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My eyelids flicker open, and I stare at the bullet hole between Phoenix’s lifeless eyes. “No!” The wail bounces off the walls of the basement, and I dimly register that it came from me.
My head spins. Black spots dance in my vision. My eyelids flutter, but I can see Mia weeping in Lorenzo’s arms. I hear him tell her how much he loves her and how he would die without her. She clings to him, and he holds onto her like he’ll never let her go again. A wave of bone-crushing guilt and soul-destroying grief washes over me.
I try to say Phoenix’s name, as if saying it aloud might bring her back to me, but the word dies on my lips. My heart shatters into a million tiny fragments, bursting out of my chest with an explosion of visceral, excruciating pain. Except the pain travels from my chest and burns along my right arm.
If Mia’s okay, whose blood soaked through her dress? I look down. Blood pours from a wide gash in my wrist, a river of red forming a thick channel down my forearm, pooling on the cold ground. I sway on my knees.
“She’s bleeding,” Ace shouts, but I know I’m dreaming now because it sounds like he cares. It sounds like he might not leave me to bleed out in this dirty, windowless room. But it’s only fitting for me to die quietly next to Phoenix where I belong. The only place I’ve ever belonged. The hard truth is that we both died in that wooden trunk twelve years ago. My eyes close and I’m falling. And I know my journey is finally over when I feel a strong pair of arms catch me before I hit the ground.
I never believed in God until now, but he must be real. Because he holds onto me so tightly that I feel safer than I ever have before, and he smells of engine oil and leather.
Chapter
Thirty-Four
KERES
Asoft humming noise, persistent and annoying, drags me out of the dark.
There’s something tight around my wrist, something sticking in my arm. My head throbs as I open my eyes. I’m alive. And I’m in a sterile room that reminds me of a hospital, but something tells me it isn’t.
“She wakes,” a deep, grumbling voice says.
Ace?
“About fucking time,” a second voice adds.
Romeo?
Tears blur my vision as I twist my head and find them sitting on either side of my bed. They’re here? For me?
“You’d better go tell the boss,” Ace adds.
My heart sinks. Of course that’s why they’re here. My bodyguards. The only reason Lorenzo didn’t let me die was so he could make good on his promise to torture me.
Phoenix is dead. We didn’t get the name. I fucked everything up. A sob wells in my throat, and I can’t force it down. It tumbles out of me before I can stop it.
“I’ll go in a minute,” Romeo snaps, and then he’s sitting on my bed, brushing my hair back from my forehead. “How you feeling, Fuck-up?”
I blink at him. Like he even cares. I swallow my emotions and sniff. “Where am I?”
“The Moretti mansion.”
My heart rate spikes. I have to get out of here.
“You lost a lot of blood. Kat had to give you some meds to help you sleep for a while. You’ve been out for twelve hours.” Kat? The name rings a bell. Dante Moretti’s wife. She used to be a nurse.
He holds up his arm, revealing a small strip of gauze and tape near the crook of his elbow. “She gave you some blood too.”
“She gave me your blood?”
He leans close, his lips grazing my ear. “Not just mine. Lorenzo donated a pint too.” He grazes his fingertips over my chest. “But you feel that blood pumping in your heart right now? That’s mine, Fireblade.”
“Lorenzo… and you…” I blink in confusion. My head hurts. “Why didn’t you just let me bleed out on that floor?” I know the answer though. A quick, relatively painless death would have been too easy.
Romeo frowns, and Ace squeezes his shoulder before he can reply. “Go tell the boss she’s awake.”
Romeo hesitates for a second, like he wants to say something, but he climbs off the bed and walks out of the room.
