Chapter 47
I slammed on the brakes, and everyone jerked forward in their seats, grousing and grumbling. The SUV behind us screeched to a stop, missing our bumper by a hair. Quickly, I made a three-point turn and gestured out the window for the other vehicle to do the same.
“What are you doing?” Vinny griped, rubbing his neck.
“That was them.”
“Them who?”
“Them them.”
Another gunshot went off ahead just as Ainsley’s vehicle squealed and tumbled off the road.
My heart leaped into my throat as we sped through the distance.
I braked at the last minute, tires smoking from the strain, and aimed for the rear of the vehicle that had been tagging Ainsley. Their doors opened.
“Brace!” I yelled, straining my back and arms straight.
“You’re crazier than Tore,” Vinny barked as our front end hit their rear. For her, I’d be as crazy as she needed me to be. I’d light up the world and smash the ashes to bits if she asked.
The impact jolted up my arms, the airbag smashing into my nose. A gush of blood flowed into my mouth. I smeared it away and unbuckled my seatbelt. On the driver’s side, the crash had knocked one of the assailants onto their stomach.
“Up and out!” I hollered to my men, both in our car and the car behind us pulling up on a soft stop.
I refused to look down at Ainsley’s car until the immediate threat was out of the way.
With my semi-automatic pistol locked and loaded, I kicked my door open and jumped onto the asphalt.
My first shot landed as the hostile rose to his knees.
Vinny shot off two rounds before moving forward on quick feet. Knowing him, each one hit their target.
“Leave one alive,” Vinny yelled.
I’d rather kill them all off, but I knew where he was coming from.
My other eight men filtered through the woods as we chased down the fuckers who’d gone after my woman.
There were more of us than them. I left them to it and raced down the hill instead, phone flashlight on, toward the smashed SUV. Its rear was wrapped around a tree.
Before I even reached it, the woods went sickeningly quiet.
“Ainsley!” I wrenched open the front passenger door. Empty. No one was in the driver’s seat. I circled the car, flashing my light over the woods, in case she ran. “Ainsley! Where are you?”
“Renzo?” Her voice trembled.
I vaulted around, expecting her right behind me, but the woods were empty. “Where are you?”
“In here. Call 9-1-1.”
That’s when I noticed the bloodied calf and tennis shoe sticking out of the back passenger window behind the driver’s seat. Nausea swamped my throat, despite everything I’d previously experienced.
“Get all this cleaned up. Pack them in the car,” Vinny called out uphill. “We’ve got minutes, if that. Let’s move. If the engines work, all vehicles go with us.”
With my phone to my ear and 9-1-1 dialed, I ran around to the car’s other side and opened the door. I froze. Ainsley was alive, upright, and conscious. Blood trickled down her forehead, and the bottom half of her shirt was missing. Cuts littered her arms and face. Otherwise, she was fine.
Her back was to me as she tied fabric tightly around the top of a thigh, right above where a shard of glass impaled the leg. The skin was not olive like Ainsley’s, but dark brown—thin, not meaty like hers. I glanced down at the kid’s face. It was Lou.
Madonna, good god.
The 9-1-1 operator came on the line, and I explained the situation: the three of us had been in the car, my wife, her sister, and me.
I’d been driving. We got shot at by a random SUV and ran off the road in the middle of the woods.
My sister-in-law needed immediate medical attention and was at risk of bleeding out.
As the operator coordinated on speaker, I sidled closer to both Ainsley and Lou and muted my side of the conversation.
Ainsley didn’t look at me—all her focus on Lou.
“Talk to me, civetta. Where does it hurt?”
She picked glass from Lou’s clothes and hair. “Y-you…” she stammered, her voice frail, “Y-you called me your wife.”
“That doesn’t matter right now.”
Shaky exhales left her as she continued her task. “And Lou, your sister-in-law?”
“Where are you hurting?”
“Is it true?”
“Stop focusing on that.” I wanted to shake her.
“I can’t,” she whispered brokenly. She wiped a small cut clean from Lou’s head with her shirt.
“Yes, alright? Yes, it’s true. All of it.”
She nodded slowly, her fingers trailing down Lou’s cornrow braids.
“You forged my signature on the certificate?” It was asked so softly, I almost didn’t hear it.
“Yes,” I said, almost hoping it would make her angry and break her out of this funk.
“Oh.”
The operator came back on the line before I could demand more of a reaction. An ambulance and a medical helicopter were dispatched and on their way.
“You hear that, baby? They’re almost here. She’s going to be okay.”
“Okay.” She sniffled through her tears.
I muted the line again.
“Civetta, we need to know. Where’s Massimo?”
She didn’t look away from Lou, her eyes gaunt and tired. “He’s dead.”
“Good, that’s good.”
Her hand lifted, a pair of keys on her index finger, and she pointed back toward the road. “There’s a side road. Not far. He’s there with Alfie. And their car.”
“We’ll take care of it.” I twisted around. “Vinny?”
“I heard. We’ll get on it.” Footsteps crunched through the woods, running back up to the road. Car doors slammed, and engines grumbled. Metal whined and rattled, and then the cars hummed and groaned as they pulled away.
“I’m not leaving you,” I told Ainsley.
“I know,” she whispered.
I pulled her into a hug, and her head rested on my shoulder. All the while, she continued removing debris from Lou’s hair. Glass bits poked my collarbone, so I too gently pried piece after piece out of Ainsley’s hair.
“She’s not waking up. Why isn’t she waking up?” Ainsley smeared tears off her face with the back of her bloodied hand.
“She will.”
“Promise?”
It was the first time she looked at me since I found her here, and I’d never seen her so broken. Not even that day seven years ago in the Hayes house.
Tears washed lines through the blood caking her face.
Her clothing was torn. A mishmash of cuts decorated her arms and hands.
Even still, she looked every inch the warrior I knew her to be.
She’d fought back. She’d gotten herself and Lou out on their own.
My fighter. My minx. The woman who’d snuck up on me and torn down every wall I’d ever built around my heart.
There was never going to be a better woman for me, and I was done fighting that truth.
“I promise. No matter who I have to threaten or what doctor I have to hire. Even if I have to go fetch Lou back from the reaper’s claws, she’ll live.”
Ainsley broke into sobs in my arms. I thumbed her cheeks over the tiny cuts as the rhythmic whoop of helicopter blades sounded overhead and strong searchlights swept over the woods. An ambulance’s siren joined in.
“She’s like you. So strong. And she’ll come back fighting. I swear.”
Her watery gaze met mine. “I trust you.”