Chapter 37 Aerin
AERIN
“Hey asshole.” Falco’s beaten face gazes up at me, blood leaking from several areas where skin has split under the impact of god knows what.
Just seeing him like this breaks my heart, but there’s no time to dwell on that.
I’m on limited time, and most of it was already wasted trying to hunt down where Falco was being held.
I hassled my father, tore his office apart, had Bullet pour through all accounts I could access, then when Rex delivered the same news to me that he gave Falco, everything made sense.
Falco was trying to protect me and my heart, distancing himself likely so he could take out my brother without hurting me too much.
I almost didn’t believe it. Ever since I can remember, Giacomo has been the only person on my side. It turns out he never was.
“Come on,” Rex barks behind me after delivering a lethal blow to the last guard in the room. “We have to go!”
“Aerin…” My name practically pours out of Falco’s mouth with a stream of blood, and I place my trembling hand against his wet, bruised cheek.
“I’m here. I’m here and we have to go, okay? Can you do that for me? Can you?” The gun weighing down my other hand clatters to the floor as I reach for the blood-soaked bindings keeping his wrists locked together. Behind me, Rex and Bullet clear the room then stumble to stop behind me.
“One more,” Bullet says, raising his gun.
Suddenly, gunfire rises out of the smoke from the explosion and I throw myself over Falco, covering his body with mine as the bullets ping in all directions. Once they stop, I peer up and glimpse something that makes my heart ache like every beat is worsening a bruise on the surface.
It’s Giacomo. He’s sprinting away through the door hanging off its hinges and heading deeper into the warehouse.
“I’m on it,” Bullet barks and he’s sprinting after Giacomo before we can say anything.
“Shit,” Rex curses. “Bastard never sticks to the damn plan.”
“Aerin?” Falco wheezes underneath me.
I quickly pick myself up and return to untying his bindings, resorting to using Rex’s knife to slice through them, then together we help Falco to his feet.
“Can you stand?” I ask as he sways and leans heavily into me.
“I-I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Believe it,” I mutter. “We don’t have time for—”
Falco’s good hand suddenly presses against my cheek and his touch rapidly silences all thoughts in my head and words on my tongue. He’s staring down at me with his only visible eye, and his jaw wobbles as he tries to talk.
“I-I’m sorry.”
Warmth suddenly surges behind my eyes and tears threaten at the corners. “Don’t,” I choke out. “Not here. After. I promise.”
“Promise,” he repeats.
“Hold up,” Rex barks and he throws himself away from us and toward the wall. “Someone’s coming.”
“Shit.” Unable to abandon Falco as he struggles to find his balance, I crouch and pick up my gun then stand half in front of him with all my attention locked on the hole we blew through the back door.
“What the fuck is going on in—Aerin?”
“Dad?”
“Aerin, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Me?” My gun wavers slightly as he steps through the hole. “You’re supposed to be at dinner with Mom.”
“We cancelled because I had to come here and—” Dad freezes as he makes the last step into the room and Rex, pressed flat against the wall, presses the barrel of his gun to Dad’s temple.
“Sorry,” Rex says. “But don’t move.”
“What the hell is going on?” Around Dad, his guards pour in like a black river, and they surge into the room with their weapons raised and trained on me, Falco, and Rex.
Rex doesn’t blink. “Ask your men to stand down.”
“The fuck I will.”
“Dad please!” I yell and my arm wobbles. “We don’t have time for this! The longer we stand here, the further away Giacomo gets!”
“Explain!” Dad barks. “Explain this betrayal, Aerin. Haven’t you broken your mother’s heart enough with that…” He glances down at my stomach and anger surges through me.
Coming here, risking my life and my baby, is worth it for Falco because I won’t let the man I love die for my brother.
My brother, who I loved and admired since I was a child.
He’s turned his back on me, spent these past months trying to kill me, and even twisted the wedding to his own advantage.
It was painful and I spent a good few hours bawling into my pillow after Rex told me.
But once I calmed down, the revelation taught me one thing.
Falco cares. He risked his life for me when he didn’t even know me. He gave me a new lease on life, and I’m returning the favor.
“Look, Dad. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but you have to trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing. It wasn’t Falco, and I’m not saying that because I love him—”
Dad gasps in horror.
“I’m saying it because you’re about to make the worst mistake of your life.
It was Giacomo, okay? The drug theft? The attempts on my life?
Hell, it was even him that worked behind you to stoke this war with the Irish in the first place and I can prove it, okay?
The man beside you, Rex, he’s a friend and he’s been helping me and Falco—”
“Enough!” Dad yells, but it immediately triggers a coughing fit. He covers his mouth as one guard steps closer to him, their weapon trained on me.
“No, enough from you!” I yell back, even as pain floods me at how frail he suddenly looks.
“Even helping me stand up to you about the wedding was part of his plan because if I have no husband, there’s no one to stop him from killing us both!
Don’t you see, Dad? You’ve spent all this time torturing and breaking Falco and what’s happened?
Have the Irish stopped killing our people?
Have they pulled back? Did they even get the drugs recovered from the warehouse? ”
Dad finishes his coughing fit and lifts his head, but before he can speak Falco suddenly places his hand on my shoulder and limps forward.
“We could stand here all day and debate this,” he croaks, his voice rough. “But he’s getting away and I’m going after him.”
“No!” I spin to face Falco and grab the shredded remains of his shirt. “You can’t! Look at you, Falco, you’re far too—”
Gunshots suddenly ring out deeper in the warehouse and Falco clutches my face, drags me in for a hard, wet kiss then he’s sprinting away as fast as a hobbled man can. Out through the door Bullet raced through only minutes ago, and toward the gunshots.
