Chapter 73 – thiago
Seventy-Three
thiago
The shot goes off.
Amalia jerks backward as blood blooms across her shirt. For a fraction of a second, Remi doesn’t move as her mother crumples toward the concrete.
“Mamá!” Her scream tears through the room as she runs toward her, but Kai gets there first, catching Amalia’s before her head hits the floor.
“No! Look at me.” He presses both hands against the wound, red seeping between his fingers. “Stay with me, vicious.”
Matteo drops beside them and reaches for Amalia, while Remi stares down at her mother, then turns toward Elena. The horror disappears from her face, replaced by pure rage, and I know exactly what’s coming.
“Remi, don’t!”
She lunges.
Elena fires again, but Remi is already moving. The shot misses and Remi slams into Elena, both women hitting the concrete hard, sending Elena’s gun skidding away.
I wrench against the cuffs until the chair tips beneath me. “Remi!”
It crashes onto its side with me still attached to it. By the time I lift my head, Remi is on top of Elena.
Her fist strikes Elena’s face once, then again before Elena catches her wrist. They struggle across the floor as Elena reaches for the gun lying several feet away, and Remi fights to keep her from getting to it.
“Thiago, hold still.” Matteo’s voice comes from behind me.
A gunshot blasts beside my head, and one of the cuffs breaks free from the chair. I tear my other hand free and try to stand, but the bullet wound in my thigh nearly sends me back to the floor.
Across the room, Remi rips the knife from the sheath at her leg and drives it beneath Elena’s ribs. Elena cries out as Remi yanks the blade free and scrambles away.
“Remi!” I force my injured leg beneath me. “We have to go.”
Elena lies on the concrete, struggling for air as blood spreads beneath her.
Remi gets to her feet and turns toward me, tears streaking through the blood on her face as she takes in my injuries. “Thiago,” she whispers.
I start toward her, but something behind her moves. Elena reaches across the concrete for her pistol and manages to wrap her fingers around the grip.
“Remi, watch out!”
But Elena aims at me this time. Remi spins and fires twice, both bullets striking Elena in the head and knocking her backward.
Remi spits blood beside Elena’s body. “Bitch.”
My gaze falls to the biometric monitor, still strapped around Elena’s wrist.
Fuck. Remi just stopped her heart.
“Run!” I grab Remi’s hand and pull her toward the door, ignoring the pain ripping through my thigh as I force my injured leg to keep up. Matteo is several feet ahead of us, while Kai has Amalia in his arms and is already carrying her through the doorway.
“Faster!” Matteo shouts.
We’re almost there when the explosion hits.
The force tears Remi’s hand from mine and hurls us across the room. I hit the concrete hard enough to lose track of where I am as part of the ceiling collapses between us and the doorway.
A high-pitched ringing drowns out everything around me. Dust fills my mouth and nose, and I cover my face as debris continues falling from above.
Then the heat reaches me. Flames spread across the collapsed section of ceiling, cutting us off from the doorway and everyone on the other side.
“Remi, where are you?” I shout, spotting her a few feet away and dragging myself closer. She’s already pushing herself upright by the time I get there. I pull her against me, checking her face and arms for injuries. “Baby, are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.” She touches the side of her head and looks at the blood on her fingers before her gaze snaps toward the collapsed doorway. “Mamá.”
She tries to get up, but I catch her before she can move toward the flames. “Did they make it out? Did you see them get out?”
“Your dad had her. They were ahead of us.”
“That doesn’t mean they made it.”
“I know.” I stare at the wreckage, but there’s no way to see what’s on the other side. “Matteo was with them. We have to trust that they got her out.”
Her eyes stay on the flames for another second before returning to me, and whatever she sees has her expression crumbling. “Thiago, you’re bleeding everywhere.”
“I’ve seen better days.”
“Don’t joke right now.”
“I’m trying not to scare you.”
“You think I’m scared because of the blood?”
I look past her instead of answering.
Fire has consumed the debris blocking the doorway, and smoke is already spreading across the ceiling. I scan the room for an exit, a window, anything we can use, but this part of the building is completely sealed.
