Pyotr’s men surrender at once.
Liam’s do not. And within fifteen minutes, the halls of the compound are littered with Irish corpses. The Russians Liam bought leave the minute they’re permitted, and my men see them out to their fleet of cars, picking off stray Irish guards where they appear out of the woodwork. Lucky, I think, more than once, as I pick my way over the bodies, rifle leveled, eyes narrowed for enemies. Lucky, those Russians didn’t decide to hold up to that cheap loyalty, or we’d be outnumbered and truly, seriously fucked.
We could tell even from the road what had happened. At once, the Russians and the Irish lowered their rifles. Their demeanors changed, and they began to interact more cordially. The way they all left the compound at once, too, didn’t escape my notice—they were dismissed.
And Ariana was not among them.
Clearly, Liam had bought them out. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. That is, except for Ari. Will Liam kill her, I wonder, as I stalk through the halls. An Irish guard marches into sight, and I snipe her easily before she’s even swung up her own rifle. Her head jerks back, and she crumples, soundless, motionless, on the blood-streaked tile. Will Liam McNamara torture her? Will he make an example of her, I wonder?
Some part of me grieves. Ari is a lost soul. In another life, I am her. I suppose, in some ways, we really aren’t so different, after all. But unlike her, my men have stormed this compound. We have won already. There is just one formality left to handle.
Liam himself. The Russians told me where to go. I left Gio to man the front while I sought him out.
I insisted I go alone.
And now here I am, alone. Gliding like a shadow through the dark halls, my heart beating faster than I’d care to admit. Because somewhere in this building is Kate.
And this is the last time I will ever see her.
There are bargains we strike with ourselves in life. There are bargains we make with the universe. This one is mine: I will kill Liam McNamara. For my father. For my men. For my organization and my legacy, and everything the Romano name has ever stood for. I have no choice; I must kill him.
But I will not take Kate back with me to Italy. I will leave her here and appoint her as head of her late father’s organization. I know now just how handily she can deal in empires. I know what she’s made of, and she is a formidable enemy. She will make a brilliant ally. Granted, one that will always loathe me. It’s an exchange, nothing more. Her father’s life for hers. Everyone wins.
Do we, though? Does she? Do I?
Because, in truth, if it were up to me, all of this would go a different way. If it were up to me, Kate McNamara would be leaving this compound, this country, with me today. No matter the cost, no matter her feelings, no matter the grudges she would hold over me. I would take her. Force her.
Because I am not ready to let her go. Too late. There is honor among thieves, the good ones. This is the best that I can give her, and I know it’s not enough. But it’s better than nothing. Her freedom she can keep. She will never again have to sleep in the same bed as her father’s murderer. She will be set free of me, and my debt to my father will be paid.
I reach the office, and the doors are closed, the Russians having already left their posts. I hang back a hallway away, pull a silencer from my pocket, and screw it on. Discreetly, I release two rounds, taking out the only two guards at the door. They fall into twin piles on the floor, silent, dead, blood rapidly pooling beneath them. I feel nothing looking at them. I am vacant and cold. Dead inside.
Knowing that this is the beginning of the end for Kate and me.
I take a breath. I know whatever happens next will happen quickly. And I know, if I am not careful and exceedingly lucky—whatever happens might also end in my dying. I should have brought backup. But it’s not the first time I’ve let my pride endanger me. And if I survive today, I’m sure it won’t be the last.
It’s time.
I kick open the door.
The sight that greets me is certainly unexpected. Liam McNamara, looking horribly pale and ill, stands at the head of a huge conference table. He’s flanked by a handful of armed guards, none of whom seem concerned with what is before them—before me.
Kate. Kate. When I see her, the cold falseness of my reality melts away. Everything brightens. The colors of the room, the lights. I see her with a sudden and astounding clarity: her sweet, tired eyes; her dark honey hair; the surprise on her face at seeing me. The relief. Bare, evident, shameless. She’s happy to see me. Me. After everything. Knowing why I’m here—she is still pleased to see me.
Is that love?
“Luca,” she whispers, and her eyes are bright with tears.
It’s then I register Ari. She stands at Kate’s side, rifle hanging limp in her hand—why? I notice immediately that her finger is on the trigger. Yet she’s not firing. The rifle has an empty magazine.
And it all makes sense, then. Liam orchestrated this. Every bit of it. He had Ariana armed with an unloaded gun by her men, which the men bought out. Brilliant, really, I think, with resentment. But, of course, he did. How the hell else could he let her in here, armed, with Kate under her control? He would never do that. He is an orchestrator. He is a puppet master.
And for everything he has done, he has to die.
But in an instant, I go to raise my pistol—Ariana runs.
She takes Kate by both shoulders and hurls her forward, slamming her into the table so hard I hear Kate cry out. It’s distraction and obstruction enough—the minute she’s done it, Ari is blasting out of that room like a cat on fucking fire. And it’s not my job. Not my duty. I am here to kill Liam McNamara. I must kill him…
That woman just had a rifle aimed at Kate. Her finger was on the trigger. Kate looks at me over her shoulder, her face pale and full of terror. She has one hand clutching her stomach, and I don’t know how I know it, but I do.
