Chapter 81
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
Ace
Song- Fearless, PRESIDENT
They've left me alone with two guards.
I've been working the cuff for an hour. Every movement sends lightning through my arm, white spots bursting behind my eyes. I bite down on the pain the way I bite down before a ride. Eight seconds. That's all anything ever is. Eight seconds at a time.
The swelling is my friend now. Blood slicks my wrist. I fold my thumb in, grind my hand through the metal, and feel skin tear.
The cuff slips free.
I don't move. I sit exactly as I was, broken arm cradled in my lap, head down, breathing heavy, the way a beaten man should. The two guards are by the door, talking low in Italian. One has a rifle slung lazily across his chest, the other is scrolling on his phone.
I think about Harper. Hanging upside down in that seatbelt. The smoke. Her hand, two feet from mine.
I think about my baby.
And then I stop thinking. Because thinking is what gets you killed, and what I'm about to do runs on something older than thought.
The phone guy walks past me to check the dripping pipe in the corner as part of his routine. He's done it four times in two hours.
This time, when he passes, I move.
I come up off the chair and drive my good elbow into his throat. He drops the phone, choking, and I grab the knife off his belt with my working hand and put it in him twice before he hits the floor.
The second guard is fast. A hell of a lot faster than I expected. The rifle comes up, and I'm already moving, closing the distance to the point where the weapon can't help him.
The shot goes wide, the sound in the cellar is a bomb going off inside my skull.
I get the knife into him, but he gets me too. Something punches into my side, and the world goes gray at the edges. We go down together. I land on my broken arm, and the scream that comes out of me doesn't sound human.
He's still moving. So am I. Barely.
I finish it, driving my blade as hard as I can into his neck.
And then I'm on my back on the wet concrete, two dead men beside me, blood pumping out of my side between my fingers, and I can hear boots. Lots of boots. Coming down the stairs. Shouting in Italian.
The gunshot. The gunshot told everyone in this building exactly where I am.
That was the part of the plan I didn't have an answer for. I knew it was a risk, but it was either that or die in this cellar without trying. And I couldn’t do that. Harper and my kid deserved at least one shot for me to survive.
I drag myself toward the wall, leaving a smear of red across the floor, and grip the knife with the last of what I've got. If this is it, I ain't going quiet. I'm a Sterling. We die with our teeth in something.
The door bursts open. I can’t move.
Gunfire erupts from somewhere above. Not down here. Upstairs. The whole building shudders with it. The men coming through the door freeze; the shooting upstairs becomes a storm.
The men in the doorway scatter. Two run back up the stairs into the gunfire. One stays, raising his weapon toward me, and his chest opens up before he gets the barrel level. He drops.
Behind him, coming down the stairs through the smoke, is the devil in a black suit and red lipstick. The one and only, Gianna Milano.
Her hair tied back into a swishing ponytail. There’s blood splattered across her cheek. A pistol in one hand and a blade in the other, and an expression of pure, unfiltered rage.
Relief floods me when I see my brothers storm through the door behind her. Hunter. Colten. Jett. Enzo's men flood down the stairwell.
My family came. But there is no Harper.
My vision is going. The gray at the edges is turning black, creeping inward. The blood between my fingers won't slow down. I slide down the wall until I'm sitting in it.
A man stumbles down the last few stairs, hands raised, screaming in Italian. The brother. The one with the expensive watch. The one who called his sister a useless bitch and smiled while he said it.
He sees Gianna and starts begging. I don't speak the language, but I know begging when I hear it. That man is petrified of his sister.
Gianna walks to him, her heels clicking against the concrete. She listens to all of it with her head tilted, as if she’s genuinely interested.
Then she says one sentence, soft as a lullaby in Italian, and the color drains from his face in an instant.
Gianna shoves the knife through her brother's heart.
She holds him by the collar while he goes and looks her in the eyes the whole way down like a psychopath, while Colten watches from behind. She lowers him to the floor almost gently and stands, wipes the blade on his jacket, and turns away from him.
That's the last clear thing I see.
The black rushes in and there’s bubbling in my ears.
"ACE!"
Colten. Colten's face above me. His hands on my side, pressing down hard, and I want to tell him it hurts, but there are more important words, and I only have so many left.
I think these may be my last ones. I can see her blonde hair in my mind. Her smile. That nose ring that I love.
"Is she alive?" I manage.
My eyes won’t focus anymore.
"Ace, stay with me."
I need to know she made it. I don’t give a fuck about anything else. Just let her be okay. I just need my girl to live, even if it is without me. I’ll find her again. I know I will.
"Where is she?" My hand finds his shirt. My fingers won't work right, but I hold on anyway. "Colt. Where's Harper? The baby?”
"She's safe. She's safe, Ace, she's with Gianna's doctor—"
"My baby." The words are sliding around. Everything is sliding. "Is my baby—"
"The baby's okay. They're both okay. You hear me? Both of them. You just gotta stay awake."
I try to believe him. I want to believe him. But all I can see is her hand hanging through that broken window, and the smoke, and the two feet of road I couldn't cross.
"I couldn't get to her, Colt." My voice cracks apart.
"You got to her. You hear me? You went, and you got her out of that house, and that's why she's alive. Now stop talkin'."
"Where is she?" It's all I have left. The only sentence in me. I say it again. "Where is she. My baby. Where—"
"Ace. ACE. Eyes on me—"
Hunter's there now, too. Both my brothers, hands pressed into me, shouting my name, and somewhere behind them, Jett is roaring at someone to move faster, and Gianna is standing over us with her brother's blood on her hands.
Her face alone tells me I ain’t gonna make it.
Fuck.
“Tell Harper I love her. Tell her that I’ll find her in another lifetime, just like I promised.”
And the last thing I think as the dark takes me, is that it ain't the dark I'm afraid of.
It's waking up in a world where Colten was lying to me.