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Matteo and Rex bow their heads in solemn respect. They know how much Ester meant to me. Even Loreto bows his head. I can’t allow myself to feel any emotion about this now, though—I need to be lethally clear-headed. The engagement party has been ruined without Lara even realizing it was in the works. My home has been infiltrated and my territory breached. My innocent, elderly housekeeper was brutally slaughtered. Things could only be worse if something had happened to Lara.
I walk closer to her to look her over and check to make sure she’s okay. I open my mouth to try and come up with some words of reassurance, since she looks absolutely terrified at the sight of Ester sitting in a pool of her own blood. I want to tell her that I’ll protect her, and that I plan on tearing apart the men who did this to Ester. But before I can say anything at all, Lara bursts out her emotional outrage at the situation which has clearly traumatized her.
“This is it,” she says quietly but intensely, the heat of a million suns burning in her eyes. “I wantout. I don’t want even one moreminuteof this violent life any longer. If you truly care about me at all, you’ll help me escape.”
11
LARA
I spent the rest of today excited to tell him yes. I had already thought about it all night and then after this morning, every question I asked myself brought me to the same answer—I’m quickly falling in love with Christian, and making an arranged marriage now suddenly did not sound like such a bad thing. That is, until this happened.
The attack on Christian’s apartment happened all at once, without time to think or process the individual events of it. All of a sudden, men were bursting through the doors, guns were being fired, and bikers with knives already wetted with blood were combing the hallways of the building. It took a mere moment before my brother grabbed me and whisked me out the fire escape and toward safety. Christian’s men, Rex and Matteo, came with us. It felt like I was the only one who thought about the people still left inside as we hid at the bottom of the fire escape, waiting between the carnage in the penthouse and my father’s men prowling the perimeter below.
“What about Ester and the rest of the staff?” I asked in panic.
“They’re all armed,” Matteo said, as if that was supposed to comfort me. Somehow, I can’t picture Ester wielding a firearm. Although in the mafia,everyoneis taught how to shoot a gun while you’re still a child. Everyone except for me, that is. My father gave me a new weapon every Christmas. He kept pressuring me to pick up a gun but I refused. A few times he forced it into my hand and pressed my finger on the trigger as he yelled at me to toughen up, but all that did was make me reject it even more. My mother would cry and beg him to leave me alone but that only made him angrier and he would end up hitting me. That’s usually when Loreto would round the corner and convince our father to give him some shooting lessons or some other distraction, which was my cue to lock myself in our hiding place until things had calmed down.
“Why aren’t the two of you inside defending the apartment and helping to protect the staff?” I asked as I frowned at Rex and Matteo in turn.
“Because you’re the most important person to Christian right now,” Matteo replied in a scolding tone, as if I ought to be grateful enough to stop asking questions. “Our primary objective is to make sure you remain safe.”
“I doubt my father would kill me in this raid of his.”
Loreto gave me a sour expression. “You might want to rethink your stance on that,” he said. “Our father has made it increasingly clear that he only cares about himself.”
I didn’t say anything in response because I knew my brother was right. But as we stood there in the cold out on the fire escape, I worried for the others still in the apartment. This seemed cowardly. I knew they were only doing it for me, to protect me since it was what Christian would want. But that made me feel even more guilty. Any deaths that happened inside the apartment would be blood onmyhands, because if I wasn’t here then Loreto, Rex and Matteo would be inside, fighting to protect everyone instead of babysitting me.
“Look!” Loreto said as he pointed down to the cars pulling away from the building. They were leaving. They’d accomplished what they set out to do, trashed Christian’s place and terrorized his staff, and when they couldn’t find me they decided to pull out. Climbing back up the fire escape and stepping back into the apartment was like re-entering a war zone. Everything was broken and strewn about, and there was an eerie silence that filled me with dread. Why wasn’t Christian’s staff screaming or crying or calling for help? The answer to that was simple and terrible—because they were all dead.
Quickly, Rex and Matteo went to search for survivors while Loreto and I looked around in horror. It wasn’t long before Christian was back. When he walked up to me to check and make sure I was alright, I wanted to thrust myself into his arms and stay there in his embrace, erasing all of this from my mind. But there was one sight I couldn’t erase—Ester slumped in the corner, dead, her head barely still attached to her neck. I can’t remember ever seeing anything so terrible. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of encountering death many times in my life, the worst of which was my mother’s own death. In the short time I’ve been here, Ester was both a calming motherly presence and the voice of wisdom, and this was uncalled-for violence against someone who had done nothing to deserve it at all. She was my only friend here, and now she was gone. Seeing her lying there lifeless stirs up the feelings of terror that gripped me when Loreto told me our mother was gone.
I expect Christian to get angry or to recoil when I insist on being let go that moment, or maybe even to lash out at me. But instead, he just looks hurt. “Lara, please, you just need to calm down and take a minute to think,” he says sadly. “This has been a…mess. Why don’t you go get cleaned up and get away from this for a moment? I’ll come and talk to you in your room in a few minutes.”
I nod and leave the kitchen, heading down the hall toward my bedroom as I try to ignore the other signs of brutal deaths along the way. He’s right—I’m traumatized. Maybe I’ll think differently about this once I calm down. Ester’s death is horrific, but it’s also not Christian’s fault.I’m starting to fall in love with him, I keep reminding myself. And you don’t run away from the people you love.
I step into my room and then into the bathroom, taking a cool washcloth to my face as I try to breathe steadily and calm my nerves. But a ringing phone back in the other room that’s never getting answered suddenly gets my attention. I go back in and answer it. “Hello?”
“I was wondering if I might be able to get ahold of you.”
Father. “What do you want?”
He chuckles. “I’m calling to officially inform Christian that my offer of your hand in marriage is being rescinded, like theborgaterules specify. You can just give him the message for me.”
“That’s not your choice to make any longer,” I say.
“Come now, Lara. Surely you see that my new alliance with the Hell’s Devils will ensure that Christian won’t live to see another year. If you’re still with him, that will simply be more collateral damage.”
“Is that all you think of me as? Collateral damage? You can threaten me all you want, but Christian is a very powerfulcapo, and you don’t stand a chance against his crew.”
“Well, look at you acting all empowered now that you think you have a man to protect you. I guess you failed to notice how brokenChristian looked just now when he returned? That’s because Roman already got the jump on him. And do you know why?” I don’t answer because I know my father is going to monologue on his own. “Because you’re a distraction to him.Youare now Christian Greco’s weakness. And believe me when I tell you that Roman and I are ready to play that to our advantage.” I did notice how beat up Christian looked, but I was too emotional to register why or how it might have happened.
“The next time, we won’t just beat him within an inch of his life,” he continues. “The next time, if you don’t listen to me and break off your engagement to him, we will ensure that Christian doesn’t survive the attack at all, and woe to you if you happen to be in the way.”
He hangs up before I have a chance to respond. And in that moment, I realize how much I care about Christian. I need to protect him as much as he’s been trying to protect me. In order to save his life, I must get as far away from him as I can.
“Are you okay?” Christian says as he comes to my door a few minutes later. I won’t tell him that my father called or what he said, not because I’m trying to protect my father but because I’m trying to protect Christian. If he knows something’s wrong, he’ll try to fix it and protect me, and that will only prolong my father’s wrath against him.
“No, I amnotokay,” I say, leaning dramatically into the part that I must now play. “I’ve reached the end of my limits, Christian. I want you to help me escape.” The amount of hurt on his face breaks my heart. But I know I have to do thisin order to save his life.
