Chapter 42 Katarina
KATARINA
We went in through the back door.
“Stay behind me, angel,” Massimo instructed, stepping before me. In his black fatigues, bristling with weapons, he was a fearsome sight.
I nodded and stepped back, then followed as he advanced. He reached back and grabbed my hand, guiding it to the back of his bulletproof vest.
“Hold on tight so we don’t lose each other. I can’t take it a second time.”
We advanced down the hallway, and Massimo’s gun fired ahead of me. We passed the bodies of Sergei’s men, fallen on either side.
The air smelled like fire and copper. The cooks scrambled out of the kitchen and ran for the back door, women for the most part. Massimo didn’t look their way as we passed by them. We reached the foyer and crouched. Massimo pointed toward a table.
“You wait for me there,” he instructed firmly, pulling a pin out of some kind of weapon.
He was in his element here. He wasn’t afraid, and somehow, neither was I. I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, for the first time in my life, perhaps.
I nodded, and at his signal, ran for the table.
He tossed the object into the foyer, and smoke filled the space.
Massimo slipped his mask on and walked in fearlessly.
I couldn’t see everything, but I made out enough of him moving around and taking down the men who had just walked in through the front door to know no one would survive this if Massimo didn’t want them to. He was a one-man killing machine.
Silence fell, thick and heavy.
“Sergei? I think it’s time we were introduced,” Massimo called.
The silence had that particular quality of people trying to be quiet.
“I’m your daughter’s new husband. I apologize for not asking your permission to marry her, it’s just that I don’t give a fuck about what you think,” Massimo continued, goading in his tone.
There was a shuffling noise and then a flash in the smoke.
“You bastard! You think you can just marry my daughter?” Sergei roared, his voice rough with smoke.
Another flash. Sergei shooting at Massimo? No. No, that couldn’t happen. He couldn’t die.
“Where is my daughter? Tell me now, or you’re a dead man.” Sergei sounded so confident. Did he have a line of sight on Massimo?
“Stop!” I cried out and stood. “Don’t hurt him.”
“Katarina,” Sergei snapped. “Come here.”
Massimo was silent. Had he been hurt? I stumbled around until a hard hand closed on my arm. Sergei’s face loomed out of the smoke.
“What have you done?” he all but spit in my face, then hauled me up the stairs.
I frantically searched the lower floor for Massimo, but it was still too shrouded in smoke to make out.
“And this is exactly why I needed you taken care of at Hallow Hall until you were old enough to marry. Ever since your mother came and told me that I had a daughter and she was eighteen, no less, it’s been a fucking headache. Get up here.”
He yanked me even harder, and I went down on one knee on the stairs. Fuck, that hurt. But I’d been hurt worse. I tugged back against him.
“Let me go, I don’t want you to touch me,” I hissed at him.
“I’m your father!” he roared.
“You’re a fucking monster,” I screamed back.
We’d reached the top floor, and now he pushed me through a doorway I hadn’t seen before. It came out onto a platform on the roof. A helipad. I dragged clean air into my lungs and tried to keep up with his violent pace. Rada stumbled up the stairs behind us, tears falling down her face.
“Sergei! Wait for me!” She tripped and fell in her heels, but got up and followed.
He dragged me across the platform and then dumped me to the ground, taking his phone from his pocket. He still had a gun clutched in his hand.
“You think I don’t know what you are?” I cried out.
“You think you managed to pull the wool over my eyes? I know you’re behind all the evil shit at Hallow Hall.
I know you profit off the misery of all those poor women.
” I struggled to my feet. “You think I came here to be your daughter? To embrace you?”
I laughed, and Sergei stared at me.
“Why did you come here then?”
“I came here to kill you. I’ve been waiting three years. I’m done waiting. Tonight, the last monster behind that hellhole dies.”
“Sergei! Why’s she calling you a monster? What’s happening?” Rada screamed. She was losing it and Sergei couldn’t care less. In the distance, the choppy sound of helicopter blades beat the air. Sergei’s escape route was opening up, and I couldn’t let that happen.
He ignored his fiancée, stared at me hard. He shook his head. “You call me a monster? What about that man you married? What about yourself?”
“She’s no monster, she’s an angel of vengeance descended from above.
” Massimo called, stalking out from the door onto the roof.
He had a gun trained on Sergei. “And as for me, yes, I am a monster, but I’m the man your daughter loves, and that makes me God’s favorite monster.
Thank you, micetta, for separating him from the fucking smoke below, I’ll take it from here.
” There was blood on Massimo’s ear and his mask was gone.
Had one of those shots hit him in the ear? Panic threatened to engulf me.
Sergei waved his gun at Massimo. “Don’t come any closer.”
Sergei’s movements were erratic and full of fear. Massimo’s confidence was a stark contrast. He walked unerringly toward him, his gun never wavering.
“Let’s both take the shot. I trust my aim more than yours, old man.”
Sergei grabbed for me, but I scuttled back. He swore and grabbed Rada instead, dragging her up by the hair.
“Drop the gun or she’s dead.”
I staggered to my feet and put a hand out toward Massimo. The fear and betrayal on Rada’s face broke my heart. How many lovers had Sergei used and discarded? Just like my mother . . .
Massimo didn’t take the shot. He waited.
“Let the girl go, she isn’t involved with any of this. Besides, you kill her and you’ll follow seconds later. I don’t miss.” Massimo’s words were a promise.
“Please, I was putting strays down since before you could walk!” Sergei shouted, and then cried out as a shot sounded.
