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My finger hovers over the trigger.
"But just know that if you kill me, my men will kill both you and Alexander before my body cools." He gives me a bone-chilling smile. "Take your best shot, whore."
I hesitate for a second, thinking of his threat. I don't doubt it—I even thought of that myself when he first cornered me here.
But that single moment of hesitation is all it takes.
For an old man, Griffin is quick. He grabs the barrel of the gun, yanking it from my grip, sweeping his leg across mine. The sudden movement makes me twist my ankle and lose my balance. I fall but grab the railing. He slams the gun down on my knuckles. Hard.
I yelp in pain, tears springing from the corner of my eyes.
Crumpling to the floor, I clutch my hand. Pain slices through my fingers like prickling shards of glass. It feels broken.
Griffin clears his throat.
When I look up, he's pointingmygun at me.
My heart is in my throat now. I know Griffin has no qualms about killing me.
"You had your chance at £15,000,000," he hisses. "Now even that's off the table too. I just want you gone. Get out of here, or I'm going to kill you."
He's seething, but he's serious.
I rise to my feet shakily, pain blossoming in my ankle. My hand hurts too much to even move. Am I really going to run away? Fuck no, there's nothing Griffin could do to make me leave. But I canactlike I'm running away.
That's the only way I'm going to be able to survive.
I scoop my clutch from the ground and hobble away. He's blocking my path back into the party, so the only other option is to go through the garden. It looks like a maze from up here. There's got to be somewhere in there I can hide until Alexander and Wesley come looking for me.
Griffin's eyes are on me the entire time.
Every few steps, I look back to see that he hasn't moved. He's still standing there, glaring at me, with my gun trained on me, the cherry barrel glinting in the dull light. It feels like a scene out of a bad movie.
I nearly can't believe this is happening to me.
But it is.
And I'm alive still, so I focus on that.
I limp along the pathway. It's littered with more of the synthetic snow, string lights the shape of snowflakes wrapped around the manicured flowering bushes and topiaries. There should be some sort of seating area in here, where I can stop to catch my breath and call Alexander.
My steps are slow, painful.
In the dim light, I can see a bruise already forming by my ankle, a rivulet of blood trailing down my side from where I hit the railing. All my fingers on one hand are black and blue too.
I blink back the tears.
Crying makes me feel pathetic.
But I'm not. All of this only happened because I stood up to Griffin, even in the face of his rage. I stood up for myself, for Alexander, for the baby. I stood up for our family, and I would never regret that.
Finally, the seating area comes into view.
It's set on a raised concrete platform. There are potted plants set in heavy stone planters neatly arranged around it, with lounge chairs and patterned cushions.
It's perfect.
I can sit here in the relative darkness, out of the way, away from Griffin while I call Alexander. I hobble to the closest chair and collapse onto it. My ankle is the size of a golf ball by this time. It throbs in time with my heart.
