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Soon afterward, the doors to the jet closed, and we were moving down the runway. I found myself watching the lights of the airfield as we moved, tapping my fingers in anticipation. We were only a plane ride away. The last twenty-eight years had brought me to this point, and I just wanted it to be done. I needed to wake up tomorrow or the next day and know that I’d done everything I had ever wanted to do.
“Well?” Ethan asked as the jet pulled into the air. When I faced them, they were all serious? They were all ready for the battle that was to come.
Pulling out the phone, I showed it to Ethan. “This passageway that leads from the house to the seaside. It’s hard to get to. You’d have to climb up, but there is a blind spot in the camera. We go that way, and it takes us right to the main house pool.”
“So—”
“Mommy!”
I heard Gigi call, her voice scared.
“Gigi?” I called out.
When she didn’t answer, Ethan and I both got up, walking toward the backroom, pulling open the door. However, there she was, sleeping soundly in the middle of the bed.
“Gigi?” I moved to her bed side, shaking her. She stirred and turned over but didn’t get up. “What in the hell would make her scream and go back to sleep?”
“She didn’t scream.”
“What?”
The moment I turned back, Ethan was looking down at me, his eyes sad; however, that wasn’t the thing that bothered me most. It was the needle he’d pressed into my neck. He injected whatever it was in me so quickly I didn’t have time to process. All of a sudden, my legs went weak, and I collapsed, but he caught me.
Panic began to fill me as I couldn’t feel anything. “W...what…what…” I gasped out in his arms.
“Shh!” he whispered, holding me tightly. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay!”
I was not okay! I couldn’t feel my legs! “E…Ethan!” I tried to push him away, but he held me tighter and kissed the side of my head as I struggled to get my body to wake back up.
“I really do love you. That’s why I can’t let you come with us.”
What? “N–no.” It took so much energy just to speak, but I forced myself. I tried pushing against him, but my arms were like jelly.
“You want this so badly, Calliope, that you can’t see. You aren’t recovered. I know you are still in pain and just hiding it—”
“No!” I smacked his face as hard as I could, my nails slashing his cheek, but still, he held me, and all the energy in me left with a slap, and my body went limp. He just pulled me into his arms until we were both on the floor.
“What…is…this?”
He cupped my cheek, and I wanted to smack his wrist away, but I couldn’t do anything but stare at his face.
“I noticed you don’t take pain meds often. You struggle through the pain. I realized it was because they make you drowsy, and you go to sleep easily. When you had Gigi, the pain meds knocked you out for hours. After you were shot, so did the morphine. So I created a neuromuscular-blocking shot for you. It will wear off in a few hours. By that time, you will be back home, and we will already be in Italy.”
“T–traitor.” The tear slipped from my eye without my control.
“Gigi is only safe with one of us, with her—”
“Betrayer…”
“That family needs someone there just in case something goes wrong. I have a feeling they are going to attack the house, and my family is too weak right now. If we are both gone, they will all die. You’re the only person I can trust to protect them when I am not there. The only person strong enough in case there is an attack—”
“I…will never…forgive…you.” I had told him everything. I had let down my guard, me of all people. I had let down my guard because I loved him, and he had used that against me.
He had used our daughter against me.
He wiped the tear from my cheek, swallowing hard as if this were painful for him. “I don’t believe that. You will forgive me. I will always forgive you for anything. That’s how it’s always been. We promised each other we’d do whatever we needed to do to win this war. This is what I needed to do. The box in the ottoman at the end of our bed you asked me to bring, the one you keep the poison in? That last vile, you were saving it for Siena, weren’t you? Should I use it?”
He pulled out the vile for me to see. He had planned that far ahead!
