Chapter 22 #2
“First of all, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. And even if I did invite him, so what? You seriously can’t be shifting the blame to me, of all people, for something so silly.”
“Silly?” Alina scoffs.
They’ve already started to move. Viktor’s threat obviously got to Camille even though she tries not to show it.
Yuri is moving in from the far side of the lawn again, alert without looking frantic. Nadine stands near the front chairs, pale and still, clearly wondering whether she should salvage the flowers or the people first.
I take one breath and then another, trying to steady myself enough to move.
That’s when I hear it. A crack from somewhere beyond the hedge line.
For one second, my mind doesn’t understand it. It’s too out of place. Too harsh against the wedding lawn and the flowers and the murmuring guests.
Then comes the second shot, and everything breaks at once.
Someone screams.
The sound tears through the lawn, high and raw, and all the pretty stillness of the morning disappears. Guests drop, duck, scatter. Chairs scrape across the grass. A bridesmaid falls. Somebody shouts to get down. Music stands crash sideways near the quartet.
Viktor moves before I fully understand what’s happening. One second he’s turning toward the sound, the next he’s grabbing me and dragging me down with him behind the nearest row of chairs.
“Down.” His voice is in my ear, hard and controlled, one arm around me, the other braced in front of my body like he can shield me from everything with force alone.
Another shot. Closer this time.
Or maybe it only feels that way.
My heart is hammering so violently I can barely breathe.
Grass presses against my palms. My dress is twisted under my knees.
Somewhere to my left Ethan is shouting something I can’t make out.
Alina’s voice cuts across the chaos, sharp and furious.
Anna is yelling for people to get inside.
Guests are running in every direction at once, which somehow makes the lawn feel even more exposed.
Viktor lifts his head just enough to see over the chairs. “Stay here,” he says.
I grab at his jacket without thinking. “No.”
His eyes cut back to mine. For one terrible second I see the whole truth of him there. Not the father of the groom. Not the man from the plane. Not even the man who just had his mouth on my body hours ago.
Something older.
More dangerous.
Made for this.
“Sienna,” he says, and his voice changes just enough to make me stop fighting him. “Do not move.”
He lets go of me only when he knows I’ve heard him.
Then he rises into the chaos.
Yuri is already moving toward the hedge line with two of the men from earlier, no longer pretending to be anything but what they are.
Ethan is on the ground near the aisle, half covering his head with his arms, staring up in shock.
Alina is crouched beside one of the overturned chairs, white-faced and furious, while Anna pulls at her shoulder trying to force her toward cover.
Everything is noise now. Screams. Running feet. Someone crying. The thud of bodies hitting the grass to get low.
I stay where Viktor put me because the baby is kicking wildly now and fear has made my body feel too tight, too shaky, too strange.
I curl one arm around my stomach and try to breathe through the panic while watching him move across the lawn toward the sound of gunfire like it’s a thing he has done too many times to count.
Another shot cracks across the lawn.
I flinch so hard my teeth hit together.
Someone screams again, closer this time, and I can’t tell where it’s coming from because the whole world has turned into movement and noise and people dropping to the ground in terrible, graceless panic.
Viktor doesn’t hesitate. He cuts across the grass with Yuri’s men fanning out around him, low and fast, using the overturned chairs and flower stands for cover as they move toward the hedges.
He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to.
He already placed me where he wanted me, and some stupid part of me takes comfort in that even now.
I hate that.
I press my hand harder over my stomach and try to breathe.
In. Out.
Again.
The baby is moving so violently now it almost hurts. Not pain exactly. More like my whole body has tightened around the fear, and the life inside me is reacting to it. My lower abdomen pulls in a way that makes me grit my teeth.
“Come on,” I whisper to myself. “Come on.”
A woman in a pale pink dress crawls toward me on her hands and knees, mascara already running, face wild. “What do we do?”
I look at her, stunned for half a second that she’s asking me anything. Then training takes over where reason can’t.
“Stay low,” I say. “Get to the terrace. Don’t run upright.”
She nods too quickly and drags herself that way, clutching at the grass.
Across the lawn, one of the musicians is lying flat behind his overturned chair, his cello half on the ground beside him.
Nadine is crouched near the aisle, one arm around a sobbing bridesmaid, both of them trying to move toward the house.
Anna is shouting at people to get inside, her voice cutting through the chaos with a force I didn’t know she had.
Alina is still down near the front row, furious even in fear, fighting Anna’s grip until another shot sends dirt spitting up near the path and finally gets her moving.
Ethan is still on the ground. For one awful second I think he’s been hit.
Then he lifts his head, dazed and pale, and I see that he’s only frozen. Staring. Not moving. Like his body has simply stopped obeying him.
“Ethan!” I hear Alina scream.
That gets him.
He starts crawling toward the terrace, awkward and slow, one hand still half over his head like he can’t quite understand where the bullets are coming from or how a wedding turned into this.
I drag in another breath and force myself onto my knees.
The lawn feels too open now. Too exposed. Viktor told me not to move, but Viktor is no longer here. He’s somewhere ahead of me closing in on gunfire, and I’m in the middle of the grass with a child turning inside me and panic making the edges of my vision blur.
I need cover. I need to get to the terrace.
