Chapter 6 #2
“To where?” she asked gently. “A hospital? With Nico’s men everywhere and police crawling all over this mess by morning?
Your clubhouse?” she laughed then, which was quickly followed by a pained cough.
“Vienna, don’t delude yourself. I wouldn’t be seen dead at your clubhouse, and half your men would rather spit on me than let me through the gates. ”
“I—”
“Besides, I wouldn’t make it that far, and we both know it.”
“Who knows it?” I snapped. “I don’t know it. You certainly don’t.”
“I do.” Her fingers found my wrist, weak but certain. “And so do you.”
I shook my head because I couldn’t agree with her.
Not with this. Not when Gabriella was somewhere out there, alive and terrified and probably waiting for me to bring her mother back.
Not when that girl had spent ten years bleeding herself dry to keep this woman breathing.
“Gabriella would kill me if she found out I was even contemplating leaving you here.”
Michelle smiled then, and it broke something in me.
“No, she won’t. She’ll hate you for a while, maybe.
She’ll hate herself more, because that’s what my girl does.
She takes every awful thing and finds a way to make it her fault.
But you listen to me, Luke. You listen to me properly for once in your ridiculous life.
I cannot be the reason she stays trapped.
Not anymore. She has been hurt again and again because of me.
She stayed because of me. She let that monster put his hands on her because of me.
She made herself smaller, colder, harder, because she thought if she could just survive a little longer, she could save me too. ”
“Michelle…”
“No,” she said, her voice sharpening for one last moment, and God, there she was again.
Gabriella’s mother. Harley’s old lady. “You do not get to argue with me about my own daughter. I know what she gave up. I watched her do it. I watched her walk back into rooms she should have run from because I was still inside them. I watched her smile at men who disgusted her because she thought it might keep Nico calm enough to leave me alone. I watched her become a ghost in front of me, and every day I begged God to take me so she could leave without looking back.”
My throat closed.
“I should have been brave enough to end it myself. I should have followed Harley when I had the chance. But damn it, I was selfish enough to stay. To want more time with her. Ask her what happened here, Luke. Don’t let her shut down.
Don’t let her turn cold and bitter. Get her to talk and open up.
Help her process. Help her forget me and everything about this place. ”
Her fingers tightened around me. “But do something for me first. Please.”
“Anything.”
“I don’t want to bleed out on this floor. I don’t want Gabriella to come down here and find me like this. I don’t want her last memory of me to be another thing she failed to save.”
Dante went very still beside us.
I knew what she was asking before she said it.
And I hated her for it. And I hated that it was the only real choice she had left.
“Anything but that. Don’t ask me to do that.”
“I am asking you because I trust you.”
“That’s a terrible reason. I make awful decisions.”
“You love her,” Michelle whispered, tears slipping into her hair. “And because you love her, you’ll do what I couldn’t. You’ll free her from this place and make her live again.”
I stared at her for a long moment, trying to find another way, another answer, anything that didn’t end with me putting a bullet in the mother of the woman I loved.
“Tell her I’m sorry,” she said. “Tell her I loved her more than anything. Tell her she was never supposed to save me. Tell her she already did.”
“No.” The word escaped before I could stop it. “No,” I repeated, shaking my head. “No, absolutely fucking not. We are not doing this.”
“We’re running out of time here,” Dante said, moving closer to look at Michelle’s wound.
“We’re leaving,” I said in response. “Help me pick her up.”
“Luke—”
“No. We’ll carry you.”
A sad smile touched her lips.
“We’ll carry you,” I said again, more firmly this time. “Dante weighs roughly the same as a small planet and I’ve carried him plenty. Between the two of us, we can get you upstairs.”
“Luke.”
“We’ll get you to the cars.”
“Luke.”
“We’ll find a doctor.”
“Luke.”
“We’ll—”
“Stop.”
The word wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be.
“Look at me,” she whispered.
I was looking at her.
That was the problem.
I could see how much blood there was and how pale she’d become. I could see the tremor in her hands and how much effort she had to put into just keeping her eyes open.
I could see it all and I fucking hated it. After everything she’d survived, after everything Gabriella had sacrificed for her, this was how it ended.
Sacrificing herself for a man she couldn’t stand—a man she had actively plotted to kill alongside her old man numerous times before.
A man never good enough for her daughter, a man from the wrong side of the tracks, with a drug addict mother and a club she loathed behind him.
And for that man, she would die on a cold, disgusting basement floor.
“Do you know what Gabriella’s first word was?” Michelle asked suddenly.
I frowned. “What?”
“Mine.” Despite everything, a small laugh escaped her. “She pointed at Harley’s bike and announced it belonged to her. She was one. Harley was so proud you’d have thought she’d solved world hunger.”
My throat tightened.
Michelle smiled faintly at the memory.
“Every birthday she wanted to rescue something. A dog. A bird. Once it was a bloody squirrel that she found in the garden. She carried it around for three days before Harley realised it wasn’t injured. It just liked the free food.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
“That’s who she is, Luke. That’s who she’s always been.”
I already knew this. I knew Gabriella inside and out.
And I knew what Michelle was saying.
Gabriella saved who she could save. Even if it meant destroying herself in the process. And now, Michelle was finally going to do the same thing.
Her fingers tightened around my wrist.
“And for ten years, she’s been trying to save me.
Trying to save both of us, really. She stayed here because of me.
Because she thought distance kept you safe.
Even when everything screamed in her to go back to you, she tried to keep us both safe.
But it was me that she suffered for. It was because of me that she let that monster hurt her. ”
The guilt on her face nearly destroyed me.
“I watched it happen, and I was powerless to do anything about it. But the truth is out there now. Now she can be saved. You can save her.”
Michelle lifted a shaking hand to my cheek. “Set us free, Luke. Put me out of my misery and give my daughter her life back.”
The gun was heavy when Dante placed it in my hand.
Michelle closed her eyes.
And because I loved Gabriella, because Michelle was right, because there are some mercies so cruel they look like sins, I pressed my forehead to hers, the gun to her temple, and pulled the trigger.