My Boyfriend's Back chapter 13

Hey Tinsel Fairy, this is a combined Christmas and New Year's Day present. It's the NEW year (2003) where I am by about nine minutes. Happy holidays.

Er, you may want to re-read chapter 12 as this one picks up EXACTLY where that one left off...

I disclaim: if ownership of this gave me rights over Jason Cook, would I be here?

Rated: Quite nasty. Clint, please don't sue, even if your new movie (reportedly) is terrible.

Chapter 13

"Mom?" Belle repeated, shaking golden blonde hair out of her eyes and staring in disbelief at the beautiful woman before her. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Her hostess sighed, and put a hand to her head in a gesture that reminded Belle exactly of her mother.

"Belle, I know who you think I am, but I swear, I’m not your mother." The woman who resembled Marlena so exactly watched as tears started in Belle’s eyes, as the girl believe that her own mother was denying her. "No, Belle, don’t cry."

"I’m not," said Belle furiously, feeling the pain be submerged by the fury.

"Belle, I’m not you mom." The woman repeated more firmly. "I’m your Aunt Samantha."

Belle’s head flew up, and her blue eyes turned as hard as diamonds and as beautiful. "That’s not possible. Mom’s sister died before I was born."

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated," Samantha said with a smile. "In Salem, they usually are."

Belle did not return the smile. She was staring at a woman who looked exactly like her mother, but wasn’t. "The butler called you Miss Dimera. You’re not. You’re Miss Evans."

"Hush," Samantha took a step forwards, causing Belle to recoil and Spanner Joe to silently flex his muscles in a threatening way. Samantha sighed and ran a hand through her perfectly coiffured hair. "As far as the household knows, I’m Miss Dimera, the grown up niece of Stefano Dimera."

"Why do they think that?" Samantha was forcibly reminded of her twin sister as Belle’s beautiful blue eyes narrowed and she crinkled her nose.

She sighed. "That’s a long story."

Samantha watched as her niece chose a sofa to sit on and plunked herself down.

"I’m not going anywhere." Belle settled herself down, and signalled to Spanner Joe to relax, not noticing the smitten expression on his face. She knew that her aunt was a beautiful woman, as beautiful as her mother, but she did not realise Joe’s susceptibility to a pretty face.

"Well, it all began when the Salem Strangler stalked the streets all those years ago…"

The second bullet sped past Angelo’s cheek, just missing him by millimetres. He could hear Kirsten murmuring a Hail Mary above him, and the slight whimper that Harry could not hold inside, but ignored both. He was as silent as the grave, though he was hoping desperately that he wouldn’t be in a position to find out exactly how silent it was from the inside anytime soon.

The sniper, he decided, was deliberately missing. No one who had been chosen as an assassin by the Fettuccinis would be such a bad shot. However, that left the question: why miss?

"So you’re telling me that your death was faked?" Belle looked horrified, remembering the pain her mother had expressed at the loss of a twin sister. "It was all a lie?"

"Get down, now!" Angelo barked, putting his feet either side of the ladder and allowing himself to slide down faster than he could run, hitting the next landing with a thud, and reaching up to catch Kirsten as she slipped down the rungs and fell into his arms.

Belle’s Aunt Samantha sighed, "A necessary one. You don’t understand, Belle."

"No, I don’t," Belle’s expression was determined, resembling her father’s trademark scowl, "so explain it to me."

Spanner Joe sighed to himself, and found a comfortable seat. It was going to be a long night, and a very confusing one.

"My hero," Kirsten breathed as Angelo caught her slender body and lowered her to the next level of the fire escape. He did not respond to the words, perhaps did not even hear them, as yet another bullet darted past him and slammed into the wall.

He didn’t even grunt as Harry’s feet hit him in the back and Kirsten’s nails dug into his wrists as he dropped her down.

"Sorry," Harry muttered, as Kirsten gave him a dirty look.

Angelo didn’t reply. He didn’t know if they would make it down alive, let alone uninjured, and a slight pressure on his back wasn’t going to worry him while there were bullets whistling past his skull.

