Chapter 25 #2
Dad's voice echoes in my mind: When the time comes, mo stór, you'll know what to do. Trust your instincts.
My instincts are screaming that this is it. The final confrontation, the end of everything we've been building toward.
And I'm facing it alone.
The gunfire stops abruptly, leaving a silence that's somehow worse than the chaos. I strain to listen, pressing my ear against the door.
Footsteps. Heavy boots on hardwood floors, moving with purpose through the house below. Too many of them, too coordinated. Henry's men are either dead or overwhelmed.
Then I hear his voice. Smooth, cultured, American. The voice from the phone calls, from my nightmares.
Trace Harrington.
"Hello, Henry. You look older than your photos."
"Trace." Henry's voice is steady, controlled. No fear, just cold professionalism. "Took you long enough to work up the courage for a face-to-face meeting."
"Courage? This isn't about courage. This is about justice."
"Justice?" Henry laughs, the sound echoing up the stairs. "You killed your pregnant wife, and you want to talk about justice?"
"I protected my family. From people like you."
"You murdered an innocent woman because you're a paranoid psychopath who can't tell reality from delusion."
I creep to the top of the stairs, staying low, trying to see what's happening below. Through the banister rails, I can make out shapes moving in the entrance hall. Henry’s standing near the bottom of the stairs, positioning himself between me and whatever's coming up.
He's protecting me. Even now, even knowing he's outnumbered and outgunned, he's putting himself between his granddaughter and danger.
"Where is she?" Trace asks.
"Who?"
"Don't play games with me, old man. Your granddaughter. Killian's daughter. The girl who thinks she can hide from what's coming."
"What makes you think she's here?"
"Because you're here. Because men like you don't abandon family, even when staying means dying."
"She's not here," Henry says calmly.
"Bullshit. I can smell her fear from here. Not to mention all the guards you’ve got around this place. Guards who are dying as we speak."
"What you smell is your own madness. Three psychiatric hospitalizations, wasn't it? Maybe you should have stayed for the fourth. And as for the guards, they may be dead, but so are the men you brought with you. Can’t you hear that, Trace? There’s no one here but you and I. Your men are dead. It’s only you left."
Silence stretches for a moment. When Trace speaks again, his voice is different. Harder, less controlled.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't I? Paranoid personality disorder with psychotic features. That's what your doctors called it. Delusions of persecution, violent ideation, complete disconnection from reality."
"Shut up."
"Is that why you killed Ava? Because the voices in your head told you she was betraying you?"
"She was betraying me!"
"She was trying to escape from a madman. Can't blame her for that."
My grip tightens on the knife and hurley stick.
"You turned her against me," Trace continues, his voice getting higher, more agitated. "You and your people, you corrupted her, made her think she could leave her family."
"Her family?" Henry's laugh is cold, mocking. "You mean the husband who beat her, who isolated her, who finally put a bullet in her chest when she tried to get away?"
"I protected her!"
"You murdered her. And the baby she was carrying."
"That wasn't my baby."
The admission hangs in the air like smoke. Even from up here, I can feel the weight of it. He knew. He fucking knew all along. What the hell is wrong with him? Why would he do that?
"No," Henry says quietly. "It was Jason's baby. Jason, who loved her. Jason, who would have given her the life she wanted instead of the prison you created."
"Shut up!"
"She never loved you, Trace. She was planning to disappear with Jason, to raise their child somewhere you could never find them. You killed the only woman who ever mattered to you because you couldn't accept that she'd chosen someone else."
The sound that comes from Trace isn't quite human. Rage and pain and madness mixed into something that makes my skin crawl.
"She loved me! She was coming back to me!"
"She was running from you. Just like everyone runs from you eventually. Just like your own men will run when they realize what kind of monster they're working for."
"I said shut up!"
I hear the sound of a struggle, Henry's grunt of pain, and something clattering to the floor. Then Trace's voice, closer now, right at the bottom of the stairs.
"I'm going to make you watch, old man. I’m going to make you watch while I break your precious granddaughter piece by piece. I’m going to make sure the last thing you see is her begging for mercy she'll never get."
"Over my dead body."
"That's the plan."
I see the flash of steel, see Trace lunge forward with a knife in his hand. Henry tries to block, but he's too old, too slow. The blade punches through his chest, and he staggers backward.
No.
The word tears from my throat as I launch myself down the stairs, using all my might to swing the hurley stick.
The heavy wooden stick connects with Trace's skull with a sound like breaking branches. He drops like a stone, blood streaming from his head, the knife clattering across the floor. I drop the hurley and rush forward.
"Henry!" I'm beside my grandfather before Trace hits the ground, pressing my hands against the wound in his chest. Blood seeps between my fingers, too much blood, too fast.
"Alastríona." His voice is weak, fading. "I'm sorry."
"Don't talk. Save your strength. Help is coming."
But we both know it's not true. The wound is too deep, too close to his heart. I can see it in his eyes; the knowledge that this is goodbye.
"I love you," he whispers. "More than you know. Thank you for coming home, for giving an old man the chance to get to know his granddaughter."
"Henry, please—"
"Take care of them. The family. They'll need you now."
His hand finds mine, squeezing weakly. "Tell Freddie... tell him he chose well."
And then he's gone. Just like that, just like Dad, just like everyone I've ever loved. Gone, leaving me alone with blood on my hands and a madman unconscious at my feet.
I sit there for a moment, holding my dead grandfather's hand, feeling something inside me break and reshape itself into something harder, colder.
Then I pick up Trace's knife and wait for him to wake up.
We're going to finish this. Once and for all.