AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Lifting my foot, I dig the heel of my shoe into his wound. “Like father, like son.” I scowl. “Can’t say you’ll be buried with him, I’m afraid.”
Not that there’s a grave for any of the Bianchis.
“Winning…” He huffs a laugh as he tries to catch his breath. “Looks different…f-for everyone.”
Before I can grasp what he’s saying, a shot rings out, coming straight at Kayla.
Sophia screams as Kayla’s body falls backward, blood leaking from her stomach.
Looking down, I find the gun slipping from his grasp just as the last few seconds of his life disappear.
“No!” I run toward Kayla and fall to my knees.
That shellshocked look in her eyes has me lost in fear. With a pocketknife, I cut through the zip ties binding her wrists and rip off my shirt to put pressure on her wound.
When her blood soaks through it, agony like I’ve never known hits me in every cell of my body.
“No, no!” I shout. “Don’t fucking leave me!”
I fight for breaths that never come, my eyes burning with a raw kind of pain until a tear trips down my face. More come in its wake.
I realize in this moment as I gather her up in my arms that I’ve never cried before, not since I was a small child still seeking thecomfort and love of the world. But I never felt an ounce of it, not until this woman, and I can’t let her go. I won’t.
“Un-Uncle A,” Sophia sobs, almost unable to get the words out. “Is she o-okay?”
The fresh flood of tears in her eyes causes more of mine to surface. I don’t know how or why she called me her uncle, nor do I have a chance to ask. Because my focus is on getting Kayla to a hospital. Her pulse still beats, but it’s weak.
As I grab Sophia’s hand, her eyes widen when I register a rush of footsteps behind me.
“Daddy!” she screams, dropping my hand immediately and charging for her father.
“Princess!” His emotions wrack within him.
As soon as she jumps into his arms, our eyes lock, and he gives me one solemn nod. And I do something I never thought I would: I return it.
I ignore my other two brothers, my half sister, and all the others standing there as I hurry out the door with a dying Kayla in my arms.
“Wait!” Michael calls out with Sophia still in his embrace. “We have our own hospital. Take her there.”
“I can drive,” Raph offers, slapping my shoulder with his palm.
I don’t shake it off. This is about more than my hate for them. This is about Kayla.
“Fine.”
Together, we race into his SUV, while he does over a hundred to save her life.
And mine.
Everyone’s gathered in the hospital while the docs operate onKayla. The bullet is out, we were told, but she needed a transfusion for all the blood she lost. No one knows yet if she’ll be okay.
My mother keeps her worried attention on me, while Elsie is huddled with Jade and Kayla’s crying parents, who don’t understand why someone who lived through what Kayla did would do something like this. They have no idea what Cammie truly did. How many women she killed. And they won’t. The news will never catch wind of the Midnight Murderer’s real identity. Cammie will not get fame in her death. Nor will Jade’s center get bad press because of this. It was the one thing we all agreed on—me, my brothers, and the Cavaleris, who are all also here.
I pace like a madman, waiting for her to wake up. To call me A just one more time.
“Fuck!” I whisper-shout just as I feel a hand on my back.
Pivoting, I find Michael there.