I start moving, staying low, one hand on the ground, the other arm around my stomach. Every step feels wrong. Too slow. Too upright. The grass catches at my dress. My breath is too loud in my own ears.
Another shot. This one from farther off.
Then shouting from the hedge line.
Male voices. Yuri’s, maybe.
Another one I don’t know.
Then Viktor, sharp and furious, too far away to make out the words.
The sound of him goes through me harder than the shots did.
He’s still alive.
I crawl faster.
A server appears beside me out of nowhere, face white, tie hanging loose. “Miss, come on.”
He takes my arm and helps me the rest of the way behind the stone terrace wall. The second I’m down behind it, my legs give a little and I end up half sitting, half crouching against the cool stone with my heart trying to tear out of my chest.
The server kneels beside me. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” My voice comes out ragged. “No, I’m fine.”
A lie, but not the urgent kind.
He nods and moves on to help someone else. Everything is triage now. Whoever can still move, moves. Whoever can help, helps. Whoever can’t is being pulled behind walls, furniture, flower stands, anything solid enough to matter.
I look back toward the lawn.
The chairs are scattered. White petals torn into the grass. A veil tangled near the aisle. For one surreal second it looks less like a crime scene than a stage after a performance has gone wrong and nobody knows where to step.
Then I see Viktor again. He’s near the hedge now, one of Yuri’s men just behind him, body angled low as he moves. There’s something terrifying in how calm he looks from here. Not calm in the peaceful sense. Controlled. Focused. As if the chaos has only made him more precise.
He disappears behind the hedge line.
My stomach drops.
“No.” The word comes out before I know I’m saying it.
I push myself higher, needing to see, and the movement pulls harder through my abdomen this time. A sharper discomfort, enough to make me hiss and grab at the stone beside me.
Not now. Please not now.
I close my eyes for one second and breathe through it. When I open them, the lawn seems to tilt slightly, then settle again.
Too much stress. Too much adrenaline.
That’s all.
A hand lands on my shoulder and I jerk violently.
“It’s me,” Nadine says. She’s crouched beside me now, hair half fallen out, lipstick gone, still somehow carrying herself like she’s trying to hold the last pieces of the day together by force. “Are you all right?”
I nod too fast. “Where’s Camille?”
Nadine blinks, clearly not expecting that to be my first question. “Inside, I think. One of the bridesmaids dragged her in.”
I look back toward the house. Good. At least one person in white has some cover.
Nadine follows my gaze toward the hedge. “Is he out there?”
I know who she means. “Yes.”
She presses her lips together and says nothing else.
More shouting comes from the hedge line.
Then, suddenly, silence.
Not complete silence. People are still crying.
Someone nearby is praying under their breath.
Alina is calling Ethan’s name again, more quietly now, probably checking if he’s still attached to the earth.
But from the hedges, from where Viktor went, there’s a break in the noise that feels worse than anything before it.
I can’t breathe around it.
Yuri appears first. He comes back around the hedges with one of the men behind him, moving quickly, scanning the lawn as if he still expects another shot. His face gives away nothing.
Viktor is a step behind.
The breath leaves me so hard I almost choke on it.
He’s alive.
There’s no blood that I can see from here.
And then he looks up and finds me, and everything else drops away for one second.
He doesn’t come to me immediately. He says something to Yuri first, fast and low, then gestures toward the far side of the grounds where two other men are already running. Yuri nods and goes.
Only then does Viktor start toward the terrace.
I push myself to my feet before I can stop myself.
Nadine says something, maybe my name, maybe sit down, but I’m already moving toward him, ignoring the ache in my abdomen, ignoring the way my legs still feel shaky.
He reaches me halfway. His hands are on my arms at once, looking me over with a kind of concentrated fury that makes my throat tighten. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” I can barely get the word out. “You?”
“I’m fine.”
He says it without looking at himself, without checking, as if his own body is the least relevant thing in front of him. I believe him anyway because I need to.
The baby kicks again, hard, and I suck in a breath.
Viktor feels the change in me immediately. His eyes drop to my stomach, then back to my face. “What is it?”
“The baby,” I say. “Just the baby.”
That’s not enough of an answer for him. I can tell.
His hand moves to my belly without hesitation, broad and warm and steady, and for one absurd second we’re standing on a torn-up wedding lawn full of crying guests and shattered chairs while he soothes my stomach like the rest of the world has gone very far away.
“Easy,” he murmurs.
It helps a little.
I look at him and finally ask the question I’ve been choking on since he disappeared behind the hedges. “What happened?”
His face changes.
Not much. Just enough.
“They’re gone,” he says.
Relief rushes through me, but suddenly there’s another sensation.
I feel it before I understand it.
Not pain. Not at first. Just a sudden warmth low between my legs, so strange and wrong in the middle of everything else that for one confused second I think I’ve imagined it. Then it keeps coming, a rush I can’t stop, and I look down.
The front of my dress is wet.
My breath catches.
No.
Viktor sees my face change before I say anything. His hand is still on my stomach, his eyes on mine, and I watch the exact moment he understands that something has shifted.
“Sienna?”
I try to answer, but my voice doesn’t come properly. I look down again, at the liquid darkening the fabric, at the grass beneath me.
Oh God.
Viktor’s hand tightens on my arm. “What is it?”
I finally force the words out.
“My water broke.”
The baby is coming.