I screamed, scared that Massimo had decided to shoot through Rada after all, but Sergei’s gun fell to the ground, and he clutched his hand to his chest, blood staining down his front.
Rada fell to the ground, crying, and Sergei staggered back, turning and running now toward the helicopter that was coming in to land on the roof.
Massimo was a blur of movement sprinting toward Sergei, ignoring the terrifying blades chopping the air on the roof, which were getting lower and lower.
The helicopter touched down just as Massimo disappeared around the other side. Men in dark suits swarmed out. Had he seen them? What if they got behind him? Hurt him?
I couldn’t let that happen. I took off around the other side of the helicopter, swiping Sergei’s fallen gun from beside a hysterical Rada.
I saw them all at once. Sergei was posed on the step of the helicopter, new gun in hand. His men surrounded Massimo, one right behind him with a gun pressed to his back. His gun was on the ground.
I bit down my scream of fear, and the world seemed to grow very still.
“Sorry, I can’t have you talking shit about strays.
I’ve always been one, and now I’m in love with one.
” Massimo grinned at Sergei, seemingly unafraid of the threat all around him.
Massimo’s hand twitched at his side, a strange and purposeful movement, and suddenly the men around him were falling to the ground.
I looked around wildly, wondering just whom Massimo had stashed around the property.
I couldn’t see anything, but those sniper shots had been professional work.
The man who was standing right behind Massimo, gun pressed into his skull, barely had time to realize what had happened before Massimo twisted, throwing the man’s arm up and sending the gun flying into the air.
It sailed away over the side of the building, and the man watched it go, before convulsing.
Massimo sunk a knife into his throat, sudden and final.
Massimo pushed him backward and he fell, then Massi turned back to Sergei.
A gunshot sounded and knocked me out my stupor.
Sergei was the last man standing, but he still had a gun.
His shot had gone wild, however, thank God.
He pointed his weapon at Massimo again and I knew I had seconds to act.
I ran forward, Sergei’s gun in my hand, extended toward my father’s back.
I didn’t trust my aim, but I didn’t need to.
He just had to know that he was cornered.
I pressed the gun to the back of Sergei’s head before he could take another shot, and he stilled.
Massimo grinned at me and walked unerringly toward me, reaching my side in moments.
Sergei remained frozen in fear at the end of my gun, his foot still poised on the step . . . and his freedom.
His voice rose over the noise of the chopper. “What do you both want? Money? You can have it. Power, to inherit the family? You can have all of it,” Sergei bargained.
Massimo considered his words. “There is something I want from you. Sara Lucciano. Do you remember her?”
“What? Who? No, I don’t.”
“That’s a shame. She died in one of your institutes twenty years ago. Died in childbirth . . . or so I was told.”
“Who was she?” I asked Massimo, before realizing. “Your mother?”
Massimo nodded.
Oh my God. I couldn’t look away for a moment.
The mother Massimo had talked about. The one who’d heard voices, just like me.
She’d been like Mira? My heart broke at that moment for her, and for Massimo, and for all the women and families ruined by Sergei and his cold-blooded moneymaking scheme.
Profiting off the pure misery of others.
“Massimo?” I murmured.
His eyes were hard, lost in the past and fixed on Sergei.
“You won’t kill me,” Sergei called. He was trying to sound confident, but it wasn’t quite working. “I’m the only parent she has left. If you care about her, you won’t kill me. I’m her only chance at a family.”
A muscle ticked in Massimo’s jaw. I raised my free hand to cup it, trying to pull him back from the dark place he’d gone to.
“Mass?” I whispered.
He blinked and then looked down at me.
“It’s true, this man created the place where my mother died. He’s done what he did to Mira hundreds of times.” I could tell that every single word cost him.
He sighed, his empty hands flexing at his sides.
“But it’s your choice, my angel, if he lives or dies. You mean more to me than my vengeance.”
His eyes burned into mine, and I saw that he meant it. He really would end his lifelong quest for vengeance and leave it unfinished if I asked him to.
It was my choice.
“Do you hear, Katarina? Call your pet killer off now,” Sergei commanded. “Do not let him kill your only family.”
“You’re not my family,” I said firmly. “Tatiana is my family.” I stared up at Massimo. “My husband is my family.”
Massimo’s lips curved in the smallest ghost of a smile at those words.
“I don’t need you, and the world certainly doesn’t,” I continued, and then nodded to Massimo.
He shifted his focus back to Sergei.
“Looks like you’re dying alone, unloved and unremembered, Sergei.” He went to take the gun from me, to take that final sin upon his own soul. Sergei must have felt the changeover, because he chose that moment to act.
He threw himself into the helicopter, and the thing lifted off the roof a millisecond later.
“No!” I screamed as the chopper rose. “He’s getting away!” I couldn’t bear the thought that he would survive this and go on living, despite everything he’d cost the world. Everything he’s cost me and Massimo.
Massimo lifted the gun and aimed at the helicopter.
Shots sounded—from him, and from the sniper hidden somewhere on the property.
The helicopter made it over the garden before the pilot was hit.
The tail spun, as the gas tank was also pierced.
Then it was falling from the sky. It didn’t have a huge amount of altitude to make a massive crash, but there was enough height for it to hit the ground hard.
Not only that, but the gas tank imploded at the moment of impact.
A fireball roared up from the ground, scorching the earth and cleansing it from the presence of Sergei Stoyanov . . . forever.
He was gone and, just like that, the world was a better place.