24. Demi #2
Malevsky shifts his attention back to the lighter in his hand. “Much as I’m enjoying our cozy chat, Ms. Payne, I believe you’re the one who is missing the point. It doesn’t matter who set the fucking fire, I’m still going to kill you all.”
“Why?” I hear the desperation in my own voice, and I hate that this evil bastard can make me feel this way. “You think revenge will make you happy?”
“I know it will.”
“Until the next enemy pisses you off, and the next. You might think you’re clever, but you’re just like every other pakhan out there, driven by greed and power and—”
His face is in mine, his breath permeating my oxygen, his thick fingers squeezing my face in his iron grip. “Don’t make me kill you before your boyfriend gets here. I would hate for him to miss the show.”
“Fucking coward.” It’s impossible to form the words with my jaw squashed in his fist, but I think he gets the gist of what I’m trying to say when his eyes darken. “Blame everyone else instead of owning your actions.”
Silence invades the rest of the house for a second time, and his lips curl. “Looks like he made it.”
He shoves my face away from him and releases me, and I work my jaw to ease the throbbing and make it feel normal again.
I’m torn. I want Enzo to walk through the door like an avenging superhero, but at the same time, I wish that he’d stayed away.
With a little more time, I might’ve convinced my captor that he’s been tracking down the wrong person for the past twelve months.
Sure, he’ll take me down with her, but at least Enzo and Gio would be safe.
But even as I’m allowing this impossible scenario to grow legs inside my head, the door to my right opens, and Enzo walks in.
The door closes behind him with a click.
I gasp. His shoulder is blown open, his jacket shredded, the flesh beneath it little more than a pulpy mess. Blood trickles down his leg from another bullet wound, but he strolls in with a weapon in each hand as if this is his showdown and everything is going according to plan.
His eyes land on me, and his expression softens momentarily.
He looks bone-weary. There are dark pouches under his eyes, his skin is dirty from the ash the house has been guarding for the last year, and his hair is longer than I remember, but he is still so goddamned beautiful, my heart remembers the way it used to beat for him.
Of course it does. My love for him was hibernating while I tried to forget him; it didn’t go anywhere.
Then, he sniffs gasoline, spots the container at my feet, and his gaze takes in the ropes and the lighter in our captor’s hand, and finally… his sister.
“Let them go,” he addresses Malevsky. “This is between me and you.”
Malevsky’s lips twitch. “Maybe it was to begin with. But your girlfriend here has irritated the fuck out of me, and your sister—” he shrugs “—doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut and disappear.”
Enzo’s eyes slide to Bianca and back again without giving anything away.
“Do you have sisters? They get treated like princesses when they’re growing up, spoiled, given everything they could possibly want, and then they discover that it was all a lie, and they will always come second to the men in the family. ”
“Boo-hoo.” Malesky makes a crying signal with his hands near his eyes. “Am I supposed to feel something here? Because it isn’t working.”
“Maybe you don’t know how to feel. Your loss. Family relationships and love are messy and complicated and brutal, but they’re the only things worth living for.”
Enzo fires a bullet into Malevsky’s shoulder to match the one in his own, and the pakhan barely flinches.
Blood oozes from the hole in his jacket, and I watch it, mesmerized, like it’s a clever illusion while my heart panics that this will all be over soon, and I’ll never get to tell Enzo I love him. I always loved him.
“They’re the only things worth dying for too,” Enzo concludes. “Wouldn’t you agree, Bianca?”
“Leave me out of this, Enzo,” she says. “I’m only here because of you.”
He watches her for a long beat, his expression unfathomable. I don’t know if she’s staring back at him, or if she’s trapped inside her own head right now, but I wonder how much he knows about the fire that killed Malevsky’s cousin and his family.
I wonder if he has always known that his sister set him up.
Enzo turns his attention back to Malevsky. “Is that correct?”
“I don’t like to leave loose ends. Unlike the Sabatellis, who have loose ends flapping around all over the place.” His lips part into a macabre grin to reveal his teeth. “Girlfriends in the NYPD, ex-lovers on the runway, kids in exclusive schools in Rome. Do you know how easy it is to—”
“You leave my children out of this, you fucking asshole!” Bianca struggles to free herself from her constraints, the chair legs banging on the floor as she tries to move. “Touch them and I’ll fucking kill you myself!”
“Like I said,” Malevsky says, unfazed, “she doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.”
“Let them go, and I’ll give you what you want,” Enzo says.
“The deal is off.”
“Name your price.” Enzo’s expression hasn’t faltered since he entered the room.
He has barely looked at me since his initial glance when he walked in.
Part of me, the irrational needy part that I never knew existed, is desperate to know that he still feels the same way as he did before, aching for a wink, or a glimmer in his eyes to tell me that he’ll make this all go away.
While the rational part of my brain is yelling at me that his deliberate indifference is calculated to get me out of here.
“You gain nothing by killing the women,” Enzo continues.
“Sure, I do,” Malevsky counters. “I get to see you watch them die.”
“You know I’ll kill you before that happens, right?”
Malevsky laughs out loud. “Yet here you are still talking when you could’ve killed me already.
” His laughter stops as abruptly as it started.
“We both know that you can’t stop the fire once I start it.
That you’ll go up in flames with them or you’ll hear their screams while you cover your ears with your hands. ”
“You’ll die with us,” Enzo says.
“It will be worth it.”
That’s when I know that we’re all going to die in this room. Life holds so little value to men like Malevsky, that he is willing to sacrifice his own life in the name of revenge.
“No!” I blurt out.
We’re running out of options. There’s no point trying to appeal to Malevsky’s humanity because it doesn’t exist, but I can’t give up now, not while I’m still breathing and there’s a chance I might save Enzo and Gio and his family.
I’m under no illusions that he’ll let Megan and the children live when he’s done here.
“Enzo is willing to make a deal. Won’t you at least listen to what he’s offering?”
Malevsky tilts his head to one side like I’m a curious creature he discovered in the wild. For one fleeting moment, I think he might be tempted, then, “No. Time’s up.”
He flicks open the lid of the lighter, and a flame bursts to life.
A scream lodges inside my throat.
I hear the click of Enzo’s fingers on the triggers of his weapons.
But before either of us can react in that millisecond it would take for Enzo to release bullets into our captor and pray that the spark doesn’t reach the gasoline ring, more gunfire erupts elsewhere in the house.
Malevsky’s mouth twitches at the corners. “It would appear we have visitors.” He shuts off the flame sitting atop the lighter by closing the lid, and slides it back into his pocket. “The larger the audience, the louder the applause. Talk amongst yourselves while I’m gone.”
He crosses the room and leaves via a door on the opposite side to the one through which Enzo entered. I think he locks it, but it’s hard to concentrate with the fear numbing my senses and the uncontrollable shivers ravaging my body.
Enzo doesn’t miss a beat. He produces a knife from somewhere and slices through the ropes binding me to the seat. As soon as I am free, he folds me into his arms, fisting my hair, and holding me so tightly I can hardly breathe through the fluttering in my chest.
“I thought I would never see you again,” he says, his voice husky, when he releases me enough that I can tilt my head back and peer into his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Enzo.” I need him to hear it before we figure out next steps, even if we run out of time. “I didn’t want it to—”