Chapter 20 #2
“Come on, come on,” I mutter, hand searching for the stupid fucking lever.
My fingers close around the lever and I nearly sag with relief.
Oh thank fuck.
I pull.
For one horrible second, nothing happens. The lever doesn’t move. Did I break something? Did I cut the wrong wire? Is this whole thing going to—
The lever gives way with a heavy clunk that I feel more than hear the sound of bolts retracting, heavy metal sliding through steel guides.
The door clicks.
No alarm. No flashing lights. No automated voice telling me I’ve just committed a security breach. Just that one small sound that means freedom.
I bolt forward, grabbing the door handle and pulling. It swings open and I nearly fall through it, my legs shaky from adrenaline and rage and however long it’s been since I spent systematically destroying a security system with medical scissors.
“Ha!” I shout giddily, breathing in the smell of Leo’s office.
My hands are covered in small cuts, blood dripping from my fingers.
My knuckles are purple and swollen from pounding on the door.
My arm has a long gash from the wiring that’s bleeding through my shirt.
There are burns on my palms from the sparking wires.
I look like I’ve been in a fight.
Good. Leo needs to know exactly what his “protection” cost.
If he’s even still alive.
The thought threatens to overwhelm me and I shove it down hard. He’s alive. He has to be alive. I didn’t just break out of a goddamn panic room to find out he’s dead. I didn’t tear apart wiring and cut my hands to pieces just to be too late.
And there’s something else. Something I haven’t let myself think about since I saw those two pink lines this morning. God, was that really just this morning? It feels like a lifetime ago.
I’m pregnant with Leo’s baby.
And both Leo and my father are out there trying to kill each other and neither of them knows. Neither of them knows that there’s a fourth person in this equation now, a tiny cluster of cells that’s depending on both of its parents to survive this.
The irony would be funny if it wasn’t so fucked up.
I glance down at my stomach. I know what I have to lose now.
Everything. I have everything to lose.
So I’m not losing anything.
The hallway outside is empty but I can hear it—the sounds of battle. Gunfire, closer now. Shouting. Something that might be an explosion or might be a door being blown off its hinges.
And underneath it all, the smell. It’s acrid and metallic and makes me dry heave. It smells like smoke and blood and gunpowder.
I run toward it.
The house is a war zone.
There’s a body at the end of the hallway. One of Leo’s men—Marcus, I think, though there’s so much blood I can’t be sure. His eyes are open and staring at nothing. There’s a hole in his chest, right where his heart should be.
I stop and force myself to look. I need to acknowledge that this was a person. Someone who laughed and ate breakfast and had a life, and now he’s just…gone.
My stomach churns and for a second I think I’m going to be sick. Tears blur my vision but I swallow hard and step over him, my legs shaking.
I can’t fall apart now. I can do that later.
There are more bodies in the stairwell and I flinch violently when I see them sprawled there.
I have to pick my way through them carefully, trying not to step on anyone.
I do my best to not look at their faces but I see them anyway.
Young. Some of them are so young. Maybe twenty, twenty-five.
One of them has a photo sticking out of his pocket—a girlfriend?
A sister? I can’t tell and I don’t know if I want to.
The smoke is thicker on the first floor. It burns my lungs and makes my eyes water. I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me and I pull my shirt up over my nose and mouth and keep moving.
I need a weapon.
The thought is clinical, like I’m not walking through a house full of dead bodies. This is just another problem to solve.
There. A gun, fallen next to one of the bodies.
It’s a Glock, I think. My father has a few of these.
He showed me how to use them when I was twelve, despite my mother’s protests.
Everyone should know how to handle a gun, he’d said.
Everyone should know how to check if it’s loaded, how to aim, and how to fire if they need to.
I never thought I’d need to.
I grab the gun, my hands clumsy. I check the grip and slide before I eject the magazine. I curse. There’s only five rounds. It’s not great but better than nothing. I slide it back in and chamber a round before I remove the safety.
The grip is slick with someone else’s blood but I hold it steady, my finger off the trigger like I was taught. My hands have stopped shaking. Actually, everything has stopped shaking. I feel oddly calm now, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s body.
I run through the dining room and freeze.
The table—the beautiful antique table where Leo and I had dinner for so many weeks—is splintered with bullet holes.
The chairs are overturned, some broken into pieces.
