“No matter.” His eyes settle on me with something ancient and cold behind them. “I will finish what should have been finished years ago.”
Then he raises his weapon and opens fire.
We hit the floor. Glass detonates above our heads, and wood splinters in every direction, shards raining down across the backs of our hands, our necks, our gear. The room fills with noise and smoke and the smell of gunpowder thick enough to taste.
“Alive!” I shout across the chaos.
“I know, Serenity,” Nico growls.
My husband is pissed.
Through the smoke, I notice Ettore bolt through the side exit. I am right behind him, boots hitting the rooftop before the door has finished swinging.
The heat up here is immediate and suffocating; the summer air sitting heavy and thick even as dawn begins bleeding pale light across the edge of the sky. Humidity wraps itself around me like a second layer of skin. The roar hits me before I fully process what I am seeing. A helicopter sits at the far end of the rooftop, blades already cutting through the morning air, the downdraft flattening everything around it.
He had an exit plan the entire time.
Ettore is running hard toward it, head down, closing the distance fast, moving like a man who actually believes he is going to make it off this roof.
Not today.
Nico fires first. The shot catches Ettore in the shoulder and spins him half a step sideways. He stumbles, loses his rhythm, but finds it again, still driving forward, still reaching for that helicopter like salvation is rotating its blades fifty feet away.
I raise my Glock and fire.
The bullet takes out his knee.
Ettore goes down hard, hitting the rooftop with the full weight of his body, a sound like something finally breaking. The scream that tears out of him splits the early morning open and gets swallowed immediately by the roar of the rotors.
I start walking toward him.
Slow, measured steps across the concrete while he writhes and claws at the surface beneath him, leaving a dark smear of blood behind him with every inch he manages to drag himself backward.
“Stay away from me.” He spits the words up at me, still trying to manufacture authority from the ground.
The sound that comes out of my mouth is not quite a laugh. It is harder than that. Older.
“Afraid?”
I stop in front of him and look down at the man who has lived in my nightmares for fifteen years. The silver at his temples. The expensive fabric of his suit soaked dark at the shoulder and the knees. The way his eyes are still trying to hold on to something that looks like control.
“Your brother planned to rape then kill me.”
His face stays blank. One of my tears slips free. I wipe it away angrily.
Monster.
“You created every nightmare I’ve ever had.”
He gathers whatever is left in his throat and spits blood near my boots. His lip curls.
“Weakness.”
I raise my Glock and shoot out his other knee.
The scream that erupts from him is enormous, ragged and animal, loud enough to swallow the last of the night whole. He rolls onto his side, both hands clawing at his legs, his body curling around the pain like he can hold it together by sheer will.
I watch him without expression.