At that moment, I feel it. I feel her. Kate. The Kate I stupidly, stupidly, blindly fell in love with. The Kate I admire and respect.
The Kate I cannot let go. Is she? Could she be? Is she carrying my child?
Does this change everything?
No. It doesn’t change one thing. Ari—my ally, the woman I brought into Kate’s life—just attempted to kill my wife.
And for that, she dies.
I wish I could take Kate in my arms. Hold her. Ask her for forgiveness. I wish I could clutch her close and apologize: for it all. Taking her, demanding of her, marrying her. Falling for her. Endangering her. Abandoning her. Would she believe me? I know she would. Would she forgive me? Yes—it’s in her nature. She loves me. And that’s how I know I will have a chance to come back to her.
But I may never have a chance to stop Ariana again. So I run after her. She’s a split second ahead of me, moving faster than I thought her capable of. Her boots pound the tile, and she rounds a corner, bent forward, running hard as an Olympic athlete. Does she know where she’s going? I don’t. But I follow blindly. Because this is my mess. My mistake. And I’ll be damned if I expect someone else to clean up after me.
Ari hits a long hall with no turns and no shelter. I swing my rifle up and fire. But running, I miss badly, speckling the ceiling with bullet holes. Plaster falls in a dusty white rain, and before I can aim again, Ari busts through a steel door and out into the rain.
I’m on her heels, running so hard that all I can hear is the quiet, contained thunder of my own pulse. The door leads to a steep kind of lot, asphalt black and slick with rain. Ari is already down it by the time I break through the door, and she’s already ducking into some kind of hangar-like building. Rain crashes hard angrily on the corrugated steel roof. I aim, peeling off a few more rounds.
This time, one hits. Ari staggers, slamming into the door to the hangar, gripping her shoulder. Even from a distance, I see blood pouring between her fingers. But by then, she’s already through the door.
“Fuck,” I bite out, racing down the steep incline. Her blood is on the door handle. I yank it open and rush inside, only to be greeted by gunfire. “Fuck!”
I dive behind a parked vehicle hidden under a tarp. There are dozens, some sleek and low, some huge and hulking. And as soon as the gunfire—Ari’s, ostensibly—goes silent, so does everything else. I’m breathing hard on the concrete floor with my back against the tarp-covered car. I listen, straining to hear footsteps. Nothing. Wherever she is, she’s hiding. And she has the advantage of knowing where I am.
Fuck. This was a bad call. This was a mistake. I swallow, wiping rain from my eyes, shoving my hair back from my forehead impatiently. “Ari,” I call out after a moment. “Haven’t you had enough of this, hm? Aren’t you tired?”
She ignores me, or else has vanished. I turn, debating, then decide to risk it—and stand. Pop, pop, pop! Bullets shred through the tarp, and I drop like a rock. Got you, I think, smiling. I know what direction the fire came from. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to pick her off with so little to go off, though. This is going to be risky; however, the fuck it goes down.
“Give up,” I call, knowing I can rile her. “You didn’t really think this was going to work, did you? Think about it. Every move you’ve ever made, you’ve been too slow—someone is always a step ahead of you.” I wait for answering shots, but they don’t come. “Look how close you got today. Admit it. It’s the closest you will ever get, and it wasn’t enough. You will never be enough.”
No gunfire. But I can practically feel her rage, taut, twisted up tight. A coiled snake snapping its tongue, hungry to strike.
“You were right, by the way,” I add, creeping in a crouch to the back of the car. I peer out, just over the edge: and there, spot her. She’s arranged on a metal staircase around a corner and some distance away. The rifle is raised in trembling hands, picked, no doubt, off one of the Irish bodies abundant in the hallways we fled through. She turns the nose of the rifle in a slow, searching half-circle. She doesn’t know where I am. “I am in love with Kate.”
The tendon in her neck stands out in anger. But she says nothing, only presses her eye to the scope and waits patiently. And some part of me aches, then. I see Kate in her, too. We are similar, the three of us. We’re not our fathers.
And this war is over. I realize then: I cannot kill Liam. Why the hell did I think I could? My men will not walk away from me. My men respect me. I’ll make them respect me. Because I can’t lose Kate. I don’t care if our marriage began as a sham. An arrangement. A contract. I don’t care about the war of our fathers; mine would be far more shamed to think of his empire falling. Not like this.
I meant what I said. I do love Kate. And if my hunch is right, if she’s pregnant—there’s no way in hell that I can walk away from her. And I think—I hope—that she feels the same.