"So you’re telling me that your death was faked as you were part of a secret government agency that was set on destroying the Dimera clan from the inside, and you had to go undercover as Stefano’s long lost niece, the daughter of the sister he lost years ago, and you’ve stayed undercover working to bring him down until now?" Belle’s head was spinning. She glanced over at Spanner Joe, but he had fallen asleep, unable, after all the walking they had done, to stay alert enough to follow the intricacies of Salem relationships.

"Yes," Samantha replied shortly. "I’ve been Miss Dimera for longer than you’ve been alive."

The dizziness wasn’t going away. "But you know you’re really Samantha, my Mom’s twin sister, right?"

"Of course, Stefano’s brain washing techniques aren’t that good!" Samantha gave her niece a bright smile. Then it faded as quickly as it had begun as her gaze shifted from Belle’s face to the long windows looking out onto the garden. "I think you’d better go soon, Belle. My ‘Uncle’ will be back before it gets dark."

She considered this briefly, then crossed her arms and stared hard at her aunt. "I’m not leaving until you tell me where Shawn is."

"Oh dear," Samantha had stood up but quickly sat back down again. "I see you’ve inherited your father’s stubbornness."

"And my mother’s heart," Belle added swiftly. "So, where is he? What have you all done with the love of my life?"

The door behind Belle opened smoothly, and Stefano Dimera, in full Opera dress, strode in with a magnificence few could rival. He took one look at the small blonde girl sitting on his couch, and sighed, not noticing as Samantha slipped out another door or that Spanner Joe jerked awake at his post. "How did you find me this time, Isabella?"

Completely undaunted by the arrival of her family’s arch-nemesis, Belle stood up and stared him down, looking up to his eyes with a gaze of blue steel. "Where is he, Stefi?"

"Please don’t call me that!" Stefano was actually afraid of her. No one in Salem would believe it, but Belle Black of all people was the one Stefano knew would not hesitate to harm him, all because she thought that he knew where her precious Shawn Douglas was. Not that he did. "I don’t know."

Belle twitched a finger at Spanner Joe, and he rose slowly to tower over Stefano. "Are you sure?"

Stefano did not cringe, but only because his self restraint was masterful. He could barely keep the fear from his voice. "I swear on my children’s lives, I don’t know!"

Belle stared at him for long seconds. She believed him. She knew he could lie well enough to convince her parents, but there was no sign of lying in his eyes now. She doubted she could trust him, but she believed him all the same. "Have you seen him since the time when your John clone was revealed?"

"What John clone? I haven’t seen Shawn Douglas for months. I’ve been out of Salem. I hadn’t seen him when you shot me, and I haven’t seen him since." Stefano had to control a steady tremor that wanted to overrule his stiffness. He had faced many enemies, but none could scare him the way Belle could. "Isabella Black, I promise, I do not know where Shawn Douglas Brady is, where he has been or where he may be in the future."

Belle stared harder.

"Except that someone closely resembling him abducted Vicomtesse de la Fere in New York," he added quickly.

Belle scrunched up her nose and narrowed her eyes at him. He trembled. "Who?"

"My least pleasant and most spoiled daughter, Ivy; her mother is Lady Sarah Hamilton." Stefano sighed again, but elicited no sympathy from either Spanner Joe or Belle. "I am, in fact, quite grateful to Shawn Douglas for his abduction of her, if it was him. She really was a tiresome girl. Always getting into financial difficulties and begging me to save her from the big bad world…"

He jerked his head a little, and felt his heart surge with adrenaline. He was trained for this in every way possible. He would not fail on the eve of his triumph. If he did, and survived the sniper’s bullets, his Boss would make life so unendurable for him that he would pray to have died here on the fire escape with a beautiful woman in his arms and a friend by his side.

Even as he thought it, Angelo knew that he could not afford to lose that friend or this woman. If he died doing so, he would save Harry and Kirsten. He owed them that much. He could not explain what they had done to him that night, but Harry with his simple faith in mankind and Kirsten with her willingness to trust him after a horrific ordeal had changed something in him. He had told himself that he was not made for love, but perhaps he could die for friendship. The coldness that had encased his heart was melting even as his body cooled in the frosty night air.