“There has to be another way out.”
“We'll find one.”
We both know I’m lying.
She gets to her feet anyway and joins me, running her hands along the walls before trying the only other door within reach. It doesn’t budge. I slam my weight against it with her, but my leg gives beneath me and sends me down to one knee.
“Thiago, stop. You'll make it worse.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re fucking not.” She catches my arm and helps me back up, but another section of ceiling crashes down behind us, forcing us into a corner.
“Fuck!”
The flames climb higher along the wall, and the smoke thickens enough that Remi starts coughing. I pull her away and lower us both to the floor, where the air is clearer.
“There’s no way out, is there?”
I can’t lie to her again.
“I don’t think so.”
Tears fill her eyes, and seeing them nearly fucking destroys me.
“I need you to hear me, chama.”
“Thiago, no...” she cries, shaking her head.
“Please. I need to say this while I still can.” I cup her face and wipe the soot and tears from her cheeks. “Meeting you started as a mission. I won’t insult you by pretending it didn’t. I came into your life because I was ordered to, and I lied to you every day I kept the truth from you.”
Her mouth trembles, but she lets me continue.
“What I didn’t plan for was you. I didn’t plan on looking forward to every argument or finding excuses to stay another hour because I wasn’t ready to leave you yet.
I didn’t plan on falling in love with how fucking brilliant you are, or how you can take anything apart and somehow know exactly how to put it back together.
Turns out, that includes me." I reach for her hand and interlace our fingers. “Remi, baby, you’re funny and stubborn and so fucking beautiful, but you’re also one of the strongest women I’ve ever known. I love you, and I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Stop.” She presses her forehead against mine. “Please stop talking like you’re saying goodbye.”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Remi, listen—”
“No.” Her fingers rip from mine and clench around the front of my shirt. “You don’t get to tell me all this and then die on me.”
A broken laugh escapes me. “I’m not exactly planning on it.”
“I mean it.” Her tears flow freely down her cheeks. “I spent two days trying to hate you, Thiago. I shot your fucking truck.”
“You shot at me too.”
“I stabbed you.”
“You did.”
A laugh catches between her tears, and fuck me, even here, I love that sound.
“I wanted to hate you so badly,” she says. “I thought that if I hated you enough, none of it would hurt anymore. But it didn’t work.”
My hand slides around the back of her neck. “Chama, I'm so sorry.”
“I still love you.” Her voice shakes, but she doesn’t look away. “I fucking hate what you did to me, and I don’t know how to forgive you yet. Maybe I’ll be angry for a long time, but I still love you, Thiago.”
I close my eyes as her words hit every broken part of me at once. “If we get out of here, I’ll spend however long it takes earning back everything I destroyed.”
“When we get out.” She leans into me, and I wrap both arms around her as the fire closes in around us.
“I love you, Remi Cain.”
Her face presses into my neck. “I love you too.”
I hold her tighter, knowing there’s still so much I need her to know, but there’s no time.
The fire is spreading, leaving only a few feet between us and the flames. Heat scorches my back, and I turn until my body is between Remi and the worst of it.
She feels me move and tries to pull away. “What are you doing?”
Before I can answer, burning debris falls behind me, and pain sears across my back as a small patch of my shirt ignites.
Her hands fly toward me. “Oh, my God. Thiago, you’re burning.”
I catch her wrists before she can reach around me. “Don’t touch it.”
“Then let me put it out!”
“With what?”
The question stops her because there’s nothing left around us but concrete, smoke, and fire.
“No.” She grabs my shirt and tries to pull me away from the flames. “We’ll move. We’ll find somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Remi.”
“No.” She shakes her head harder. “I’m not sitting here and waiting to fucking die.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Then move with me. Do something!” Her desperation nearly breaks what little control I have left. I pull her back against my chest and turn farther away from the flames, taking as much of the heat as I can.
“There's nowhere to go.”
Her arms lock around me. “I’m scared,” she cries, her words so small against my chest that I almost don’t hear them. “I don’t want to die.”