Crack! I turn the slightest pivot and thank God I do. The bullet catches me straight in the collarbone, so hard I fall back against the car. Pain explodes through me, blinding, vibrant. Painting my vision full-red as blood pours over my chest. I slide to my knees, grasping my collarbone, alarm bells clamoring violently in my skull. Get up, get up, get up. But when I grasp the rifle, my fingers are slippery with blood, and I miss the trigger, and I can’t hardly aim—
I lock eyes with Ari. She’s standing on the stairs, gazing down at me. Regal. Lethal. A force to be reckoned with, and yet this is her reckoning. Even if she succeeds in killing me now, like this—she doesn’t make it out of this compound alive.
Fuck. Kate. Protect yourself. Take care of yourself. Raise our child…No. I can’t just leave her. I can’t just resign myself to death. I didn’t take care of anything for her. I didn’t write her into my will and estate. I didn’t know to create something for a future child…
But my limbs are so heavy. My body is already so beaten, so bruised, so bone-deep exhausted. Ari is walking toward me, curt confident steps that rattle the metal staircase until she reaches the concrete floor. My heartbeat rages. I fumble with the rifle again, but I’m useless, losing blood so fast I can’t see straight. She missed on purpose. For an instant there, she had a clear shot. It’s the second time that Ariana has shown me mercy, and for the same reasons, I think that I have shown her mercy.
When I raise my eyes and meet hers, she has the rifle back up to her nose, and her finger is on the trigger. Neatly, coldly, she kicks the rifle straight out of my hands and lets it clatter to the concrete.
“Last words,” she says sharply. There is something forlorn in her tone. “We die together today, Luca. At least there is some poetry in that.”
“You could have been great,” I say, after a moment, looking up into her one dark, visible eye, looking into the barrel of her rifle. Looking at death. “You could have been something.”
Pop! Blood rockets from her temple, and like a light switched off, her gaze goes instantly blank. She wobbles slightly, then crashes onto her side, dead, looking emptily into the distance.
I turn. Kate stands in the doorway of the hangar, pistol still raised, clasped in both hands, one eye squeezed shut. A faint, almost imperceptible wisp of smoke trailing from the barrel. Her eyes meet mine, and then she’s marching to my side.
It’s when she reaches me that the last of my strength and will deserts me. I tip forward, more grateful than I could ever express, when she catches me, falling to her knees and pulling me against her.
“They’re coming,” she says, cradling my head, looking brightly down into my eyes. “Look at me, Luca. Look at me.’
I do, but it’s almost impossible. She’s haloed in light, somehow, and blurring at all of her edges. She brushes her hand over my face and moves my hair out of my eyes. “You got her,” I say, my voice rough and far away. “Good shot.”
“Better than you.” She smiles, but her eyes are wide and brimming with tears. One falls hot onto my jaw. “Help is coming. The doctors are coming right now. You’re going to be OK.”
Red creeps in at the edges of my vision. “How do you know?”
“Because you’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever met in my life.” She bends down and presses her lips to mine, and a weight releases at once from my chest. “Luca.” Her breath stirs so softly against my lips, my face. I forget where we are. We could be in bed in the villa, snow dancing at the window. We could be entwined, naked, our tongues entangled. We could be happy and safe, together. All bets off. All expectations burned away. Alone, us, together. “I know that you know.”
“Hm,” I say. It’s all I can muster. The pain has already blown away, and I’m relaxed now, and in my mind, I know that can’t be, that shouldn’t be, that means this is serious, something is wrong. Ari was a good shot, too. Did she nick an artery? Splinter a bone into an organ? Did she know I would die slowly, or would she have done it? Would she have put a bullet straight in my skull if Kate hadn’t appeared to save me? “What do I know?”
But I do know. Deep, deep in my mind. And when she says it, everything in me wakes up. She bends close, her hair a soft golden curtain. Her lips are against my ear, her breath. I feel flawless there. I feel safe like she’s got me.
It’s how I’ve felt, I realize, since I met her.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers and lets the words hang there between us like fragrance, like spring wind. A child. A legacy. A life. And it’s ours. Going to be ours. Our first step together as a real couple. “You’re going to be a father, Luca. You have to hang on. Promise me. I know you’re a fighter.”
“So are you,” I tell her, finding the strength to raise my hand, bloody, and slide it gently into her hair. When she sits back, our eyes meet, and my body fills with warmth. “I wasn’t going to do it.”
Tears spill down her cheeks. “Luca…”
“I changed my mind,” I say, and I mean it, and I want her to know because if I die, I can’t have her think I would have seen it through. Not after I realized how I truly felt about her. Not after I realized that what we had was real, that it could be real enough to bring a baby into this world. “I promise you that I did.”
“I believe you,” she says, and by the heartbreak in her voice, I know that she does. “You don’t have to promise that, Luca. Just promise you’ll stay alive. Promise you’ll fight as hard as you can. Please. Please.” She brings my hand to her lips. Her tears fall on my fingers. “Please, Luca.”
I can hear something somewhere: a clamor and footsteps, shouts. Kate clings to me, even when they try to move her.
Determinedly, stubbornly as ever, she stays at my side. Even as the darkness comes swirling in, even as my eyes grow too heavy to keep open even a second longer, she’s there.
She’s there, and it means more to me than I could ever say.
