Chapter 18 #4
Breathe.
Sal’s voice lived inside me.
Observe.
Gianni’s right hand held the gun. Donatella had crushed it inside the case. His grip trembled. His balance leaned backward to keep me against him. The suppressant hid the floor.
Choose.
I drove my heel into his injured hand.
He screamed.
The pistol shifted from my jaw. I dropped my full weight. Not forward, straight down.
His arm slid across my face. The gun fired.
The shot tore into the ceiling. Dust and insulation rained over us.
I twisted hard and fell to my knees.
Gianni grabbed my hair and I drove my elbow into his groin.
His grip broke.
I crawled.
The guard at the end of the passage brought up his rifle. Tonio came out of the white air first, and fired once.
The guard’s head snapped back. He collapsed between the shelves, rifle clattering from his hands.
Tonio moved past him without slowing. Blood marked one side of his shirt. His face looked carved from rage.
Then Sal came through behind him.
For one second, the entire facility vanished.
No alarms. No smoke. No gunfire. Only him.
His dark suit was torn at one shoulder. Blood ran along his cheek. He held a pistol low in one hand.
His eyes found me.
Everything in his face broke.
“Lena.”
I tried to stand. Gianni’s hand closed around the dropped pistol.
I saw it.
“Sal!”
Sal turned. Too late.
Gianni rolled onto one knee and brought the weapon up.
A woman stepped from the smoke behind him.
Serafina.
Her dark hair had come loose. Blood marked the sleeve of her black shirt. She held her pistol with both hands.
Gianni looked over his shoulder.
The rage drained from his face.
“Sister?”
She didn’t say a word. She didn’t blink. Didn’t hesitate.
She shot him through the chest.
The impact drove him back against the archive shelf.
His pistol fell.
“This is for my father,” Serafina said. “For our father.”
Gianni slid down the steel upright.
For one second, he remained sitting there. Shocked. One hand pressed to the dark hole in his shirt.
Then his fingers stretched toward the gun.
Serafina shot him again.
His body went still.
She lowered her weapon.
No one spoke.
Sal did not look at Gianni.
Not once.
He crossed the corridor to me.
His pistol hit the floor before he reached me. His hands caught my face, my shoulders, my throat. They moved over me with no order. Searching. Checking. Trembling so badly his fingers caught in my hair.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
His hands closed around my wrists. He turned them over. Saw the red restraint marks from the ambulance. His face went white.
“Lena. Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m all right.”
“Did he—”
“No.”
I caught his jacket. The fabric bunched in my fists.
“I knew you would come.”
His eyes closed.
The sound he made was small. Broken.
“I was always coming.”
He pulled me against him.
Hard.
One arm locked around my waist. The other covered the back of my head. I pressed my face into his chest and breathed smoke, blood, wool, and Sal.
Home.
My legs shook. I hated them for it. I held tighter.
“I didn’t surrender,” I said.
His entire body went still around me.
“I didn’t sign. I didn’t give him the companies. I didn’t give myself back.”
Sal leaned away just enough to see my face. His hands remained on me. His forehead pressed against mine.
“I know, little one,” he said.
His voice cracked.
“I know.”
Behind him, Tonio moved to Serafina. Donatella lowered her pistol. The alarms continued screaming. Suppressant drifted around the bodies and broken shelves.
None of it reached me.
Sal kissed my forehead.
Then my temple.
Then the skin above the mark the gun had left beneath my jaw.
His hands still shook.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“No.”
“I should have—”
“No.” I caught his face. Forced him to look at me. “Do not turn what he did into your failure.”
Pain moved through his eyes.
I knew that pain. It was mine too. The old habit of finding a way to make another person’s cruelty into a debt we owed.
Donatella brushed dust from her sleeve.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
I looked at her over Sal’s shoulder.
“I still hate you.”
“That’s fair.”
Her red lipstick had survived. I found that offensive.
Tonio reached us and put one broad hand against the back of my head.
“You scared ten years off my life.”
“You looked old already.”
His mouth broke into a fierce smile.
“There she is.”
Then he pulled me against him and Sal both, turning the embrace into something crowded and ridiculous. His shoulder was bleeding. Sal swore at him. Tonio ignored it.
Serafina remained beside Gianni’s body.
I looked at her.
She stared down at her brother for one long second. Her face showed nothing I could name.
Then she turned away from him.
Sal drew me back against his chest as men moved through the corridor and the outer alarms began shutting down one by one.
I still did not know where I was. I did not know how far we had to travel or what waited outside.
But his heart beat beneath my cheek.
Steady.
Real.
Mine only because he gave it freely.
I closed my eyes.
For the first time since the fire door fell between us, I let somebody else hold my weight.