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“Remember her first morning at the house?”
“Don’t tell me she’s trying to jump?”
I message Leroi.
Where is she?
Four frantic heartbeats later, his text appears on my screen.
East wing of the house.
Leroi and I exchange a volley of texts, including messages from his bloodthirsty girlfriend, who’s watching Emberly through the scope of her rifle. When she announces that a man just appeared on the balcony and unfastened one of her ropes, I give the order to shoot.
The car bounces over a bump, making me jolt forward. Galliano fills the back seat with screams. I look up to find us charging through the gates of the Capello estate.
I grab Gil’s shoulder. “She’s around the far side.”
Gil passes the mansion’s double doors and swerves around its side before halting behind a line of trees. I fling open the door, leap out, and break into a sprint.
Emberly hangs fourteen-feet in the air, still dressed in her leggings and white maternity shirt. Both hands cling onto a pair of burgundy drapes fashioned into a rope, and another lies puddled on the ground.
Alarm shoots through my system like electricity, charging my steps. I pick up speed, sprinting through the shooters and leaping over fallen corpses. Bullets fly past. One of them hits me in the back with a burst of pain that I dismiss.
All I can think about is my wife dangling by a precarious rope.
“Emberly!” I roar.
She twitches, still clinging onto the curtain. “Roman?”
“It’s me,” I say, my voice thickening. I position myself directly beneath the hanging velvet. “I’m here.”
Emberly says something that’s muffled by the gunfire.
A man in a black suit appears from around the corner and rushes at me with a pistol. He fires two shots into my chest. Pain slices through my ribs, and I stagger backward from the impact. I fire back and hit him between the eyes.
The gunfire stops, but I’m so focused on Emberly that everyone around me fades into insignificance.
“Let go, baby,” I yell.
She whimpers, reminding me of a cat that’s climbed too far up a tree and is now too afraid to move.
Silence stretches across the garden, broken only by Emberly’s ragged cries. My heart pounds hard, but my ears remain attuned to Emberly’s voice.
“I’m too high up,” she cries.
“Don’t worry. I’ll catch you when you fall.”
“But I’m too heavy.”
The makeshift rope sways, making my stomach plummet. Either it’s about to come loose from the balcony railing or the knot she made to connect the two drapes is unraveling. If she clings on much longer, she’ll fall against her will.
Gil appears at my side with Leroi, as do Cesare and Benito, all four of them ready to catch her, providing silent solidarity and support.
“Emberly,” I say, trying to remain calm. “You’re the strongest, bravest woman I know, and you’ve survived worse than this. Just trust me and let go.”
“A-Alright,” she says, but doesn’t move.
Of course, she doesn’t. Why would she trust the man who’s told her nothing but lies?