“Falco!”
“Aerin!” Dad barks, pushing his guard out of the way. “You need to tell me everything.”
I hesitate for a moment and lock eyes with my father, then I turn and chase after Falco. Thundering footsteps behind tell me that my father and his men are following, but I don’t have time to look.
Panic fuels me, mingling with the adrenaline surging through me and numbing any pain of exhaustion that threatens to slow me down. With my eyes locked on Falco’s retreating back, I race after him.
We head down a long corridor, around a corner, through two doors and up a set of stairs that set my thighs ablaze.
The path takes us back out onto the warehouse floor where Bullet lies flat on the ground with Giacomo standing over him, panting.
Blood pours from a split on his brow, indicating that Bullet got a few licks in before he went down.
“Bullet!” I scream, horrified that his motionless form is another death I’ve caused just by association.
My scream makes my brother jolt in fright and he lifts his head, his eyes widening as he spots Falco sprinting toward him like a crazed bull.
“What the fuck?” He raises his gun but doesn’t have time to get a shot off as Falco collides with him with all the force of a runaway boulder and the two of them crash to the ground.
“Bullet!” As the fistfight between Falco and my brother rolls away from Bullet, I sprint toward his body and collapse down to my knees beside him. The pain of landing doesn’t even register as I grab his shoulder and roll him over.
Blood pools on the ground beneath his body. His eyes are closed and a dark crimson stain spreads across his chest.
I gasp. “Damn it all.” Abandoning my gun, I raise my hand and press my fingers to his neck and my stomach somersaults into knots.
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t tell me I got someone else killed.
A sluggish, weak pulse flutters against my fingertips and relief momentarily pours through me. He’s still alive. Thank god.
Relief is short-lived as a cry of utter agony rises from Falco, and I look up in time to see him crashing to the ground as Giacomo cruelly twists on his broken fingers.
On any given day, a fight between them would be over in a matter of seconds. Falco is bigger and much stronger, but he’s so terribly injured that every punch from my brother is worth ten. Every blow is amplified and his weak state drags him back down to the floor again and again.
But Falco keeps getting back up.
No matter how many times Giacomo’s fist or boot crashes into his body, he keeps getting back up.
But he’s slower.
I can’t stand by.
Snatching my gun up from the floor just as Rex sprints through the door, I point to Bullet and run toward Falco.
“Help him!” I yell to Rex. As my gaze lingers momentarily on him, Rex looks utterly torn over who to help, but in the end he follows my request and runs toward Bullet.
“Giacomo!” I yell as Falco crashes down to the floor again. “Stop! You have to stop!”
Falco doesn’t get back up this time and Giacomo stands over him, panting furiously with both fists clenched. He raises his fist and I raise my gun as I trip to a halt. “Stop!”
Giacomo hesitates and his narrow eyes slide to me. “You wouldn’t shoot me.”
“Wouldn’t I?”
“You’d shoot your own brother?”
My voice wavers. “You didn’t care when you were trying to kill me.”
“But not by my own hand. That’s different.” He lowers his fists and holsters his gun, then he steps over Falco’s bloodied form and approaches me slowly. “I’m your brother, Aerin. Look at me. You can’t hurt me.”
My grip tightens on the weapon, but with each closing step doubt sneaks into my mind. I’ve never killed someone with intent before. Never harmed someone with purpose.
“Stop,” I gasp. “Stop moving. Stop talking. It’s over!”
“Is it?” His lips pull into a smirk. “Do you really think I don’t have a way out of this? It’s bad enough that I spent years rolling over because Father named you the heir. Do you really think I’m going to keep rolling over and hand myself in because you ask me to?”
He steps forward and I stumble back. “Giacomo…please.”
“Go on,” he sneers. “Shoot me. Save your little boyfriend. Oh but wait…” He touches one hand to his lip.
“If you kill me then there’s actually no one to save your boyfriend.
Because without me to hang out to dry, someone has to take the fall, and do you think Father will admit that I did all of this right under his nose? ”
“Stop!” My voice is weaker, the word escaping me in a gasp as a lump forms at the base of my throat. “I don’t care what you say because I—no!”
In a swift move by swinging one arm up and the other down, Giacomo’s hands collide painfully with my wrist in such a blow that my fingers loosen and the gun slips from my grip. It clatters to the ground. In the same movement, he removes his gun from his waist. “Oops.”
Coldness drenches me as I stare down the barrel of the gun, my brother’s face twisting into a maniacal smirk just behind.
It’s over.
I lost.
“Why?” I croak softly. “What did I ever do to you?”
The gun tilts as he shrugs. “Exist? Say hi to Pidge for me.”
There’s a bang.
A single gunshot and I stare in utter shock while waiting for the pain to hit, but it never does.
In the same instance that Giacomo pulled the trigger, Falco surged up between us with my fallen gun clutched in his hand and knocked Giacomo’s arm out of the way, causing my brother to shoot nothing but air a few inches away from where I stand.
Then, Falco’s arms come around me much like they did the very first time we met, and I stare up into his eyes.
He spins us around, placing my back between him and Giacomo, and a second gunshot rings out. A beat of silence passes, then the heavy thump of a body hitting the ground behind me reaches my ears, followed by the clatter of a gun.
I blink. Unshed tears are spilling down my cheeks. Falco’s other arm wraps around me, and he pulls me tight against his broad, bleeding chest.
I can’t speak. Distantly, my father cries out amidst an echo of thundering footsteps, but none of it matters.
Falco’s eye darts about my face as if he’s taking in every detail and imprinting it to memory, then his lips crash down against mine.