Chapter 67
Astor
I abandonthe motorcycle halfway up the mountain, so they won’t hear me coming. Breathless, I sprint through the forest, branches and thorns ripping my clothes and clawing at my arms. It’s still storming, but the canopy of leaves overhead provides a decent shield so I can at least see where I am going.
The outline of the hangar slowly comes into view.
I press harder, faster, my breath coming out in short, ragged gasps. I can no longer feel my burning quads, constricted lungs, pounding heart. I’ve slipped into a robotic state of mind, programmed with only one goal: Get Sabine before it’s too late.
As I breach the top of the mountain, I don’t pause at the clearing. There’s no time.
Double-fisting my gun, I hunker down and jog across the cracked concrete, skirting the side of the metal building. Best I can tell, I’ve come up on the back side of the hangar. A black helicopter sits on the small landing, just outside a bay. I’m careful to avoid being seen.
Cillian either hasn’t arrived or had the same idea I did—ditch the vehicle and sneak up the mountain. There’s no telling where he is. If Cillian doesn’t want to be seen, not even a thermal-imaging camera could spot him. The man is a ghost.
I strain to hear anything from the inside, but the sound of rain drumming against the metal roof drowns out everything.
Thunder rumbles in the distance as I round the corner of the building.
Parked in front is my Aston Martin. The back door is standing open. No one is inside.
I squat next to the metal door that serves as the main entry and debate my options—which are extremely limited. Only two, really.
One, I wait for Cillian and we breach together. This is the smartest option.
Or two, I breach alone. The quickest option—and therefore the one I go with.
Staying low, I open the door, raise my gun, and lunge inside.
My pulse skyrockets as the scene unfolds around me.
Carlos is holding Valerie, his gun pressed to her side. My wife, back from the dead.
My wife.
Her appearance is jarring. She’s sobbing, her face red and mottled. She’s wearing a dirty housedress that stops just below her knees. She’s even skinnier than I remember, her weak frame emphasized by Carlos, who towers over her by more than a foot.
Carlos, on the other hand, looks like he’s ready for war. His long brown hair is tied back in a slick ponytail. He’s wearing a pair of khaki utility pants and scarred brown boots. He smirks when he sees me, while Valerie’s jaw drops.
Next to them, Prishna is holding Sabine, a knife to her throat. Her eyes fill with tears the moment she sees me.
My gaze darts back and forth between the two hostages.
My wife and the love of my life.
An impossible situation.
I try to understand the scene around me.
Prishna and Carlos are working together. It’s almost too incomprehensible to process. I trusted this woman. Prishna has been working for me for over a decade. I gave her a second chance at life, opened my home to her, my life, both professionally and personally. I think of all the things she has access to, everything she’s overheard, things she’s read, printed, arranged. She knows my entire life.
Which is exactly why she got the drop on me.
Fucking idiot, and fucking bitch.
My eyes lock on Sabine, my sweet, beautiful butterfly. Her forehead is red and swollen, and a thin trickle of blood runs down her neck. Rage blows through my veins.
“Let her go.” I shift my stance, pointing the sight of my pistol between Prishna’s eyebrows.
“Who?” Carlos asks. “Your wife or your whore?”
Prishna laughs.
“Pri,” Valerie croaks, barely audible. “What are you doing?”
“Something I—we—should have done a long time ago.”
“You’re my sister ... stop. Stop this. You’re not thinking straight.”
“I’m not thinking straight? You haven’t had a single straight thought in years. Your incompetence as a mother is the reason Chloe is dead.”
At the sound of my daughter’s name, I snap. “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on here?!”
Carlos tilts his head to the side. “You know exactly what’s going on here. You set this up. Last week, you offered me a swap—Valerie’s body for Sabine. And here I am, ready to collect.”
Oh shit.
Sabine’s eyes widen with shock, with pain.
The betrayal she must feel, the foolishness.
No, no, I did it before, I want to scream. Before I fell in love with you.
My stomach curdles, and suddenly I feel like I’m losing control.
“Stone,” Carlos says. “You and I go way back. You’re the one who started everything when you went behind my back and fucked Valerie, my first girlfriend, my first love. Then you went and married her just to put the final nail in the coffin.”
Oh God.I look again at Sabine.
I lied to her and told her I didn’t know Valerie before our “one-night stand.” I said it because I didn’t want her to think there were real feelings between Valerie and me. Because there weren’t. There never was.
Sabine’s lips part, and her face pales.
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Carlos continues, his gritty voice like a goddamn hammer to my eardrums. “But it doesn’t stop there, does it, Stone? As if that wasn’t enough, your mother killed my brother. She’s the reason he’s dead. Honestly, I should have done this back then.”
A mad chuckle bubbles out of him. His eyes grow wild.
“And even then, you still don’t leave me alone. You go and destroy my most profitable real estate venture, costing me almost everything I’d worked for.”
“Money can be replaced.”
“My brother can’t.”
“Neither can my daughter.”
“I didn’t kill her, Stone. You know that. I’ve done a lot of shit in my life, but I don’t kill kids. Trust me, I’d happily admit to it at this point if I did.”
Valerie hangs her head, sobbing uncontrollably.
Carlos glances at her. “You have a way with women, don’t you, Astor. Every woman who enters your life meets a tragic end, don’t they? Your mother, in a plane crash, Valerie loses her daughter, and now Sabine, standing here with a knife to her throat. And Pri? Look at her. You made her hate you so badly, she’s willing to do anything to get out of your clutches.”
“How much is he paying you, Pri?”
“More than you ever would, Stone.” She glares back. “Enough to go away and start a new life somewhere.”
