Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty Four
Caterina
The silence after Vito and Nico leave is somehow worse.
Before, Adrian was out there alone, and my brothers were here, standing between us and the door like a final wall. Now they are gone too.
Now there is only one steel door between us and whatever is happening above.
Nick stays near it, gun in hand, shoulders squared, body positioned so he can cover the entrance and still keep Lucia and the children behind him. Lucia sits with her kids, but the gun in her hand is at the ready as well.
Teresa has Cristiano held close, one hand cupped over the back of his head, her eyes fixed on the door Vito just disappeared through.
Erica is trying not to cry.
She is doing a very good job of it, honestly.
Better than I would be if I were pregnant, holding a one-year-old, and watching my husband walk out of a safe room into a house full of men with guns.
Emma has finally started to cry, though softly.
Erica presses a kiss to her hair and whispers, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”
It is not okay.
Nothing is okay.
But I understand the lie.
Sometimes you say the words for the child and hope some tiny part of you believes them, too.
I still have Vito’s gun in my hand.
The weight of it is familiar enough not to scare me, but not familiar enough to feel natural. I know how to shoot. Papà made sure of that. But knowing how to shoot and standing in a reinforced basement room, waiting to see if someone will come through the door, are two very different things.
The sight of the gun in Lucia’s hand does something strange to me.
Lucia left this world. She built another life, married Nick Dixon, became a mother, became something outside the Conti name, or as outside as any of us can ever really be.
And still, there she is.
Dark hair falling over her shoulder, baby against her chest, pistol within reach, eyes calm and hard.
I’m a Conti too.
And before you were, even.
The words replay in my head.
I look at her, and for the first time tonight, I see my older sister instead of a missing sister.
The one who was there before all of us. The one whose absence shaped us, yes, but whose presence still has weight.
She catches me looking.
“What?” she asks quietly.
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
Her mouth tightens like she knows I’m lying, but she lets it go.
Above us, something thuds.
Everyone freezes.
Nick shifts slightly, bringing the gun up.
Lucia pulls the girls closer.
Sofia’s eyes are enormous. “Was that Daddy?”
“No,” Nick says immediately.
He does not know that.
None of us knows that.
But Sofia accepts it because he is her father, and fathers are supposed to know everything.
I grip Vito’s gun tighter.
We can hear sounds outside the door. Upstairs, maybe outside. It’s hard to tell what they are through concrete and reinforced walls.
Teresa’s face is utterly still.
That scares me more than if she were crying.
Her eyes stay on the door.
Come back, I think. All of you. Come back.
The monitors remain black.
I hate them.
I hate every blank screen. Every dead reflection. Every useless piece of technology Adrian built to protect us that someone took away.
Then one of them flickers.
I gasp before I can stop myself.
Every head turns.
The screen nearest the center flashes gray, then black, then gray again. Static crawls over it in jagged lines. Another monitor does the same. Then another.
The feeds are coming back.
Not all of them and not clearly, but it’s something.
“Oh, thank God,” Erica whispers.
I rush to the desk and lean over the console, terrified to touch anything in case I somehow make it worse.
The front hall appears first. Dim, flickering lights.
There is a body near the entry table, unmoving. Another near the side wall with a pool of blood under it.
My stomach rolls hard, but I do not look away.
I know behind me, the eyes of the children are being shielded, but I cannot look away.
The dining room feed comes back next.
At first glance, it seems destroyed, but looking at it closer, I see that it’s more just a mess than actual destruction.
Chairs shoved back, plates overturned, wine spilled across the white cloth. The yellow roses knocked on their side, water pooling around them, petals crushed against the table.
My beautiful dinner.
My stupid, hopeful, beautiful dinner.
The kitchen feed flickers next.
It’s empty, but my hand tightens around the gun.
“What do you see?” Nick asks, still at the door.
Blood. No body, though.
I keep it to myself.
“Nothing yet,” I say.
The exterior west feed snaps on.
Relief floods through my body so quickly that I nearly collapse to the ground.
Adrian is braced at the utility panel, shoulders hunched, one hand inside the open casing, the other holding his gun at the ready.
Alive. He’s alive.
Then I see the blood on his shirt. Way too much of it.
“No,” I whisper.
Teresa is beside me instantly. “What?”
I point at the screen because I cannot speak.
Her expression grows grave, and she puts a hand on my shoulder.
For a second, the angle shifts, showing movement in the hedges to Adrian’s right.
My heart jumps into my throat.
“Adrian,” I whisper, uselessly.
Nico appears on another feed, moving fast along the east side, keeping low with his weapon up. He is headed toward the service road.
That must mean they have a plan.
A few moments later, Vito appears on the front hall feed, moving through the entry with his weapon raised. He checks the closet near the door, then disappears inside it.
Teresa takes one step toward the monitor, her breath catching.
“What is he doing?” she asks.
Before anyone can answer, Vito backs out, dragging someone with him.
I recognize Andrew, Adrian’s right-hand man, barely upright now, one arm slung over Vito’s shoulder, blood on his shirt.
“He’s alive,” I say. “I think.”
The words come out ragged.
Teresa exhales shakily. “Okay. Good. That’s good.”
Vito gets Andrew behind the curve of the front staircase, out of the direct line from the entry. He says something to him, then presses a bundle of fabric harder against his wound.
Another feed returns, and we all turn to it.
The rear patio shows a woman from Adrian’s team—the one who brought the flowers in—crouched behind the stone wall, firing toward the tree line. One of Nick’s security team moves in behind her, dragging another injured person by the straps of his vest.
They are still alive and fighting. Relief goes through me.
I look back at Adrian’s feed, and all that relief flees in an instant.
I lean closer. “No.”
Teresa grips my arm. “What?”
Then she sees it too. A shadow moving near the west path, moving up behind him slowly.
He doesn’t hear them.
Damn it, he’s not turning around.
I watch helplessly as the shadow sneaks up on him, as Adrian’s head comes up, and he turns.
A moment too late.
The man hits him hard and sends him to the ground.
“Caterina, what are you doing?” comes my sister’s voice.
I don’t even realize I’ve broken away from Teresa and run for the door.
“Cat, don’t,” Erica says, panicked.
“I can’t leave him there,” I say as I input the code.
Nick puts his hand over mine.
“Caterina, think about this,” he says calmly.
“I am,” I say. “I am thinking about it. I’m thinking the man I love is out there, injured, and he’s not going to win that fight. I’m thinking that if my sister were out there in the same situation, you wouldn’t sit in here and watch her die.”
Nick’s face changes, and I know he knows I’m right. But he’s not ready to go that easily.
“I can’t just let you go out there.”
“And Adrian will die if I stay here.”
“Caterina—”
“No.” I look him dead in the eye. “Move your hand, Nick.”
For one long second, he doesn’t.
Then Lucia says, very quietly, “Let her go.”
Nick’s head snaps toward her.
Lucia is pale, Gabriel clutched against her chest, Sofia and Charlotte pressed into her sides, but her eyes are steady on mine.
“She’s a Conti,” Lucia says. “And she loves him.”
That is all she says.
And that is enough.
Nick swears under his breath and says, “I’ll come with you. I’m not staying here and watching someone else walk out that door, untrained or not. Not again.”
I turn to look at Lucia, and she nods.
He pulls his hand away, and I finish the code.
The second he does, I finish the code. The lock releases with a heavy click.
We step into the darkness of the basement. Behind us, Lucia has handed Gabriel over to Erica and is holding the gun at the ready.
We close the door and wait for it to lock behind us before taking off.