2. Gianna
CHAPTER 2
“Papa!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but my voice breaks as my vocal cords fail. Smoke fills my lungs, and for a moment, I misinterpret the stream of gunfire and the burst of broken glass as an explosion. I stare at the hole between my father’s eyes, and rather than dropping to the floor for cover, I stay seated and vomit all over myself.
His body lies between the dining chairs in an odd heap. His hand lays above his head. That slap never landed, and I wish it had. I wish we were still fighting over the Russian I’ll never marry.
A shrill, wailing siren rips through the room. My head splits open, and the pain in my mother’s cry digs so deep inside me that I think I’ve finally lost that battle I’ve been fighting with my mind for months. The frayed thread my sanity has been hanging from snaps.
Mama, please! I’m about to cry, to beg her to stop making that sound.
But I never get the chance. Another shot rips through the room, and she’s quiet too. Why am I still here?
Laser-focused eyes rip from my father’s corpse to the spot where my mother lies dead and slumped on the table. Golden brown hair spills out of her chignon. A thin river of blood pools beneath her, staining the lace tablecloth Violetta made her for Christmas.
Violetta—I pray to God she heard the commotion and hid.
I drag in heavy breaths, the scent of bile mixing with the heat of the gunpowder. Fyodor’s picture lays on the table, staring at me, perfectly unmussed except for two dots of bright red blood. I stare at the man's dark eyes and wonder if this is his doing. I look away from him, away from our killer. Neither deserves my last thoughts.
I watched this movie when I was a kid, where they projected the last image you saw before you died up on a screen. It horrified and fascinated me, leaving me to wonder what mine would be. I stare at the crucifix above the fireplace. The one carved by the nuns at the monastery where we attended church my entire life before it became Bouchard territory. That’s a good enough choice.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
“Don’t tell me you still believe that shit, Gianna. Hasn’t life been cruel enough to teach you anything?” The voice drips with disdain, reminding me of a boy who never believed in God, let alone feared him. A boy who never considered me worthy of a goodbye.
The deep familiarity of that voice stirs a disturbing, fluttering hope inside me. The sensation fades, ripping acute dread from my gut. The intensity stuns me in the face of the end-of-life adrenaline wracking my system.
I ignore the chastisement, past the point of embarrassment as my lips tangle around my prayer. I refuse to think of anything but those words and the shape of the crucifix on the wall. I pretend he’s a stranger. But I know him. I know him so damn well.
A delusional quality shadows my thoughts, slowing them. I can’t think through whatever is happening to me, can’t even wallow in my grief through the nothing. I think there’s a common word for this, but I can’t think of that either. My vulnerability becomes my entire being, shaking the foundations of myself I once considered solid but have been eroding beneath so much isolation and death. Bricks, like my tenacity and passion, slide on shifting sands.
“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” My lips trace and kiss the words like lovers, like hunger, thirst, and pain could and would all be quenched by them.
Hold them, Dante. These words I keep inside myself, but I know my brother hears. He wouldn’t leave them alone in death. He would never leave us if he had the choice.
Boots crunch across glass. The sharp twist and impatience of the steps conveys the determination of our killer.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
The footsteps come to a sudden stop. Heat radiates off the figure beside me. Cold metal presses into my skin before tipping my chin up. My eyes pinch closed.
“Open your eyes, Gianna. We don’t have a lot of time before the Russian gets here, and he won’t give a fuck if your parents are dead or alive. A deal is a deal, princess.” The words don’t mean much to me. My thoughts remain too fuzzy for anything but my prayer.
“Amen.” With a wordless heart cry, I plead with God to end my suffering quickly.
“Gianna.” Warm, patient, kind. I shake my head, forcing myself to forget the positive associations I have. The swell of love still aches in my chest. Something is terribly wrong with me.
“No,” I argue, shaking my head miserably as the hot tears drop across my skin. “It’s not you. You wouldn’t do this to me.”
I fucking love you. Why the hell do I still love you?
That grunt of male frustration stirs too much familiarity. It prickles my skin like heartsick need and agony. I’ll get past this and hate him more than anything. My stupid fucking heart just hasn’t caught up with reality. Hell, I can’t open my eyes and look at him. How can I face what he did and start to hate him?
Just kill me. It would be kinder to let me die than let my heart die this way.
“Kill me,” I beg him with everything I have left.
There’s a long, death-free silence.
“Gianna, fucking open your eyes.”
I don’t.
“Open your fucking eyes.”
He’s angry, and for some reason, I don’t want him to be. I need to go with my parents and be done with all this madness, but that last burst of self-preservation won’t let go.
I shake my head, and tears spill down my cheeks. They burn as they slide, and my mouth opens in a breathless wail. That stupidity protecting me partially breaks, revealing the truth of the matter. Nikolai Bouchard just killed my parents, and I’m the one who showed him this place. I lost my virginity to him here. No one other than our closest men knew its location before I exposed it to our enemy.
“I wouldn’t. I didn’t. Not here. Please not here.” I’m not making sense, but alongside the fear and pain, the guilt stands a good chance of eating me alive. “Kill me already. I’m dead.”
I fucked him on nearly every surface of this house so he could learn the layout. So he could choose the place where he killed my parents.
“You’re not dead. I will never let that happen. Your life is mine. Now, open your eyes. Look at me. I need to see you.” His voice wavers, and the raw need in his tone shakes something inside me.
Maybe I should look.
“Gi, open your eyes.” A hand knots in my hair, forcing my face up to him. My scalp burns, and the gentle kiss of metal runs down my cheek like a lover's caress. The tip of the gun presses into my chin like its owner wants to inspect my mouth, possibly deciding whether it’s the best point to blow my brains out from—it is.
The gun leaves my skin, scraping against the holster as he returns it to his waist. When I still don’t open my eyes, a slap lands against my cheek like the one my father intended for me, but it lacks the burn.
“Gianna, you are in shock. Open your fucking eyes.”
Nikolai Bouchard stands in front of me, dressed in all-black tactical gear, wearing the gun he used to kill my parents and holding me by my hair like an errant kid he’s tossing out of his yard.
“Did you just slap me?”
He has the audacity to smile at me from beneath his mask.
“Knew you were still in there, princess.”
“Why?” I manage to ask through the pain that’s somehow not quite as intense as the betrayal. All the betrayal around me. He used me. After all these years, I was sure he loved me, but this deranged fuck played a longer game than I thought anyone capable of.
“Because I had to.” His words hang between us like an already broken oath. “Don’t you fucking get that?”
“Kill me, Niko.”
His features contort, his lip raising. He yanks me by my hair until we’re face-to-face, and his mask skims my nose. “I’d shoot myself before I shot you, Gi. Now, don’t fucking ask me to kill you again.”
And with that threat thick in his tone, I disintegrate into soul-shaking sobs because there isn’t a chance in hell he and his father don’t have something wretched planned for me after what they just did to my parents.