“It’s not my fault he showed up here. He should already know I’ll do anything to protect my daughter.” She shoves Emma out of the way and aims her gun at my head. I raise my gun while ignoring my bleeding arm.
“I will kill you,” Valentina threatens. “Go.”
“I will shoot you,” I say in response. “Let Emma go and I won’t have to kill you.”
“No,” Emma sobs. “Don’t kill each other. Please. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this. Why doesn’t anyone care what I want?” She runs between me and her mother. “Just stop this. Please.”
“I have protected you all your life,” Valentina says to Emma while keeping her eyes on me. “I am not going to give you over to this man.”
“I am no longer anyone’s prisoner. I am not staying in this house to watch you kill my husband.” Emma turns to me. “And I can’t watch you kill my mother. Despite everything, she’s still my mom. So please, lower your gun.”
“She will shoot me again if I lower my gun.” At that exact moment, the intense pain from the bullets in my arm sends me stumbling back. The blood seeping out of me is making me woozy.
“Leo,” Emma gasps as I kneel to the ground. She bends over me, pressing her hand into my wound. “You’ll be ok. I’ll make sure you’re ok.” Emma sounds like she’s trying to convince herself more than she’s trying to convince me.
“Get out of the way,” Valentina says. “He needs to die.”
“No!” Emma screams. “I will not let you kill him.”
Valentina looks like Emma just slapped her with the way her eyes widen and her face turns white. “How can you care for this man? He kidnapped you. He used you as a pawn against your father whereas I only ever protected you from him.”
“By abusing me,” Emma snaps. “You kicked me. Slapped me. Used words to hurt me. Leo did hurt me once. And it cut me to the core. But I know he’s not like that anymore. He made a promise to me that I’m no longer his prisoner.”
“And you believe him?” She scoffs. “Emma, you will be used time and time again in these mafia games as a pawn. But with me, you’ll be safe.”
“I’ll never be safe with you. Not when you’ve hurt me time and time again. Can’t you just let me go, Mother? I just want you to let me go. I want my own freedom.”
“And you think you’ll find that with him? No. Over my dead body will I let that happen.”
“I can arrange that,” I threaten.
Emma grabs her mother’s arms, forcing Valentina to lower her gun. “Just let me go. Please. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to stay with you. I want to be with Leo.”
“How can you say this to me? I am your mother.”
“If you truly treated me as a mother would, you never would have hurt me. I read your books. All of them. I know the ways people should be treated and you never treated me right. So let me go, Mother. Please.”
Valentina jerks back. “You read my books? You weren’t supposed to read those things. They’re filth.”
“So then why did you read them yourself? You’re a hypocrite, Mother. You claim to want to protect me when you just want to control me. Leo is bleeding out. He could die. I have to get him to a hospital. Stop coming for me.”
“Or what?”
“Or I might have to kill you the way I killed my own father.”
Her eyes widen. “You… you killed Alessandro?”
“Yes.” Emma’s voice doesn’t waver. The shy, timid girl she once was is gone. “And I don’t want t have to hurt you. So please, just stop. Leo and I will be leaving. I will go back home.”
“This is your home.”
“My home is with Leo now. Not you. I am choosing him. This is my choice. Listen to it. Respect it. Please, Mother.”
“He shot me before. In the shoulder. He has to die.”
“And you survived,” I spit out. Fuck, I’m getting more and more woozy by the moment. “I didn’t intend to kill you but I should have.”
“He needs to die,” Valentina says, raising her gun again but Emma puts herself between me and the barrel.
