25. Damian #2
A bullet whines past my ear, close enough that I feel the heat of it.
I spin and return fire, watching a man in an expensive suit stumble backward with a hole in his throat.
Not Giovanni, though. Good . I want to look in his eyes when I kill him, not see him fall from a quick bullet.
I might not get the time to flay him like I’d like to, but I don’t want his end to be so unceremonious.
"Where is he?" I shout over the gunfire, putting another round into a man who's trying to crawl behind a couch.
"Back room!" Konstantin jerks his head toward a hallway that leads deeper into the safe house. "Has to be!"
We fight our way through the main room, stepping over bodies and broken furniture. My boots slip in a pool of blood, but I keep moving. Nothing matters except getting to Giovanni Russo. Nothing matters except making him pay for what he’s done to Sienna, once and for all.
The hallway is narrow and dark, lit only by the muzzle flashes from our weapons.
A man jumps out of a doorway with a shotgun, and I dive to the side as buckshot tears chunks out of the wall where my head was a moment ago.
Konstantin puts three rounds in the man's chest before he can pump another shell into the chamber.
I kick the door at the end of the hall in, boot slamming against the latch, and as it swings open and crashes into the wall, I see Giovanni Russo leap up from the bed where he was sitting, his hand on the weapon holstered at his hip.
Before he can draw it, I fire, and his hand explodes in a spray of meat and bone, splattering the wall with red.
I stride forward, his shrieks of pain making my blood pump through my veins, fast and hard. He falls back onto the bed, clutching his mangled wrist, and I reach out, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and hauling him upright.
“How does that fucking feel?” I snarl, spit flying into his face, and he shrinks back, his face gone greyish pale with fear. The acrid scent of piss fills the room, and I’ve never been more pleased to see a man humiliated.
“Damian.” Konstantin’s low voice behind me warns me not to draw this out too long. We don’t have time to play too many games, but I haven’t come this far to do it so quickly that I leave without satisfaction.
“We can make a deal,” he stammers, looking over my shoulder toward Konstantin. “You’re a diplomatic man. Everyone knows that. You?—”
“You’re talking to me now!” I snarl in his face, shaking him hard as he lets out another cry of pain.
“The time to negotiate with Konstantin is fucking over , Russo. You had your fucking chance. And then you touched my wife, threatened her, tried to use her like a piece of fucking meat.” The words come out as a growl, something primal and possessive that I don't even recognize as my own voice. "You put your hands on what's mine."
His eyes widen. "She's just some whore from a strip club?—"
I fire directly into his groin.
He screams, bucking in my grasp as blood soaks his suit trousers. He babbles something incoherent, saliva dripping from his lower lip, and I throw him back onto the bed.
"She's my wife," I snarl, advancing on him. "And you're going to die for what you did to her."
The third bullet goes into his stomach. He rolls to his side, gasping, his face going pale. I want him to suffer. I want him to feel a fraction of the terror that Sienna felt when his men dragged her to that warehouse.
"Please," he wheezes, clutching his stomach. "I'll give you anything?—"
"There's nothing you have that I want," I growl through clenched teeth, aiming again. "Except your death. "
He coughs, wheezing again. “All… this. Over that little… blonde… whore. My men said she was… sweet.” He looks up at me, blood staining his teeth as he grimaces. “Tight, too.”
“They never touched her, you fucking liar.” My finger strokes the trigger, anticipating where the last bullet will go. “She’s mine. And you’ll never touch another woman again.”
The fourth bullet goes right between his eyes. I see the moment that he registers me pulling the trigger, the flash of terror, right before he slumps back onto the cheap duvet, his blood soaking it as he collapses like a broken puppet.
He’s dead. Finally.
I wait to feel elation. Satisfaction. Relief . But instead, all I feel is a hollow dread. The threat to Sienna is gone, which means our marriage is over. Which means I have to let her go.
