Chapter 54 Silas #4
More guards. Two of them are at the end of the hallway, backlit by a window. They see me at the same moment I see them. Weapons raising.
I drop the MP5—too slow to transition, too unwieldy for this range—and draw the Glock in one smooth motion. The draw is clean despite the pain in my shoulder, despite the way my hands are starting to shake from blood loss.
Four shots. Two for each target. Mozambique drill—two to the chest, assess, two more if needed.
Both are down before they can return fire.
Professional. Efficient. The part of me that’s been doing this since I was eighteen, moving on autopilot while my brain tracks other things. The sound of the breach. The layout of the building. Exit routes. Where Parker might be.
The sounds of the breach are getting closer now, the organized chaos of a tactical entry in full swing.
I can hear Cal’s voice somewhere ahead, shouting coordinates with that manic edge he gets when the adrenaline kicks in.
Jace giving orders, his voice carrying that absolute authority that makes people obey without thinking.
Charles’s deeper tone cutting through the chaos, directing teams, orchestrating the violence.
They’re almost here.
I turn to head toward them, toward the sound of family coming to save me even though I told them not to.
And she’s standing there.
Aria.
Ten feet away at the end of the hallway. Gun raised. Pointed directly at my chest with both hands, proper grip, proper stance. She’s been trained. Recently, by someone good.
Her face is streaked with tears and mascara, black lines running down her cheeks like war paint. Her hands are shaking so badly I can see it from here, the gun trembling, but her finger’s on the trigger, and at this range even a bad shot will do the job.
“I loved you,” she says, and her voice breaks on the words. Shatters completely. “I would have given you everything. Everything I am. Everything I built. It was all for you.”
“I know,” I say, because what else is there? What do you say to someone whose love is actually obsession, whose devotion is actually possession? “I know you believe that.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she continues, and now she’s crying harder, her breath hitching. “You were supposed to see. Supposed to understand. Parker doesn’t love you the way I do. She doesn’t—”
She fires.
The first shot hits center mass. High chest. Right side. The impact is immediate and overwhelming—like being hit with a sledgehammer, like every atom in my body suddenly decides to move in a different direction. Knocks me backward, stealing my breath, turning my vision white at the edges.
Before I can recover, before I can even process the pain, she fires again.
Lower. Left side. Different angle.
The second shot spins me, sends me stumbling, my leg finally giving out completely. I’m falling. Can’t stop it. Can’t catch myself. My back hits the floor hard enough to rattle my teeth, hard enough that I taste blood, my head bouncing off the hardwood.
Aria’s standing over me now. The gun is shaking in her hands, pointing down at my face, and I can see her finger tightening on the trigger. See the moment she decides to finish it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and somehow I believe her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it to be you. I wanted it to be us.”
I wait for the third shot. The one that will finish it. The one that will put me out of this pain that’s spreading through my chest like fire.
It doesn’t come.
A different shot. Louder. From behind her. Different caliber—bigger, angrier.
Aria’s eyes go wide. She looks down at her chest, at the bloom of red spreading across her black shirt, dark on dark. Her mouth opens like she wants to say something but nothing comes out. Just blood. Just the wet sound of lungs that suddenly don’t work.
Then she falls.
Crumples like a puppet with cut strings, hitting the floor beside me with a sound that’s somehow gentle and final all at once.
The world is getting colder. My vision is narrowing, edges going dark and fuzzy like I’m looking through a tunnel that’s slowly closing. Like someone’s dimming the lights one by one until there’s nothing left but a pinpoint of awareness.
I’m dying.
The thought is distant. Clinical. Observational. Like I’m watching this happen to someone else, like my consciousness has already started separating from my body in preparation for whatever comes next.
“Silas!”
That voice.
I know that voice. Would know it anywhere. In any life. In any world.
Hands on my face. On my chest. Pressing against the wounds with desperate pressure that sends fresh pain radiating through my entire torso.
Parker.
But that can’t be right. Parker’s safe. Parker’s with the boys. Parker’s supposed to be miles away from this, protected, safe, alive—
“Stay with me,” she’s sobbing, and her voice is wrecked, destroyed, the sound of a heart breaking in real time. “Please, Silas, please stay with me. Don’t leave me. Don’t you dare leave me—”
Her face appears above me, swimming into focus through the tunnel vision. Sea-glass eyes streaming tears that fall on my face like rain. Hair falling around us like a curtain, blocking out the rest of the world.
She’s here.
She’s really here.
She came for me.
I try to say her name, but nothing comes out. Just blood. Just the wet, wrong sound of lungs that don’t work anymore, that are filling with fluid, drowning me from the inside.
“I love you,” she’s saying, and the words pour out of her like a flood, like she’s been holding them back for six years and can’t contain them anymore.
“I love you, I love you, I love you. You don’t get to die.
You don’t get to leave me again. Not like this.
Not ever. Do you hear me? Silas, I love you—”
I want to say it back. Want to tell her so many things. That she’s everything. That the boys need her. That she makes me want to be something other than the monster my father created. That loving her is the only thing I’ve ever done that felt right.
But the words won’t come.
The cold is spreading too fast now, moving through my veins like ice water. Up my arms. Down my legs. Into my chest where my heart is barely beating, each pulse weaker than the last.
Her voice is getting further away. Fading like she’s moving down a long hallway even though I can still see her face above me, can still feel her hands trying to hold me together.
Everything’s fading.
The sound. The light. The pain.
All of it draining away like water through a sieve.
I’m sorry, firefly.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t be what you needed. Sorry, I let you down. Sorry, I won’t get to see our boys grow up, won’t get to teach them how to ride or how to fight or how to love someone so much it terrifies you.
The darkness takes me.
Gentle. Final. Complete.
And everything goes quiet.