Chapter 34
34
Grey
Someone was yelling ‘Get down!’ It sounded like Jett but it could have been anyone.
Who’d been shot?
Please not her ... please not ...
It was all his fault ...
Two more shots.
A scream – a woman. Vittoria?
The crowd pushed as one black entity, a wave cresting towards an exit.
His breath was taking over his body, heaving still after dragging the limp frame of his passed-out security guard into the room where he’d stationed Lang, the paramedic. Just as a precaution.
He couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about the little dart in her shoulder and the fact that, despite Lang’s assurances, it didn’t seem like she was breathing at all.
‘The doors are locked!’
‘Everyone stop pushing!’
Grey grabbed one of Nella’s friends by the arm. ‘What’s going on?’
The girl screamed but stopped when she saw Grey. ‘Someone shot Nella’s dad.’
Grey let her go so quickly she staggered back into one of Frankie’s friends who’d drawn his hood up over his ears. The boy swore at him, but Grey couldn’t hear.
No. No. No. No. No.
His boots slipped as he staggered up the white stairs, fighting against all of his senses. The metallic smell was not blood. The wetness beneath his shoes was just spilled wine. The figure slumped under Vittoria’s shaking body had slipped and fallen. Giovanni was not dead. Giovanni had not been shot. Grey had been here, he’d been here the entire time, where he’d said he’d be. He was in control ... he was ...
‘Where were you?’ Vittoria screamed from somewhere in an alternative universe where Grey had not been there and there was blood on the front of her cream dress and Nella was sobbing into Luca’s shoulders. Where Giovanni was staring up at Grey with wide, unseeing eyes. ‘Where the fuck were you?’
‘I ...’
The two realities collided. The blood-soaked world rose before Grey like a red tsunami.
‘No.’ He said it aloud this time. ‘No. No. No.’ He shook Giovanni. The man was a rock, a consummate survivor; he was not going to leave this world because of a tiny bullet. Grey waited for Giovanni’s thick fingers to rise up and pick the piece of lead from his crumpled skull, flicking it at Grey like it was a bee sting.
‘It’s not Grey’s fault,’ Nella managed to heave through sobs.
‘He said he’d protect him!’ Vittoria screamed. ‘He said he’d protect us!’
Nella was wrong. Vittoria was right. Giovanni was dead. That was all Grey knew.
Vittoria was right.
‘I need you all together,’ he said. ‘Where’s Frankie? Where’s Tomaso?’
‘Who did it?’ Luca staggered up, his face wet, one hand steadying Nella. ‘Who shot him?’
‘Luca,’ Grey’s voice said somewhere between the two worlds. He knew he had to stay here but every part of him was pulling him back to the ravaged planet where Giovanni wasn’t dead and Grey had been standing next to him the whole time ... ‘Get them out of here.’
‘Who was it?’ Luca said again, his eyes wide and wild.
‘The La Marcas. Get them out.’
‘No.’ Luca shook his head. ‘It can’t have been. No.’
‘Where’s Tomaso? Where’s Frankie?’ Grey gripped Nella as she swayed backwards on the steps. ‘We need to move, now.’
‘It wasn’t the La Marcas.’ Luca shook his head. ‘It can’t—’
Click.
They plunged into darkness.
‘What the f—’
‘Move them. Now, Luca. Get them to the cellar. Don’t open the door for anyone but me. I’m going to get Frank and Tom.’
‘But—’
‘Move. Now. That’s a goddamn order.’
‘You don’t get to order me around when you couldn’t even protect my dad!’
‘Luca!’ Nella’s voice was closer than Grey had anticipated. ‘He doesn’t mean that.’
Should he stay with them? Protect them by cowering behind a wooden door? Or should he risk them running out in the open and go and take down Skinner or whoever it was the La Marcas had paid to take this hit? Or was this all because of her ? Was he going to risk their lives again because he was looking for her?
She was a cancer, spreading through him, metastasising to every inch until he couldn’t breathe.
How did you get rid of cancer? You cut it out.
Where was the rest of the goddamn security team?
‘I’m going to take you to the door,’ Grey said. ‘We stay low, and when it’s safe, you run to the cellar. You don’t open the door until I come back. If I don’t come back ...’
‘Grey ...’ Nella’s voice broke.
‘NOW. Move.’ He pushed them. Vittoria clung to Giovanni, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, but Luca – or Nella, Grey couldn’t be sure in the dark – grabbed her under the arm and together they lifted her down the stairs.
Grey filtered through the screams and bodies, trying to locate Jett’s voice, Max’s shoulder blades, Frankie’s back, Tomaso’s scent. ‘Jett!’
‘I’m here. I’m here. I’ve got Tom and Frank.’
Grey squinted at the three figures.
‘Can’t go outside,’ Jett said. ‘They’ve locked the exits.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know, man, I don’t know what’s—’
‘Max?’
‘I haven’t seen her. Grey, they’ve ... the security – they’re ...’
The guard, barely breathing, dart in her shoulder. Focus on the Barbaranis, don’t think about anything else. ‘Keep them safe. You know where.’
‘Don’t go, Grey, please.’ Nella sounded like she had when they were younger. When the lines were blurred and Grey used to forget he wasn’t one of them.
He shook off her hand. ‘Keep them safe,’ he ordered again.
Jett’s tall, shadowed head bowed.
Something shoved past Grey and he stumbled slightly. ‘Luca. No!’ He charged after Luca’s silhouetted corkscrew curls. ‘Luca, all of you are targets, goddamn it!’ He grabbed him by his coat sleeve, but Luca shook him off like Grey had done to Nella.
‘I have to find her!’
‘Luca, for fuck’s sake! You have to stay with your family. For all we know Ariana’s family are the ones who killed your dad.’