It was rather a shame therefore that he might not live long enough for his heart to beat freely once again.

The next bullet found it’s mark, and though he emitted no sound, the impact sent him stumbling backwards, blood gushing from the wound in his arm.

"Angelo!" Harry half yelled, unable to stop himself, but though the sound should have drawn the sniper’s mark upon him, Harry was not targeted by the man on the roof.

"Shut up," Angelo bit out, keeping his voice level though the pain was bad. "It doesn’t matter."

"So he’s in New York?" Belle moved to leave. "Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?"

"Isabella," there was something in the Stef’s tone that stopped her dead in her tracks. "I don’t think you’re going to find what you expect."

Belle stared hard at him, waiting for him to continue.

The threat of Spanner Joe still lurked.

"He’s changed, Belle," Stefano had softened suddenly. He respected this girl, was a little afraid of her, but also admired her. She had guts, brains, a heart, and knew how to use them all. "And maybe not for the better."

A smile brightened Belle’s face. "Then I’ll just have to change him back then, won’t I?"

They were nearly at the bottom of the fire escape.

"When you hit the ground," Angelo started, clamping a hand down over his wounded arm as he watched the two lower themselves. His heart began to race faster. ‘Please, God,’ he thought, ‘not now.’ He fought back the pain, forcing out his final instructions past the sea of red that threatened to obscure his vision and envelop his mind and finished his sentence, "run for the street. Catch a cab if you can. If you can’t, just run like hell."

"What are you going to do?" Kirsten was only feet from the ground, and her worried blue eyes stared up at him with an emotion he didn’t want to explore.

Angelo drove back the pain with a mental thrust. He couldn’t fall apart, not now. "Keep you two alive by any means necessary."

"I don’t think I like the sound of that," Harry couldn’t say more as the ground knocked the wind out of him. He had missed his footing, and for a moment lay sprawled on the cold cement. Then Kirsten was by his side, and they scrambled up together.

She cast a glance back to where Angelo had last been, and saw nothing but darkness.

His voice came out of the night from above them, hot and fierce like a lion’s pant. "I said run!"

They ran as if every demon in hell had been unleashed onto their heels.

No more bullets sounded through the night air. There were no more terrifying breezes across their skin as they narrowly missed being shot. Only the sound of running feet on cold concrete and snatched panting breaths came to their ears.

"Are we safe?" Harry asked as he and Kirsten drew frantic breaths, six blocks later. Footsteps came lurching from behind them. "Run!"

"You know," the footsteps stopped, "some people would say that running from friends was a little rude, and that running from the sound of a stranger’s footsteps was more than a little paranoid."

Kirsten flung herself into the man’s arms. "Angelo! You’re safe!"

"Not until we get to Ms. Corleone’s," Angelo would never admit how comfortable and enjoyably it was to be hugged. Wild horses wouldn’t drag that out of him, but it was. His arm ached, he knew he was losing blood, and his heart was still beating erratically, but the world seemed a better place when he was being embraced.

Unthinkingly, Harry slapped a hand to his saviour’s arm, missing the wince of pain that flickered across his face in the darkness. "We owe you."

The grimace, like the wince, went unnoticed. "Then you can repay me by taking me to Ms. Corleone."

"Whatever you want." Harry did not like the way Kirsten was staring at Angelo. It was a bit too adoring for his taste. He would have preferred a look along the lines of tender friendship, not hero worship. Hers had too much of the latter and not enough of the former.

"How far is it?" Kirsten was marvelling at the warmth of the arm Angelo embraced her with as he spoke, barely paying attention.

"Kir?" Harry tried to think of a way that would not seem insanely jealous and possessive to remove Kirsten from Angelo’s arms, and failed.

"Oh," she started coming out of her trance, thanking God and all of his angels that the street lights were not bright enough to show the blush on her cheeks. "We’ll need a cab."

