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Valentina
8:45 p.m.
My scream is high pitched and debilitating as I find my knees and hands after the fall and turn to see Shane prone and unconscious, with a puddle of blood forming under him.
“Nooo! Shane!” I just barely touch his side before I’m sliding backward, my brother’s hands under my armpits pulling me away with a strength I can’t challenge toward the edge of the lawn where agents are herding civilians behind barricades.
I kick and flail and fight hard, but he pins me with his legs and arms and pulls me back anyway as agents flock to Shane’s side to work on him.
Sirens cut through the park, red and blue lights strobing against the Parthenon as someone shouts for a perimeter while another person calls for a stretcher.
Another group of men took off after the gunman toward the south, radioing and chattering instructions to one another.
“No,” I cry, my whole system weakening as I make less and less ground. “Shane,” I cry. “I need to see if he’s okay, I need to—”
“You need to let them work on him,” Nico corrects. “He needs more help than you can give right now, Teen. You work on pulling yourself together. That’s what he needs from you right now!”
I punch him in the stomach and he caves, letting go of me just enough for me to get a foot away before spinning me back and pinning me facing him. “What the hell do you know about what I need, brother? Clearly, I don’t know you at all.”
“Stop that now. You know me.”
“Bullshit,” I contest. “If I knew anything, Dad wouldn’t be on his way to jail, you wouldn’t be standing here with the Feds while he is, and I wouldn’t be watching the guy who I thought was my boyfriend just a week and a half ago bleed out all over Centennial Park. So no, Nico, I think it’s safe to say I don’t know you at all. And what? You just turned snitch on Dad with no problem, no remorse? None of it makes any sense.”
“Dad never left the life, Teeny,” Nico says quietly, like he’s afraid raising his voice might break me. “He didn’t give it up and move us to Nashville to start over. He moved us to save his own ass from execution. The Grecos would have killed him for the shit he was pulling, and he knew it. Cordone Freight is a front. A legitimate shipping business, sure, but it’s a gun-moving operation. He sells to terrorists all over the world, and Teen, he brought some of those fucking seedy buyers to this gala, that you and Mom were attending, to do a deal knowing that it could be a risk to everyone around him. So, yeah, he’s in handcuffs, but he could be in a coffin. And you could be in a coffin. Mom could be in a coffin. All because of him. And as his fucking son, for better or worse with all the shit he’s done, I’d rather this option than any of the latter.”
Newly forming tears overwhelm me, sending my body into a vibration so sharp, Nico’s steady hands can’t stop it. “Shit. I . . . can’t . . . believe this is happening.”
“Take deep breaths,” my brother whispers, but I know it won’t help. It can’t.
The man I thought I knew enough to love is shot. He took a bullet to protect me.
“I need to go to the hospital,” I say. It’s not even a thought so much as a desperate need. I know the waters between me and Shane are churned up and muddy, and I might hate him at the end of the day, but I also love him.
And that’s the harsh reality about love: You can’t turn it off. Once you feel it, once it’s rooted itself inside your heart, you have no control over it.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Nico says, shaking his head.
“Why?” I challenge aggressively, bumping my chest directly into his. “What could it possibly hurt at this point, Nico?”
“I’m afraid it’ll hurt you, Teeny.”
“So it was all fake, then?” My voice cracks before I can stop it. “Everything between me and Shane? Tell me that wasn’t fake, Nico. Fucking tell me,” I plead.
“I’m not saying it was fake. I’m saying it was a job he was assigned to.” He sighs, admitting, “A job he didn’t want to leave at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“T, I made him text you goodbye, and then I smashed his phone and threatened to shoot him in his fucking dick if he tried to contact you, and he still showed up here tonight after explicit orders not to.” A deep exhale leaves his lungs. “No matter how much it kills me to say this, I don’t think that’s a man who thought whatever you had with him was fake. It’s a man who chose you anyway, no matter how bad the consequences could’ve been for him.” He runs a hand through his hair. “He’s also a fucking idiot, because the first rule of the fucking job is not getting overly involved, but—”
A million feelings of love and lust and laughter and joy and all the things my life was missing before Shane dance behind my eyes. My heartbreak at his leaving was the most brutal thing I’ve ever felt, and it wasn’t because I didn’t care—it was because I did. I thought we were endgame. I thought we were the soul connection so many people search for but can’t find. I thought we were each other’s forever.
And if I set the shock and anger and confusion aside from the way we started—from the lies he told on an assignment given to him by his job—those feelings are still there.
I still love him.
“Please, Nico. Give me a ride to the hospital. Take me to see Shane.” I jump forward and pull Nico into a deep hug. I know he didn’t want to tell me any of that shit, but he did, and he did it because he knows what it means just as well as I do. Shane loves me, even if he wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know everything, but I do know that.