The China cabinet is shattered, expensive plates and crystal scattered across the floor like confetti.
There’s blood splattered on the wall in a pattern that looks almost artistic if you don’t think about how it got there.
If you don’t think about the fact that it used to be inside someone.
And there’s a man slumped against the wall near the destroyed cabinet. He’s still alive, I can see his chest moving, though the movements are shallow and wrong.
He’s wearing Brennan colors. One of my father’s men. He’s clutching his stomach and there’s blood seeping between his fingers. I recoil at the sight. There’s too much blood, dark and viscous, pooling on the hardwood floor beneath him.
When he sees me, his eyes go wide. “Emma?” His voice is wet and bubbling, like he’s drowning. “Emma Brennan?”
I freeze, my heart beating a staccato against my chest. My mouth grows dry as his voice envelopes me, tugging at my memory. I suddenly can’t breathe.
I know him. His name comes to me in an instant.
Michael O’Brien. He’s been with my father for…
what, fifteen years? Twenty? I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t around.
He drove me to school sometimes when I was younger because my father was paranoid about security.
He always had strawberry lollipops in his pocket because he knew they were my favorite.
He taught me how to throw a football when I was eight because my father was too busy.
He has a wife. Caroline? Catherine? I can’t remember. And he has two kids. Thomas and Sophie. I met them at the company Christmas party several years ago.
And now he’s dying on Leo’s dining room floor and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Michael,” I breathe, heading toward him. My hands are shaking again, the gun nearly slipping from my grip. I set it down on the floor next to me and kneel beside him, trying not to think about the blood soaking into my leggings.
“Your father—” he coughs, and blood flecks his lips, bright red against pale skin. “He’s looking for you. He’s—Emma, you need to get out of here. You need to—”
Another coughing fit. More blood. I can hear the rattle in his lungs and can see the way his skin is going gray.
“Don’t talk,” I say, my voice cracking. My hands hover uselessly over his stomach wound. The first aid training my mother insisted I take is trying to surface through my panic. Apply pressure. Elevate. Keep them calm. Call for help.
But there’s so much blood and his lips are turning blue. I don’t think any amount of pressure is going to fix this. There’s no one who could get here in time even if they wanted to.
Michael’s going to die and we both know it.
“Michael, I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my throat tight with emotion as my eyes burn with tears. “I’m so—”
“Not your fault.” Somehow he manages a smile, showing blood on his teeth. “It’s never your fault, kid. Your father…he’s not thinking straight. He hasn’t been since you…since the wedding.”
His hand fumbles for mine and I take it, holding tight. His skin is cold. Too cold.
“Leo Santoro,” Michael says, his grip tightening with surprising strength. “He’s…he’s going to kill your father. Or your father will kill him. They’re—main hall—Emma, you have to stop them. Have to—”
“I will,” I promise, though I don’t know how or even if I can. “I will, Michael. I promise.”
“Good. Good girl.” His eyes are losing focus, looking past me at something I can’t see. “Catherine. Tell Catherine I…tell her I’m sorry. Tell the kids their dad…”
His voice trails off and his grip loosens.
“Michael?” I shake him slightly, panic now in my every movement. “Michael! Stay with me. Michael!”
Nothing. His chest isn’t moving anymore. His eyes are still open but there’s nothing behind them. He’s gone.
I stifle a cry and sit back on my heels, my hands covered in his blood now along with my own. The calm I felt earlier is cracking, reality bleeding through like water through a dam. A sob works its way out of me and I bow my head, giving myself a moment to cry and grieve.
Michael O’Brien was a good and kind man. He had a wife and two kids who are now going to wonder why their father never came home.
And it’s all because of me.
He died trying to warn me. He wanted to help me even though I’m the reason he’s here. The reason any of them are here.
If I hadn’t let Leo take me. If I had fought harder, run away, done anything different—
No. No, I can’t think like that. I can’t let the guilt swallow me whole because there are still people alive who need me. Leo needs me. Even my father, as wrong as he is, as misguided—he’s still my father and I don’t want him dead.
I stand up on unsteady legs, wiping my bloody hands on my leggings because there’s nothing else to do with them. The gun is on the floor next to Michael’s body and I stare at it for a long moment before picking it up again.
The weight of it feels different now. It’s heavier, more real.