“In fairness, our partnership is new,” Carlos says to clarify, like I give a shit. “When you took Sabine, I staged my men outside your penthouse in New York. There, they confronted Prishna on her way to meet you in the Tahoe. Using her was a backup plan in case you’d already killed Sabine. We struck a deal rather quickly. Her job was to deliver me both you and Sabine—if she was alive—and in return, I give her freedom from you. So, here we are. You get Valerie, I get Sabine, and we all walk out of here and never see each other again. Rivalry over.”
“You think I’m a fucking idiot? You’ll kill Sabine the second you get her. She’s a liability to you now.”
“Hey, I’m trying to be civil here. Technically, I could have just taken both women the moment Prishna showed up with Sabine, but I wanted to give you a fair chance to hold up your end of the deal.”
“Liar. You have me here because you want to see me squirm.”
“Fine, you got me. Now, I’m done with all this chitchat. I’m going to take Sabine and give you your wife, and if you interject, I’ll kill both Valerie and Sabine right now and make you watch.”
The second Carlos reaches for Sabine, I lunge forward.
He sends three warning bullets into the ceiling, shattering a skylight.
“Stop!” Sabine screams. “Just stop—everyone stop!”
I freeze in place, my heart roaring.
She turns to Carlos. “Take me. Just do this already.” She looks at Valerie, the mess of a woman. “Give him his wife and let them go. Just let them go ...”
Sabine’s voice whispers in my ear as if she’s standing right next to me.
“I didn’t even try to protect the only thing in my life that I really loved and loved me back. I just stood there. A useless little girl who didn’t stand up and be brave when I needed to.”
No. No, no, no, no.
Sabine is going to offer herself as a sacrifice.
“No!” I yell, my voice cracking. “Sabine, no, you don’t have to do this, you?—”
“You are a liar, Astor!” she screams belligerently, the veins bulging in her neck and forehead. “Everything was a lie! This whole time, you planned to give me back to Carlos!” She bursts into tears. “Just take me, Carlos! Get this done. Give Astor back his wife and just take me!”
Tears fill my eyes, the torment of seeing Sabine’s pain too overwhelming.
A sinister grin splits Carlos’s face. He drops his gun from Valerie’s waist and shoves her forward. She falls to her knees, sobbing like a child.
Then Carlos grabs Sabine from Prishna, pulls Sabine to him, and puts a bullet between Prishna’s eyes. Her head snaps back, her long braids flying in the air as her body locks up like a plank and drops to the floor.
Valerie screams, curls into a fetal position, and covers her ears.
Cillian appears in the shadows of the doorway, his gun drawn.
“Stand down!” I scream, knowing Carlos will do to Sabine exactly what he just did to Prishna if Cillian threatens him.
Valerie begins clawing her way across the concrete, her hair covering her face, her weak, shattered voice saying my name over and over and over. I want to scream at her to shut up.
Carlos begins dragging Sabine backward toward the helicopter. There are no tears or fear now. She simply lifts her chin, as if accepting her fate, and mouths:
I love you anyway.
“Stop!” I press the barrel to my temple. “Let her go and I will kill myself, right here.”
When Cillian moves, I scream at him to remain where he is.
Carlos stops, his brow arching.
“It’s what you’ve always wanted, right?” My voice is shaking. “It’s what this whole thing is about. You want me to suffer, to die, that’s the bottom line. It’s not about Sabine; it’s about me. I trade my life for hers.”
The realization hits me hard. I will die for Sabine, and I would do it over, and over, and over again.
Carlos’s chest begins to rise and fall with excitement. He likes this new plot twist. It’s exactly what he wants.
“Release her,” I say, my voice booming over the rain, “and the moment my man takes her,” I jerk my chin to Cillian, “I’ll pull the trigger. You’ll get to watch me die right here.”
From the floor in front of me, Valerie looks up and reaches a skinny hand at me. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
“Deal.”
Sabine is released.
Everything goes deathly silent.
Her eyes lock on mine as she slowly steps out of his hold.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Cillian appears in my peripheral vision.
My heart feels like it’s about to explode.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Cillian takes Sabine’s hand.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
I close my eyes and begin to squeeze the trigger.
“No!” Sabine lunges toward me.
Carlos raises his pistol.
Pop, pop, pop!
Sabine’s body flies backward, hitting the concrete with a sickening thud.
I scream, lunge across the floor, and drop to my knees next to her body.
More gunshots explode around me. Windows shatter, metal splits.
“Sabine, Sabine, Sabine!”
Screaming her name, I frantically run my hands over her motionless body, stopping on the growing pool of blood on her abdomen. I rip off my shirt, press it to the wound, and apply pressure.
“You’re going to be okay, my baby, you’re going to be okay.” My tears drop onto her face, sliding down cheeks that are growing paler by the minute. “Open your eyes, Sabine. I’m right here, I’m right here.”
Valerie is clawing at my clothes, screaming my name, trying to pull me away.
In the growing pool of blood under Sabine’s lifeless body, a sparkle of light catches my eye. I pluck the butterfly pendant from the blood and clutch it in my fist.
“My butterfly, my beautiful butterfly.” I begin sobbing uncontrollably. I can’t breathe. I can’t move.
The chaos drowns to a dull roar, and I suddenly feel like I’m floating, staring down at myself and Sabine from some weird omniscient place.
Cillian grabs my shoulders and drags me backward, pulling me away from her body.
“He’s got the place rigged with explosives!” he yells over my harrowing scream of grief. “Carlos never meant for any of us to get out of here alive. Come on! She’s dead, man—come on! Leo’s waiting for us outside! We’ve got to get out of here!”
I fight like a rabid dog, but it’s no use.
“She’s gone, Astor, she’s gone! We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
Tears stream down my face as I scream her name over and over like a dog being gutted. The name of the only woman I’ve ever loved.
My beautiful, beautiful butterfly.