"I’ll hail one," Harry offered, but Angelo was already employing a faster method by stepping directly into the path of one the of New York’s famous yellow taxi cabs that frequented the half empty street, and refusing to budge so it had to stop or hit him.

It stopped with half an inch to go before colliding with his legs.

Kirsten never knew how much money Angelo had given the cab driver, a small Sikh man with a turban covering his dark head, but it had been enough for him to break every traffic law in existence, avoid any patrol cars and land them in Upper Manhattan in a matter of minutes. He never stopped smiling. Kirsten couldn’t have guessed that the wad of bank-bills now lining his pockets were enough to allow him to buy his own taxi, even his own company of taxis. All she knew was that in less time than it would have taken on the subway, Babe Corleone’s New York mansion lay sprawled before them.

Babe had never been one for simplicity, but she was elegant, and so was her home. In the best of New York styles, it was grand, elegant and precisely to the fashion of its day. Angelo, no student of architecture, only knew it was a beautiful building.

"I can’t believe we made it," Harry murmured, staring up at the house.

"Oh ye of little faith," Kirsten chided. "I," she added, turning to Angelo who was looking rather pale, "always knew we’d get here safely."

"Was that why you kept twisting around in the cab and muttering ‘we’re being followed, I just know it’?" He asked, with a grin.

Kirsten muttered something unrepeatable at him as the ‘butler’ opened the door before them.

"Where’s Mario?" With her head tossed back, hands on slender hips, blue eyes narrowed, Angelo had a sudden flash of remembrance as he stared at Kirsten that passed again as quickly as it had come.

"Where has she gone?" John stormed, pacing through the SPD hallway and marching into Bo Brady’s office with a scowl on his handsome face. "Where’s my baby girl?"

"John, please," Marlena laid a gentle hand on her husband’s shoulder, "you were the one that put in her jail. You can’t expect her to stay there. She is an Evans after all. She’ll do anything for the man she loves."

"She does love him, then," John murmured to himself, peaceful for a brief moment, thinking almost with regret of the days lost when he could wrap Belle up in his arms and keep her safe from the world, and her only interest in her Shawn Douglas was to do with playing doctor, or house, or tea party, or, John remembered fondly, one memorable afternoon, storming the Dimera mansion and rescuing her favourite kite with him.

Bo sighed. "We don’t know exactly where Belle is, John. I have every man out looking for her."

"I left her in your care, Bo!" John was agonised. His daughter had been on a mission to find her best friend ever since their return from Europe, and with her genetics nothing short of imprisonment was going to stop her, and she’d just proved that not even jail would hold an Evans-Black with a Horton-Brady-Kiriakis soul mate to rescue from danger.

"I know." The younger man had aged visibly in the months since Shawn’s disappearance. His still handsome face was more lined than it had been in July, and his dark hair was beginning to show the first silver hairs of his life. He was sagging under the weight of both his own grief and his wife’s, and though they knew Shawn had been alive recently, reports of him were not promising. He could be anywhere, doing anything, suffering the worst torments imaginable to man, and they were impotent. Not even Shane with all of his ISA connections had found him, and with each passing day, Bo and Hope found their belief in his return fading and with it, their own will to carry on. They could only imagine what was happening to their first born child, and shiver in fear for what might be.

"We’ll find her, John." Bo needed to find Belle for his own sake as well as theirs. He could not lose the girl who, in the months following Shawn’s disappearance, had begun to call him Papa Bo, blood not withstanding, as well as his own child.

John Black knew that, and felt comfort. Bo, like a true Brady, would let nothing stand in his way any more than Shawn would when it came to the women they loved.

The radio on his desk crackled, and Officer Perez’s voice came over clear and distinct. "Captain Brady? This is Delta Alpha Zulu Echo, we have a possible ID of Belle Black…"

A woman’s scream echoed through the house, and acting on pure instinct, Angelo’s hand shot out in a fierce punch to the butler’s face that sent the man reeling backwards.

Angelo ran past him into the house throwing the briefcase back into Harry’s arms.

