocket and pushed it into the handcuffs.

"Come with me." His voice was low and quiet, right by my ear.

I took one last fearful look as Nick barely dodged a bullet to meet Cage's determined eyes. He pulled the handcuff off the pipe and pulled me close, one hand on my back to guide me through the door. I could barely walk. My legs felt like they would give out at any moment.

Cage closed the door behind us, cutting off most of the noise from the rooftop. I turned to him, frantic for an explanation and an escape. He didn't provide the first one and the second was nothing more than a slim chance.

"Let's go this way." Cage said, slipping his hand into mine. We turned the corner and immediately turned right back.

"Let's not." I whispered in panic as the two of Romeo's men standing in the hall noticed us. A loud shout of angry Italian yelling made the hair on the back of my neck raise. Cage pulled me around a different corner and just in time to get us both out of sight as the men began running towards us.

"Go!" Cage pushed me towards one of the emergency exits. We were on the highest floor. On the rooftop, I could still hear the gunfire exploding. That wasn't an option. The only other way we could go was down to the lower floors, and that didn't seem like an option either. The lack of Romeo's men on the rooftop made up for the ones in the building.

The deafening crack of bullets being fired at us was enough to make me pee myself. I mean, I actually didn't pee, but I felt like it. I had a habit of getting that feeling when I was startled. Kinda like an animal. My first instinct was to- oh, never mind. Long story short, Romeo's men were trying to kill us and it was pretty much terrifying.

Cage shoved his gun towards me as we were running and pulled out another from his coat. "Here, take this. I'll hold them off for a moment. Find an exit and get outside-"

"Oh no, you are not!" I refused to let him leave. "I'm not leaving without you."

"You'll get killed!" Cage growled. Nevertheless, he stayed with me. We turned another corridor only to notice a man standing at the door at the end of the hall. When he saw us, he pulled out a gun. We ducked through an empty hall and into the surgery floors.

"And you won't?" I questioned angrily between heaving breaths. Cage pulled me into a room. The walls were cluttered with medial tools. A gurney stood next to a surgical table that was stained with blood. It was empty and dark. The lights were turned off. I could barely see my own two hands, let alone Cage.

We waited a moment in tense silence for any footsteps. When there was no noise except our own gasping breaths, Cage relaxed just a bit.

"No." He exhaled sharply, once more offering the gun to me.

When I saw that he wasn't giving up on the belief that I would actually have the courage to use a gun, I sighed and took it from him. Our fingers brushed for just a second. It was a wonderful second, full of everything that we should not be doing.

"I think we lost them." I whispered, glancing out the small window on the door I rested my back against. We could hear footsteps above and footsteps below with the distant thundering of bullets flying, but none of that made its way to the hall we were in. For a moment, and I had no idea how long that moment was going to last, we were safe.

Cage glanced through the window like I had, just to make sure. The movement caused him to come closer to where I stood. Pressing my back harder against the door to put a little space between us, I waited with clammy hands for Cage to move back. The faint, lingering scent of cologne stamped across his neck was enough to make me nervous.

Bad things happened when Cage Vickers and I ended up in a room alone. Especially in the dark. Desires had a way of becoming a reality.

Cage didn't move back. He didn't give me an inch of space to even breathe. That consuming body heat and wandering hands was what he was best at. Instead, one of his hands pressed against the door above my head and the other ended up somewhere along the vicinity of my stomach.

"You have done so many unforgivable things." His words gyrated on my lips. Cage bent his head down to my height, moving his hand higher up my bare skin. They were, as always, cold as his voice could be sometimes and sent trails of shock down my body. "I do not know how you survived this long, princess. You get under my skin like no one else. Sometimes..." I could hear the smirk in his voice. "...I don't know whether I want to kill you or kiss you."

I smiled right back, feigning a confidence that I didn't have. It was hard considering how badly my heart wanted to escape the confines of my chest. Trailing one finger along his rough jawline, I whispered in the most provocative voice I could manage, "I prefer breadsticks."

Cage completely stopped what he was doing and moved back, staring at me with the most amused look.

I cringed. Did I ruin the moment again? Yeah, I totally did. Dammit, it was so much harder trying to seduce Cage than it was to Nick. I couldn't help it. Words just slipped out when I got nervous. And Cage made me nervous. Very, very nervous. Of what, I had yet to figure out. This was like a repeat of the butter thing, except this time, people were trying to kill us.

"What planet did you come from?" He inquired curiously.

"The planet that has breadsticks." Since I had so royally fucked up again, I decided to just go along with it. Things could only get better, right?

"I'll kiss you later, when you're not blushing so much." Cage chuckled.

If anything, my face got redder. What's the difference between a tomato and me? Absolutely not one spiffing thing, unfortunately. "You can't even see my face."

Thank my lucky stars for that.

"No, but I imagine you're just as beautiful, princess." Cage murmured softly. If he was planning to continue making me turn to mush, I didn't get to find out. It was equal parts relieving and terrifying when the heavy pounding footsteps began right outside the hall. Cage stiffened, slipping so easily back into his antihero mentality. Just as Cage grabbed my hand, the door I was standing against suddenly shuddered as a bullet pierced through it. It barely went an inch above my shoulder.

A man entered the room. The light from the hall provided us the ability to see things again. He was one of Romeo's from the way he pierced us with a glare. Cage, without missing a beat, shoved me behind him and towards the door opposite of the room as he raised his gun at the same time. A bullet went off. I turned around just in time to see the man stumble to the floor.

"I guess that means naptime is over." Cage growled.

We slipped out of the room and down several halls without meeting anyone else. Cage kept his gun ready and aimed at anything that moved other than us. It was making me jumpy. Sweat trickled down my neck and my legs ached with the effort of running, but I kept on. We were now somewhere in the middle floors. The air seemed to get warmer.

"Hey." I stopped, noticing something at the door of one of the patient rooms. It was a medium-sized barrel made of wood. I recognized the object immediately. It was the same thing that was in the Crow's underground lair. They had a whole room stacked with it. "Is that gunpowder?"

Cage looked at it. A look of anticipation passed through his face before he composed it. It was the first time I'd ever seen Cage be something other than his detached self. The grip on my wrist tightened. At this point, I didn't care about the pain anymore. I just wanted to make it out of here alive. "Yes." His voice was low and dangerous. "Keep walking, November. We need to get out of here."

We went through several more halls and staircases. Cage got annoyed after a while because I kept stopping and looking into the patient rooms to make sure no one was left behind. So far, other than Romeo's men and us, the hospital building was empty. At this point, we were sweating buckets. It was getting hotter and hotter as we went down to the lower floors. More and more barrels of gunpowder appeared.

Cage pushed open a door. We both froze in our tracks. No wonder why it was so hot.

The room was on fire. The flames were licking their way up the walls, crumbling and destroying anything it touched. Pretty soon, the rest of the building would be the same.

I guess there was a dark truth to when Cage said Romeo was going to burn this city down.