39. Caroline
CAROLINE
It happens so fast I don’t hear the gunfire as much as I feel it. The thud through the table, the crack in the air, the sudden wetness that doesn’t belong. Then I see the blood.
Kellan stumbles backward, the chair screeching behind him as it topples.
He stands quickly, his hand clamped to his side.
His eyes are wide, confused. Not from pain, but from betrayal.
Like something broke inside him that isn’t physical.
He tries to say something, but blood bubbles on his lips instead.
I scream. I think I scream. It’s hard to tell. Everything goes muffled, like the world ducked underwater. Rian grabs me and yanks me down, shielding me as we crash to the marble floor. The cold bites through my dress, the floor hard and unforgiving against my cheek.
Blood trickles out from under the table. Not just a few drops, but a puddle. The kind of red that means something awful just happened.
Chairs scrape violently, legs shuffle like thunder, and I watch bodies move like they’re pieces in a game I don’t understand.
Fionn Crowley surges toward us, gun raised, and Declan leaps over the table like a wild animal, intercepting him.
He kicks the gun away and it slides in the opposite direction, toward Kellan.
I see it all in frozen frames. From on top of me, Rian tries to draw his gun.
Fionn is at us, slamming it out of his grip, metal skittering across the tile.
Rian’s weight is pressed against me, his elbow against the floor.
He tries to shield me as death walks closer to him.
I elbow against him, trying to get him to move, to save himself. He can’t save us both.
Under the table, I see Kellan dropping to his knees.
He’s in the background, just beyond the scuffle, like a backdrop to the fight.
One hand is still pressed into the hole in his side, as the other reaches out for something or nothing.
His mouth moves silently. Declan is pressing his hand to his wound, looking around wildly for something.
He picks up a cloth napkin that fell in the scuffle and he tries to stop the bleeding.
“Kellan!” I scream, my voice cracking. I try to crawl under the table to him, everything else just noise.
I don’t care about Fionn approaching. I don’t care about any of it.
I know I had prepared for someone to die, but in my heart of hearts I thought we’d all live. I thought we had goodness on our side.
Rian tries to pull me back underneath him, but I kick myself free. I feel Fionn’s presence standing over me, the gun in my peripheral against my temple. I look up with just my eyes, keeping my knees and palms planted against the cold floor.
Fionn sneers with those whiteish lips, the cracks in them so ugly. “I had a feeling about you, Caroline, that you were a mistake.”
I encourage him to keep talking, even as the sickness in my stomach swells as I watch the life drain from Kellan’s face. He gets paler and paler, like Fionn’s words are the source. “Why’d you do it then? Why’d you tell them to get me?”
He laughs, cocking the gun and pushing it even harder against my skin.
“I don’t know. I guess I thought—” Rian swings his arm and tries to knock the weapon aside, but Fionn’s faster.
He knees Rian in the ribs, and the sound it makes is awful.
It’s not just one crunch but several, and Rian folds in on himself, disbelief all over his crumpled face.
“I thought I had raised these thick planks better than that. Parenting is hard, Caroline. You know that.”
“I do,” I tell him, meeting Declan’s eyes. He watches me carefully from under the table across the room, putting a finger to his lips as he starts to crawl toward his father. “It’s the hardest thing you can do, I think.”
“You give them everything, and then they betray you,” he spits out, shaking the gun’s barrel. It’s grinding into my skull, and I wince at the sensation of metal on bone.
“Maybe there’s time to mend this,” I breathe, and Declan crashes into his father, dragging Fionn backward by the throat.
“Get off her!” he snarls as I breathe for the first time since Fionn pressed that gun to me. I gasp, tears leaking down my face.
Fionn thrashes, red-faced and furious. “You’d really kill your old man? After all I’ve done for you?”
Declan pulls his head back by the hair and growls into his ear, “What have you ever done for me that didn’t serve you?”
Rian scrambles up, limping toward Fionn’s fallen weapon.
He’s halfway there when Fionn twists in Declan’s grip and grabs him by the ankle.
Rian falls forward, swearing, and Fionn pulls him with whatever strength he has left, even as Declan holds him tightly.
Fionn takes the moment to thrash just enough to turn and grab the blade from Faolan’s hip.
“No!” I don’t think. I move. I dive toward Rian’s fallen gun.