Another scream echoed, and he turned to see a slender dark haired woman standing at the top of the stairs, and a short Italian man raising his fist to hit her across her already swollen face. Her long body trembled with fear and she shied away from the man who held her.

"Don’t." That word alone from Angelo’s lips could have frozen hell over.

The stocky man turned and saw a handsome dark haired youth, who could hardly have been twenty, but with the oldest eyes he had ever seen, staring up at him from beneath the ornate staircase.

"You gonna stop me, kid?" He snarled in his New York accent, broken yellow teeth showing through twisted lips, "You and what army?"

"I need an army?" Angelo’s eyebrow went up, the only non-speaking part of his body that moved.

Another scream, and then a fourth, a fifth and a sixth rang through the air around them. Angelo realised that the dark haired woman at the top of the stairs was not the only one under attack.

Without there seeming to be seconds intervening while he moved, Angelo leaped up the stairs and knocked the Italian backwards. He didn’t speak, just went to work pummelling the man down and out.

"Angelo!" Kirsten yelled from the floor below. "If you’ve knocked him out, move onto the next one!"

Harry was shocked, but then he saw Kirsten’s wicked grin. She was enjoying this. She knew those men, and she knew that they were the ones who had kidnapped her and hurt her. She wanted revenge for the physical and mental injuries done to her, but also for the insult to her family. Angelo was simply the instrument of the total destruction that would tell them all a simple message: Mess with the Corleones, or any of their clan, and expect to die. Brutally, painfully, and, above all, with merciless violence.

Angelo moved quickly, searching each room and time and again finding men assaulting women, hurting them, in some cases coming close to killing them, and in each case he returned their violence doubled. Though he could not know it, the Horton honourable habit of protecting and respecting women at any price was rising in his blood and his mind. He could not bear their abuse of these women. It wasn’t inhuman, it was all to human when he thought of all the venal, cruel, barbaric humans he had met.

With an expression so stiff it could have been set in stone, Angelo pounded his way through the members of the Fettuccini mob, Kirsten and Harry following in his bloody wake with all of the women he rescued behind them.

"Someone’s seen my daughter?" John barked, moving quickly forwards to the radio and watching intently as Bo answered the call.

"Perez, this is Brady," he responded impatiently, "is the ID reliable?"

"Saw her passport," the answer came back. "Definitely Belle Black, according to the airline stewardess."

"Airline?" Marlena had gone pale.

"Where the hell was my daughter going?" John’s face had gone purple. It was as if all the colour was transferring itself from Marlena’s face to John’s.

"She bought two tickets to New Orleans, round trip," Perez went on.

Bo’s expression became as intent as John’s. "When does she leave?"

"You don’t understand, sir," Perez sounded apologetic. "She’s gone. The flight took off this morning."

Squashing the feeling of impotence that rose in him and the sudden hope that came too, Bo asked, "Who was her travelling companion? Can the woman remember what he looked like?"

"Pretty unforgettable, she’d say," Perez’s battery was running down, and the sounds from the radio were weakening. "A big older guy, covered in tattoos, helped Miss Black out with some trouble she was having with a younger boy. She didn’t catch their names."

"Thank you, officer," Bo remembered to say, "good work. Over and out."

He turned to John. "The big guy was probably Spanner Joe. He broke out of prison with Belle last night. As far as I can tell, he’s harmless."

"But he was in jail!" Marlena shrieked.

"So was Belle," Bo pointed out rationally, "and he was only in for indecent exposure, not attempted justifiable homicide."

"She didn’t try to shoot Stefano again, did she?" Brady asked from the doorway, mildly amused by the situation, and not, as his parents were, terrified for his younger sister’s safety. "Tut tut, and after she promised me just now on the phone that she wouldn’t."

Marlena lunged towards him. "You heard from Belle?"

"She called Megan in case there was any news of Shawn," Brady moved inside easily, followed by his brunette girlfriend. "She said not to worry. She’s safe, and she’ll be home by late this morning at the latest."