Killed your dad . The words were nails through his tongue.
‘I’m not going to any fucking bunker until I—’
More shots. More screams.
But Grey didn’t hear the sound of another body falling.
Warning shots.
Fuck. Grey’s military days were throbbing deep in his soul. The shots came from opposite directions. Two shooters – at least. He couldn’t tell if anyone else had been hit. If mass casualties were their aim, the execution didn’t make sense. They sounded like handguns, single shot. A bomb would have been more effective.
Fuck. What if there was another bomb?
Stairs. Two at a time. Three. In the upstairs sala da pranzo . Empty.
Luca. Luca. Where was Luca? He’d lost him – too focused on counting shots.
‘Grey!’
His heart stuck in his throat as he saw the curves of her silhouette. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and melt into her, through the floor, through the earth, into that other dimension where everyone was talking and laughing at Giovanni’s surprisingly funny jokes. Where Frankie was arguing with the waiter about serving lamb tortellini. Where Nella was oblivious to the way Jett’s eyes flickered towards her every time he took a sip of his non-alcoholic drink. Another world, where Grey had done his job right.
Where he’d never met Maxella Conrad.
‘Where the fuck were you?’ He grabbed her shoulders. ‘I was looking for you. I shouldn’t have ... I should have been ...’
‘I was with— I was on the ground like you told me to be.’
It was all becoming clear – the timing, the vagueness of Matteo’s words. It was all a distraction. He’d been drawn out of the room like a fucking cat with a piece of string. And then Matteo had gone for the oldest trick in the book. A cliché so obvious Grey had been too blind to even consider it.
I’ve got your girl.
But she wasn’t his girl. He should have known she could handle herself – that the thought of her being taken out by the La Marcas without a fight, without someone noticing was almost ludicrous. He hadn’t been thinking clearly.
But Matteo’s actions made one thing clear.
The La Marcas were behind this.
More shots rang out. A disembodied voice peeled through the screams. ‘You cannot leave. The exits are sealed. If you’re not who we want, you won’t come to any harm.’
The voice was foreign to Grey but they could be using a scrambler – it was deep and monotone like those ones they use on TV to disguise victims’ voices.
If you’re not who we want.
‘Where’s the rest of the security?’ Max’s voice tethered him back to this spot in the dark sala da pranzo as the ballroom beneath them emptied out – guests running to every corner of the mansion they’d previously been forbidden from.
‘I’ve only seen Jett. The others ...’
More shots. They ran in the same direction Luca had gone, but it was too dark – Grey couldn’t see him. ‘Fuck.’
‘Grey ...’
‘Enough.’ Cut it out. That’s how you get rid of cancer.
‘Enough of what? We have to—’
‘ We? We’re not we , Max.’
‘What are you—’
‘Where were you?’ he repeated, his voice strained – the final stretch before the fraying rope snapped.
‘I told you I was—’
‘Matteo La Marca told me he’d got you.’
Someone screamed to their right. The body of a security guard was slumped against the wall beneath the portrait of Vittoria. There was no blood, no bullet hole, only a blue feather-like needle sticking out of her neck.
Where was Luca?
‘ Got me? Greyson, I was in the room the whole time.’
‘He used you!’ Everything was caving in. ‘He used you to get to me. I was looking for you when I should have been—’
‘Are you saying this is my fault?’ she hissed.
‘I wasn’t thinking clearly. You make me ... not think clearly ...’
‘For fuck’s sake, Grey, what are you trying to say? In case you haven’t realised, we’re sitting ducks in the middle of this fucking room. And Skinner—’
‘I’m going to say this once and I need you to listen.’
Her silence was as loud as a scream. It was easier, far easier than he imagined this would be, because he couldn’t see her face.
‘There is nothing between us. There never was and there never can be. Do you hear me?’
A beat.
‘Max?’
‘I fucking hear you,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re doing. You’re pushing me away like you push everyone away, because no one could ever possibly understand the Great Greyson Hawke, whose selfless sacrifice to the Barbaranis is actually just an excuse for him to never have to open up to anyone. It’s selfish. To never risk being hurt again. I know what you’re doing – you blame yourself, but none of this was your ...’
Her voice faded out. This had to end – there could be no resurrecting. This was his last shot. He had to shoot to kill. ‘You were right. I’m messed up from that night, but I haven’t told you the whole story. That kid? The one that I let go?’
She blinked and Grey’s heart stopped, but only for a second.
‘I pushed him. He had a photo of Luca snorting coke, and he was threatening to send it to the media. I’d had a few drinks myself – I hadn’t planned on driving down to Perth that weekend and I was technically off-duty. I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t bear letting you know you were right – that I’m no better than Skinner. I wanted you, yeah, but you don’t see me. You see this idealistic image of me that doesn’t exist. You’re too na?ve, just like how you believed your friend would take the stand for you, take your side over her abusive husband’s. Just like you think Libby Johnston doesn’t know that you never planned on following through with your promise to kill Skinner. She knows you better than you think. But there’s none of that goodness in me, Max.’
She had strong principles. Her moral compass was so rigid she’d gone to jail for her friend. Her inner workings, however that car crash had rewired her to never rely on anyone else, to, like him, always be in control, would not allow her to fall in love with a shallow man who had callously killed for a morally corrupt Italian dynasty.
And even in the dark, he knew Maxella Conrad was still enough of a cop to work out he was telling the truth.
‘If I survive tonight’—her voice was a blade to his neck—‘I’ll know it’s so I can tell the world the truth about you and this murderous family. I’ll take you all down. That’s how I’ll redeem my career.’
And it was as she moved to get around him that Grey realised someone else had been standing with them the whole time. They were cloaked in a dark hood and held a large gun at their side. The figure trained the gun on the back of Max’s head.
That was the last thought Grey had.