The cold metal kisses my palm like an old secret.
Like it’s mine . Like it was always meant to end this way.
I raise it. My hands are shaking. My knees are bleeding from the scramble, but none of that registers.
“Put down the knife, Mr. Crowley,” I say, my own voice raw and unfamiliar.
Declan has his throat, but he’s straining to hold him while he bucks. The man is all bone and rage, coiled muscle and rot. And he smiles . Even with a gun pointed at his head, he smiles like he’s already won.
Rian kicks at him to free his ankle. Fionn’s grip on the dagger slackens slightly, but he still has it. His eyes flick from me to Rian, then back. “Don’t do this,” he wheezes, as if he’s offering mercy. As if he’s still the one in charge.
“Why not?”
“You kill me, wan , and everything I’ve built falls apart. The Valacchis won’t be the only ones at your door. The alliances I made will be gone. And when they come, your boys will be orphans.”
I take a step closer. “No. They won’t.”
“They’ll be hunted like hounds ,” he spits, breath wet and rattling. “You’ll never keep them safe. You think they’ll thank you when they’re bleeding out in the street?”
I shake my head. “They’ll be free. Better bleeding than chained to you.”
He sneers, baring yellowed teeth. “They’re chained to me by blood. You really think they’re not mine? That I didn’t make them who they are? You think you fixed them with your pretty face and soft hands?”
I step even closer, until the barrel of the gun presses into his temple. “You didn’t just want to kill me. You wanted to ruin them.”
“They are ruined,” he snarls, even as Declan’s arm tightens. “They’re just like me. Look at them. They want to kill their own father. They’re fucked up. ”
“No,” I whisper. “You’re the only ruined one here. They still know how to love. You? All you know is pain.”
His eyes narrow, full of something ancient and dying and desperate. “You’ll know it too.”
I don’t look away.
I think of Kellan, bleeding out alone on the floor. Of his smile. His stupid puns. The way he holds the twins like they’re his heartbeat. The way he reached for me first when he was shot.
I see Fionn’s blade twitch.
And I shoot.
The bang tears through the air like a thunderclap.
His body jerks, the dagger slips from his hand, and he slumps in Declan’s grip. Blood fans out in a burst across Declan’s chest. A few droplets spatter Rian’s cheek, and the dagger clatters to the floor beside him.
Fionn’s head tilts like a puppet with its strings cut. His eyes are still open, glassy and wide. But there’s nothing behind them now.
Just a corpse.
A man made of blood and rot, finally emptied.
Silence.
Rian breathes.
I drop the gun. It hits the floor with a loud, metallic clack.
Declan reaches for me, but I slip through sticky blood to get to Kellan.
“Kellan,” I whisper when I reach him. He’s white, so white I can’t see his freckles, and his hands are limp at his side, no longer trying to keep the blood inside himself.
I rest my cheek against his chest and hear a faint heartbeat. He’s still alive.
“Oh my God,” I sob, pressing both hands to his chest. “I’m here.
Please be okay. Please.” His blood is hot on my hands.
I don’t know where to press. Everything’s slick and red and terrifying.
“Kellan, don’t you dare die. We did it. You have to be here for the rest. We get to live life now, Kellan, please.
” I can barely talk. My throat is closing with thick sobs.
Declan kneels beside me. His face is tight, blank with panic. “We need a doctor,” he says to Rian. When he doesn’t answer, Declan screams, “ANOIS LáITHREACH!” I haven’t heard him scream in so long, and I don’t know what he said but I get it. We need the doctor now.
“I’m calling,” Rian says back calmly, fumbling for his phone. His voice shakes. “We’ll get the driver here. It’s going to be okay.”
No one believes that. Not yet. But I nod against Kellan’s chest, whispering all the words I’ve never said. I tell him he’s brave. That he’s mine. That the twins need him. That I need him.
He wheezes, barely conscious. His lips part, but he doesn’t speak. His breath rattles like leaves in wind.
I smooth his hair back, hands trembling. “I love you. Okay? I love you. I don’t know what it means to love you. But I do, I do, I do. So please stay. Stay with me.”
Across the room, Fionn Crowley’s body lies still in its final sprawl, alone and forgotten. The way it should be.
But I don’t feel triumph. Or vengeance. Not even grief. Just the cold echo of survival.