John and Marlena settled back, relieved. "Thank God."

Bo’s eyebrow lifted. "What’s up with this afternoon?"

"Beats me," Brady answered, casually leaning back against the door.

Megan grimaced. "I know what’s today and she can’t be looking forwards to it anymore than me…"

"Time for us to go, Joe," Belle rose from her seat slowly, not noticing the relieved expression that spread slowly over her unwilling host’s face at her impending departure. She turned a bright smile on Stefano, one that forced him to stop himself from cringing back. "Mr Dimera, thank you for all of your help."

Belle took a slow step forwards, proving that Shawn was not the only one who could hide the iron hand beneath the velvet glove. "It’s been a pleasure, and, Stefi," he did cringe then at the nickname and at Belle’s cold expression as she moved forwards again, "if I find out you’ve been lying to me, I’m going to hunt you down and win myself another of those lovely gold medals the Mayor gives me every time I shoot you. Only this time," a final step bringing Belle eye to eye with her family’s arch nemesis, "it’s going to be extra big because of all the damage I will have done to you."

Striding past the startled butler with Spanner Joe trailing in her wake, Belle turned and threw back to him, "You better pray he is in New York, Stefano, and that’s my final warning."

"Where is she?" Angelo turned from his latest punching bag to the young red head that he had just saved. "Where’s Babe?"

"She’s in the Winter Room," she managed to say as his dark gaze seared her, as if he saw not her body but her inner thoughts and feelings, and judged her, "in the West Wing."

"Show me." His knuckles were cracked and bleeding, but he didn’t notice. The bullet wound was throbbing blood steadily out of his body, but he didn’t care. They would be the least of his worries if he had to tell his Boss that Babe Corleone had died at the hands of the Fettuccini mob, when he had been a hair’s breadth from saving her. The images that filled his mind of what his employer’s fury would be were enough to force his ‘fight or flight’ adrenaline hormone levels as high as any physical threat near him.

He followed the swaying form of the woman out of the room, and down a series of hallways, their floors lined with deep plush purple carpets, his features as he walked softly lit by antique wall lamps.

They stopped for him to rescue more of the attacked women, some of whom were fighting back by themselves and being beaten harder for it, others who curled up into balls and prayed for it to end soon, and steadily the entourage of followers behind him grew.

"She’s in there," the red head pointed, and Angelo stared along the way.

The room she had led him to was one which could have been described as a drawing room, but was more like an abattoir as Angelo looked into it.

Guns were being fired, but the bangs were censored by silencers on their barrels. Bullets whistled from one side to the other, and Angelo realised that far from abandoning the rest of the house to marauders, Babe had been attempting to save them all by holding off the worst of the attack herself with her most loyal bodyguards surrounding her.

He had seen pictures, naturally, of the tall, elegant, high cheek boned blonde Amazonian who fired bullet after bullet at the men who were trying to take her dignity, her life, and most importantly of all, her power away from her, but no picture could ever do justice to the expressive nature of her face.

It was with awe that Angelo glimpsed her features across the room and from behind her barricade, marred as they were by blood and the expression of complete ferocity that she showed as men fell around her and no more came forward, and with a strange need in his heart. He had seen strong women before, he had seen fierce women before, but they had been nothing to the reality of Babe Corleone, one time representative of the USA for the UND and now Capa of her own mob, fighting like a tigress with threatened cubs.

He was on the wrong side of the room, he realised. He was facing Babe, not looking at her back, which meant that the Fettuccinni mob members were directly in front of him. Realising that obtaining and using one of their guns against them would be no problem, Angelo smiled.

Ignoring the women behind him, he moved as silently as a stalking cat and quietly executed one of Babe’s enemies. Taking the gun, a heavy Magnum revolver, into his hand, removing the silencer that made its aim inaccurate and checking its ammunition, Angelo knew that with his next actions, he was making Babe’s fight his.

"Turn to face me, real slow," he hissed, watching as the surprised men swung around to find their lines infiltrated and a man with an anger as cold and dangerous as the North Atlantic staring down the barrel of a .44 at them.