The thought makes my chest tight, makes it hard to breathe.
I've been telling myself this whole time that I want her gone, that I need to protect her from me, from this life.
But standing here in a room full of dead men, all I can think about is going home to her.
All I can think about is pulling her into my arms and never letting go.
"Let's get out of here," Konstantin says, already moving toward the door. "The cleanup crew will handle the rest. We need to move, Damian…"
The shot comes out of nowhere, splintering the boards at my feet.
I whirl at the same moment that Konstantin does, weapon raised, as I see a figure emerge from the other side of the doorway.
Konstantin fires, the sharp crack of the gun sounding a split second before I see a hole open up in the man’s forehead—someone young, in his twenties, perhaps. A fucking waste.
He drops to the floor with an audible thud , and I let out a sigh, pain spreading through my ribs.
Pain .
Konstantin turns back towards me, his mouth open to speak, and horror washes over his face in the same moment that I register it— real pain.
Not an analogy for it, not the ache of emotional hurt, but real, burning pain, spreading through my ribs as I feel warmth gliding down my abdomen.
There’s something hot and wet spreading across my shirt.
I look down and see blood, so much blood, soaking through the fabric and dripping onto the floor.
Just below my sternum, where my ribs spread out.
I've been shot before. Stabbed, beaten, broken. But this feels different. This feels final.
Konstantin's voice seems to come from very far away, though I know he's right beside me. "Damian! Fuck!” A string of Russian spills from his mouth, curses mixed with a shout for help, but my hearing seems to dim, and I blink, looking back down at the spreading stain.
I try to answer him, but all that comes out is a wet cough that tastes like copper. My legs give out, and I slide down the wall to the floor. The world is starting to go gray around the edges, like someone's slowly turning down the lights.
I feel Konstantin’s hand on my shoulder, hear the heavy tread of boots as more of our men rush into the room. I’m not going to die alone, at least , I think—but it’s not Konstantin that I want here with me right now, brother or no.
I can see his mouth moving, can see the panic in his eyes, but his voice sounds like it's coming from underwater.
I'm dying. The thought should terrify me, but instead it just makes me sad. Sad for all the things I'll never get to do, all the words I'll never get to say.
All the chances I threw away.
My vision is fading, darkness creeping in from all sides, but I can still see her face.
Sienna, with her strawberry-blonde hair and those green eyes that see right through me.
Sienna, who looked at a monster like me and somehow saw something worth saving.
Sienna, who offered me everything and got nothing in return but my cowardice.
I should have told her. I should have said the words that have been burning in my chest every time I’ve touched her.
I should have told her that somewhere along the way, between the forced marriage and the sleepless nights and the way she looked at me like I was her hero instead of her captor, I fell in love with her .
I should have told her that she changed me, that she made me want to be better than what I am. I should have told her that the thought of her with another man makes me want to burn the world down. I should have told her that I'd rather spend one day as her husband than a lifetime without her.
But I didn't. I walked away instead. I chose fear over love, chose what I thought was noble over what I actually wanted.
And now it's too late.
My vision narrows, darkness creeping in at the edges, and I can barely make out Konstantin's face above me.
He's saying something, probably calling for backup, for a medic, but I have a feeling it’s too late.
That I'm going to die in this shithole safe house, surrounded by the bodies of my enemies, and Sienna will never know how I really felt about her.
She'll never know that in the end, she was the only thing that mattered.
She'll never know that my last thought wasn't of the violence or the blood or the life I'm leaving behind.
My last thought is of her smile. Of her freckles, scattered across her skin like a constellation, and how it felt to trace them.
Sienna. My wife. My little wildcat.
I’m sorry.
I wish, as numbness sweeps over me and my vision goes dark, that somehow she’ll know all the same that I loved her. That despite everything I said, despite all the ways I pushed her away, she was the best thing that ever happened to me.
That she was worth fighting for, and I was just too broken to realize it until it was too late.