“I don’t either. I need more time with you.” My voice wobbles. “I wanted mornings with you, baby. I wanted to cook dinner with you, bicker over music in the truck with stock tires, grow old beside you, and spend the rest of my life finding new reasons to make you laugh.”
She’s openly weeping now, and the sound tears me apart.
“I’m sorry,” I say, kissing her hair.
Another wave of heat rolls over my back, and I curl myself around her as much as my battered body allows.
“It’s so hot.”
“I won’t let the flames touch you.”
Her sobs shake against my chest as she clings to me with everything she has.
“Focus on my voice, baby.” Smoke burns my throat, making every word harder to get out. “Don’t look at the fire. Just listen to me.”
She buries her face against me.
“That’s it. Stay right here with me.”
“I don’t want this to be the end.”
I close my eyes and rest my cheek against the top of her head. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Thiago...” She pulls back just enough to look at me, and I brush my thumb across her cheek.
“I’ll find you again, chama. I promise.”
“You better,” she says with a watery smile.
I pull her back against me as the building shudders around us.
“I love you so much,” she whispers.
“I love you too.”
A violent crash shakes the walls, and fresh cracks splinter across the ceiling. I cover her with my body as dust and pieces of concrete rain down around us again.
The roar grows louder.
At first, I think the rest of the building is finally coming down. Then metal grinds against concrete, and the section beside us begins to buckle inward.
“Oh, shit!”
The wall fractures as an armored vehicle plows through it, ripping away enough of it to leave a gaping hole.
“Remi!” Matteo appears through the dust. “Call out!”
I almost don’t trust what I’m seeing. After believing I was about to die with Remi in my arms, his arrival fills me with hope that she might actually make it out of here.
She jerks upright. “Matteo!”
“Fuck.” His shoulders drop the second he sees her. “Thank God.”
“Matteo, where’s my mom? Did they make it out?”
“She's out. She's okay. Kai’s with her.” He waves frantically toward the opening. “Come on! We need to move!”
Remi grabs my hand, and I push to my feet with her help. My wounded leg nearly folds beneath me, but she catches my arm and helps me toward the breach, where a section of the collapsed ceiling hangs over the opening, leaving barely enough room to crawl underneath.
She drops to her knees, but when she looks back at me, the panic is gone from her face. In its place is a resolve that sends a wave of fear through me before she even says a word.
“Remi, what are you doing?”
“You won’t fit through there.”
“I will.”
She shakes her head, her cheeks wet with tears as she looks at the opening again. “No, Thiago. It’s too small.”
I cup her face and bring her eyes back to mine. “I need you to go. Crawl through first.”
Grabbing the front of my shirt, she clings to me tighter. “Not without you. I won’t leave you!”
“I’ll be right behind you,” I tell her, praying she can’t hear the uncertainty in my voice. “I promise.”
The building groans around us, and more concrete crashes to the floor, sending sparks and burning debris across the room.
“Please, baby. I need you to trust me.”
Her eyes hold mine. “I do. I do trust you. But I don’t want to lose you again.”
After everything I did to break that trust, I don’t know if I deserve those words.
She nods reluctantly, clutching my wrists and kissing my palms, then crawls toward the opening.
I stay right behind her as we make our way through the smoke and broken concrete.
Every movement sends a fresh burn through my thigh and ribs, but I keep going.
I can’t stop while she’s still trapped in here with me.
I need her safe.
The moment Remi reaches the opening, hands grab her beneath the arms and pull her through.
“No!” she cries, twisting toward me as they drag her away from the breach.
“It’s okay. I’m right here.”
She reaches back for me, and our fingertips brush before another pair of hands comes through the opening and grips my forearms. They haul me forward, but my shoulders catch on the jagged concrete.
Remi’s face crumples with panic. “Thiago!”
I try to force myself forward, but my body has nothing left to give.
“Get him out!” she screams. “Matteo, get him out!”
Their grip tightens, dragging me against the opening again as my vision blurs at the edges. Remi is still screaming my name, fighting to get back to me as darkness closes in.
She’s the last thing I see.