Chapter 44
Vienna
Now
The clubhouse didn’t feel the same on the inside.
I was familiar with Gabby’s home, but I’d only been here a handful of times, and always on club business. There had always been a tense, dangerous air here. But still, it had felt lived in. Busy. Now it felt hollow.
Too still. Too quiet. Like something had already happened here, and I was walking into the aftermath of it.
I moved through it anyway, slow and deliberate, every sense tuned to the slightest shift, the faintest sound, the smallest sign that I wasn’t alone.
My knife stayed in my hand out of instinct, though I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find at this point.
The place felt stripped. Not empty, but…
paused. Like the life had been pulled out of it, and whatever remained was just waiting for something else to finish.
“Gabby,” I called quietly, the word slipping out before I could stop it.
No answer.
“Shit,” I hissed under my breath, picking up my speed as I checked the rooms one by one.
Nothing.
There was no sign of life anywhere. No guards. No movement.
Something wasn’t right.
This wasn’t the kind of quiet you heard when people were sleeping. When things were at peace. This was the kind of quiet that greeted you right before something bad happened. When something had already ended.
When something was already dead.
My pace picked up without me meaning it to, my steps losing some of their care as I moved further into the house, checking doors faster, breathing harder, my focus narrowing down to one thing and one thing only.
Her.
“Gabriella,” I tried again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
And then I saw one door half open, and instinct took over, kicking in and dragging me towards it. My hand tightened around the knife as I approached, though by the time I reached it, I already knew I wasn’t going to need it. I pushed the door open slowly, and everything in me went still.
She was on the bed, lying on top of it, not quite straight, not quite neat, like she had been placed there in a hurry or had simply fallen where she landed and never moved again.
Her hair was spread across the pillow, dark against the sheets, her face turned slightly to the side, her body too still for someone who should have been breathing.
For a second, I didn’t move.
Didn’t think.
Didn’t breathe.
Because my brain hadn’t caught up yet.
Because some part of me was still expecting her to shift, to sigh, to roll her eyes and tell me I was being dramatic, to sit up and ask what the fuck had taken me so long.
But she didn’t, and the silence stretched, leaving me with a buzzing sound in my ears and a creeping sense of disbelief spreading through me.
I strained to hear her breathing, to hear her soft whimpers in her sleep, but there was nothing, and then the silence became too heavy for me to ignore any longer.
“No,” I said, the word quiet, automatic, already shaking my head before I’d even crossed the room. “No, no, no—”
I was at her side in seconds, the knife gone from my hand without me remembering having dropped it, my knees hitting the floor hard enough to bruise as I reached for her, my fingers finding her face, her neck, her shoulder—anything—searching for anything that would prove I was wrong.
The blood on my hands smeared across her skin, and all it did was highlight how pale she was. She felt cool beneath my fingers.
“Gabby,” I said, sharper now, my hand sliding to her cheek, brushing her hair back from her face, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. “Hey. Come on. This isn’t funny. Wake up.”
Nothing.
I shook her gently at first, then harder, my hand moving to her shoulder as I tried to pull her toward me, like I could force her back into this just by refusing to accept anything else.
“Gabriella,” I snapped, panic creeping in despite everything I was trying to hold together. “Open your eyes. Come on. Look at me.”
Her head lolled slightly with the movement, her body giving nothing back, no resistance, no reaction, nothing that even resembled life.
And that was it.
That was the moment it hit.
“No…” I breathed, softer this time, my hand still cradling her face as I stared at her like I could will her to change. “No, you don’t get to do this. Not like this. Not before I got here.”
My thumb brushed over her cheek, over skin that should have been warm beneath my touch, over lips that had said my name just hours ago, over the woman I had spent years fighting for, waiting for, refusing to let go of even when everything told me I should.
“She was supposed to hold on,” I muttered, more to myself than anything else, my voice roughening as the words came out. “I told you to hold on. Just one more night. That was all you had to do.”
I let out a broken laugh that didn’t sound anything like me.
“One more night, sweetheart. That’s all I needed. Everything was in place. The boys are coming. We were ready. I was going to walk you out of here and take you home. You weren’t supposed to…”
My voice faltered, the rest of it catching somewhere I couldn’t quite push past.
“You weren’t supposed to leave before I got to you.
” Tears spilled from my eyes before I could stop them, dropping onto her skin, splattering on top of the blood I had put there.
My hand slid down to hers, threading our fingers together automatically, something I’d done a thousand times before, almost like I was expecting her to curl her hand back around mine if I just gave her long enough.
“You always did things your own way,” I murmured, staring at our hands, at the stillness of hers against mine. “Never listened. Always pushing. Always fighting. I used to love that about you.”
My jaw tightened, my vision blurring slightly as I forced myself to look at her again.
“We should have had forever,” I said, the words low, steady, like if I kept them controlled they wouldn’t break me completely.
“Do you know that? We should have had everything. I had it all planned out. You, me… our life. I would’ve given you anything.
I would have been anything you needed me to be.
All you had to do was come to me, Gabby.
I would have burned this whole fucking world down if it meant you got to live in it the way you deserved. ”
Silence answered me, just as it had since I walked into the room. I lowered my forehead to hers, closing my eyes for a second, letting myself have that one moment, that one piece of something that felt like it belonged to us before everything went to shit.
“I came for you,” I whispered. “I never stopped coming for you.”
And for the first time since I’d found her, my voice broke completely.
“I was just too late.”
I stayed there longer than I should have.
Long enough that the world outside that room started to creep back in, faint sounds filtering through the walls, distant movement, the reminder that this place wasn’t empty, that there were still men here, still enemies, still a war waiting to happen whether I wanted it or not.
My eyes opened slowly, and reality settled back into place.
She wasn’t waking up.
She wasn’t coming with me.
And whoever had done this was still breathing.
My hand slipped from hers, not because I wanted it to, but because it had to.
Because whatever part of me had been holding on to hope died the second I let go.
I pushed myself to my feet, my movements slower now, heavier. My gaze swept the room once more, taking in the details I hadn’t registered when I first came in.
I picked up a picture off the table, noticing Natalie with a man I didn’t recognise.
Natalie’s room…
So where was this so-called best friend of Gabby’s? Why had she left her to die alone?
Something wasn’t right.
But it didn’t matter. Not anymore. Because whatever the truth was, the outcome would be the same.
I looked at her one last time, forcing myself to take her in properly through the blur in my eyes, like if I committed every detail to memory hard enough then maybe some part of me would survive what came next.
And then, our last goodbye washed over me. That final moment where we had been ripped apart before.
The memory of that night pressing in hard and fast, dragging me backwards before I could fight it. Her. The scan. The future we had thought was ours. Everything that came after.
Everything we lost.
I lowered my head for one brief second, just one, and let myself feel everything. And then I snapped back into reality. Into what was real. What was happening now. Because if I let myself stay in that grief any longer, I’d never leave this room.
And when I finally turned toward the door, there was nothing left in me worth saving.
Because at least last time when I had lost her, she had still been breathing.