CHAPTER NINE
I whipped my head to my left where the opening to the alley lay. A hulking shadow of a man stood in the entrance. He had curved horns atop his head and a flat, round nose on his face. The man wore a soiled shirt and ripped pants, and the wooden handle of a knife stuck out from his waistband. His heavy black boots clacked ominously against the cobblestones as he strutted toward us with a leer on his lips and a dangerous twinkle in his eyes.
He stopped a few feet from us and grinned. “I wonder what your important friends would say if I asked them for some money for your ‘protection?”
Luca smiled as he rose to his feet and turned to face our new foe. “They would say I was hardly worth a penny.”
The man chuckled. “Would they now? What about your life? What’d they say