Behind him, with more than a dozen furious women, Kirsten and Harry stood waiting with smiles of expectation on their faces.

"Now I don’t know what you think you’re doing here," Angelo was perfectly still, his eyes narrowed, his lip curled, unconsciously doing his best ever ‘Dirty Harry’ impression, and scaring the hell out of the mob before him, "but if you don’t leave immediately, there’s going to be trouble."

Babe fired another shot, and one of the distracted men hit the floor with a bullet in his head.

The sound of the falling body brought the others round again and then Angelo was facing off with only three of the nine strong gang. Thirteen others lay on the floor, dead or dying.

One fired at Angelo, and he dived out of the way, followed by the women and Harry.

Reaching around the corner of his grand piano barricade, wishing that bullets weren’t damaging its antique finish in a brief moment of aestheticism, Angelo fired at the mobsters, each the force of each shot recoiling and forcing back his arm.

With his assistance, Babe and her men were finally gaining the upper hand after their previous stalemate.

The number of breathing Fettuccini mobsters fell from nine to two.

Angelo stood up slowly, and watched as their guns emptied themselves at Babe’s end of the room, finally falling ineffectually on empty barrels. They scrambled for ammunition, but not before Angelo levelled his gun at them.

"Stop." Icicles had been hotter than his voice when he spoke. "You sons of bitches."

Having seen the effect that his unconsciously affected Clint Eastwood impression had had on the hardened criminals before him, Angelo took the impression further, only then becoming aware of repeating lines from a movie he could knew but could not remember ever watching. "Ah, ah, I know what you’re thinking." He glanced down at the gun and back up to men, a sardonic smile on his lips. "Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I’ve kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off," he looked down again at one of the men he had shot before, noting the damage done to the body, watching the two others’ faces blanch as they too registered its mutilation, "you've got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punks?"

If anyone had looked more scared that night, or praying harder to be lucky, it had been Kirsten tied to a chair and beaten by their fellow gang members. The remembrance turned Angelo’s heart to stone.

He didn’t want to fire in cold blood. That wasn’t his way, but his decision was made for him when one of them reached for the pistol of a dead colleague, and Angelo fired to save them all.

"Guess he was just too stupid to be lucky," he murmured, watching the beaten women take hostage the last mobster and Babe stalk her way over the battlefield like an Amazon queen walking through the jungle.

Babe, at six feet tall and with golden blonde hair falling down her back in bloodied waves, looked an older, taller, more worldly wise version of Belle, he thought. Then he thought, ‘Who the hell is Belle?’ and the memory slipped from his grasp again.

The survivors of the gang battle were all blood spattered, battle weary, exhausted and still wary of one another.

"Thank you," Babe nodded her acknowledgement of his part in her war. "Now, who the hell are you?"

"Aunt B!" Kirsten squealed, and threw herself at her aunt’s warm figure, not caring about the blood. "This is my angel. He saved me."

"Ma’am," Angelo stood perfectly still while Babe took him in: his expensive black clothes torn, bloodied and ruined by the night’s activities, his mussed dark hair, the gold earring that doubled as an identity marker and a fashion statement, the flat, lithe muscled tall body, and the dark eyes that a woman could drown her soul and her sins in.

The blood rushed from his head and his heart beat became erratic as his adrenaline levels fell.

‘Please, God, not now,’ he prayed as the world turned red for all the wrong reasons.

"And you are?" Babe repeated, blue eyes meeting brown, failing to recognise his face, but seeing in those eyes a look that was all too familiar to her. It was a look she saw every time she gazed at herself in a mirror.

Angelo managed one of his devastatingly wonderful smiles that turned even Babe’s bones to hot jelly. "Angelo Salvatore at your service, Mrs Corleone."

Then he passed out backwards in spectacular fashion, hitting the floor with a thud.

That was probably not the end of chapter 13. I can't make up my mind if I need another chapter to start here or not, so you may get 13B a bit later. Yep, I'm rambling. Like I said, happy holidays, and sweet dreams.