45. Elio
Elio
C aruso and Enzo were right. Taking the guards along with us instead of killing them turned out to be the correct move.
The guard who came with Curse and me – Leon – not only knew exactly where his boss would be hanging out, but he also distracted the two bodyguards just outside the room.
With both of them turned his way, trusting and unsuspicious as Leon called out a greeting, Curse and I moved in behind, slitting the two men’s throats at the exact same moment.
Swift. Silent. Not a single sound of warning to be heard.
While Leon and Curse dealt with the bodies, I surged forward into the room.
Only to have my entire world implode at the sight of my wife on her fucking knees, shaking, her dress torn, her hands on another man’s thighs.
I assumed I’d keep Brigham alive long enough that Curse could get a crack at him, Interrogate him a little. Torture him a lot.
But when I see him with his disgusting fucking fingers buried in the flames of her hair my hand rises like it’s been drawn by a string. Every nerve in my body blazes, every ounce of sensation pouring into my hand as I pull the fucking trigger.
Someone screams, but it’s not Deirdre. For the first time I notice the other two in the room. A young woman with long brown hair.
And seated right next to her?
O’Malley.
Holy fuck. That bastard was sitting right fucking there . Didn’t lift a finger to help his daughter.
Don’t know why I expected any better.
I would go right to him, nail him to the fucking wall, if Deirdre’s movements hadn’t regained my attention. Her hands fly from the legs of the corpse, and she falls backwards onto her ass in her haste to get away from him.
“Songbird.”
She tenses, then turns, and then I know I’m going to blow this fucking world apart, because somebody’s fucking hit her.
I sweep into the room with long, vicious strides, coming to crouch beside her.
I tenderly cup her face, checking her head and scalp for injuries, but so far all I see is a very red cheek and a busted lip.
There’s a sudden choke of relief in my throat. She’s bleeding, but she’s in one piece. My gaze flashes to Brigham, dead and slouching in his chair, and my mind goes white with fucking fury. If I had gotten here one minute fucking later…
But he’s dead now, and he ain’t getting any deader. I focus on my Songbird once more, running my hands down her shuddering shoulders until I reach her hands.
Her bleeding hands.
I hiss out a curse.
“Who,” I ask, feeling like my heart is trying to batter its way out of my body, “did this to you?”
“I… I fell.”
“And what about this?” I prod ever so gently at her bloodied lip. Tears spill from her eyes, and she points miserably over her shoulder, as if she can’t stand to look at him again.
I already said that he ain’t getting any deader.
Fuck that. He deserves a few more fucking holes.
I stand and aim my gun, letting off a volley of shots into the white-clad corpse. I bust open his belly, his chest, even fire off a few at the wilting shape of his foul fucking dick.
I hear another feminine scream, and turn just in time to see the woman – who I now realize is O’Malley’s girlfriend, Bridget – sprint from the room. O’Malley, fucking prize that he is, tries to follow her.
“Not another fucking step, O’Malley.”
He freezes, and I can see the way his shoulders are creeping up around his ears.
“Turn the fuck around,” I tell him.
He doesn’t. He’s too afraid.
And that makes me so fucking angry that I cross to him in strides I don’t even feel myself taking. I smash my pistol down against his shoulder, forcing him down to his knees. As he howls with pain and clutches his shoulder, I step around in front of him, standing between him and the door.
I stare down at him, gun cocked, and suddenly I’m not looking at O’Malley anymore but my own sack of shit papà. He was on his knees just like this at the end. He apologized over and over. Begged me for forgiveness.
O’Malley doesn’t even manage that.
Instead, he throws Deirdre in my face, because she’s always been his fucking shield and never the daughter he protects.
“You can’t kill me, he whispers, voice shaking. “She’ll hate you for it.”
As if her hate could help him now.
“I know,” I reply, because I have no doubt he’s right. “But not as much as she’ll hate you.”
Maybe she’s already started hating me, or gone back to hating me, or maybe she never really, truly stopped, even when she began loving me. Because she’s started screaming at me like a banshee, her cry forming a raw shape around the syllables of my name.
She wants me to stop.
But what she wants has never been my priority. If I cared solely about what she wanted I never would have taken her in the first fucking place.
No. I care about what she needs .
And what my wife needs is a world without this piece of shit in it any longer.
I don’t answer my wife’s cries. I speak instead to her father.
“You forfeited your life the moment that you took my wife from me.”
O’Malley’s face pales so fast he looks like he’s already dead.
Deirdre isn’t just screaming my name now, but something else. Another word tacked on the end. “Elio, Elio, don’t! ”
“I love you, Songbird,” I tell my wife as I press the barrel of my gun against her father’s forehead. “And as your husband I will honour you and your wishes to the best of my ability. Starting tomorrow.”
I slide my finger against the trigger and it feels so fucking good.
“You might want to close your eyes.”
I’m saying it to Deirdre, but pathetic O’Malley is the one who actually does it, scrunching his eyes shut as if I’ll disappear if he can’t see me.
One glance tells me that Deirdre’s baby blues are wide fucking open.
She’s stopped screaming at me, her mouth tight and bloodless, her gaze glued to me, to her father, to the gun.
Like she’s searing this unholy trinity of violence into her brain.
For half a second, I wish I’d taken her out of the room for this.
But I’ve always been a monster to her. She told me that herself.
Might as well prove her right. Let her see who her husband truly is.
Let her see what happens when anyone tries to take her from me.
And I have to hand it to her – she doesn’t look away. Deirdre’s eyes are blue fire. I can’t tell if she’s pleading or condemning.
She doesn’t blink.
I’m not sure she even breathes.
But I do. And I speak. One last word for my father-in-law before he dies. And maybe not the one he expects.
“Thank you,” I murmur to him, and I mean it, too.
Because producing Deirdre was the greatest thing he ever fucking did and then he turned around and brought that treasure straight to my goddamn door.
In a twisted way, I got my perfect bride because of him, and that deserves some small acknowledgment.
Even now.
Even if it’s not enough to save him.
And so, less than twenty-four hours after I married her, as my wife looks on with those soulful, scorching eyes I love so much, I sweep my finger back against the trigger…
And I send a bullet straight through her father’s head.