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“No, no, Alister. Don’t do this. We can figure this out—together.”
I shake my head and step away from the vehicle, motioning for Ariana’s new guards to join her. They do and are quickly forced to restrain her as she tries to claw her way to the now closed door. “Alister!” she screams. It’s yet another sound I’ll never be able to get out of my head.
34
As Enzo pulls away,taking with him the only part of my heart that still beats, the SUV disappears into the black night and the sounds of its tires against the gravel drift away. The lonely road ahead of me is like a magnet that refuses to release me. My legs feel heavy as my eyes refuse to leave the space I last saw Ariana. It’s as if her very being calls to me and I want nothing more than to chase after her. And yet, I stand rigid and empty as the silence of the night gives way to the sounds of bullets and dying men.
“Boss, Vitale is trying to escape through the forest. I’m going to assist Team 3.” Gio’s voice pulls me back to the task at hand before the pain of heartbreak has time to take root just as it did this morning. I have an entire lifetime to feel it, and feel it, I will. But right now, I have to stay focused. Until Christio Vitale is dead, Ariana remains at risk and my mother and sister remain unavenged.
Finally, pulling my eyes from the road, I say, “Copy. I’m on my way.”
Before joining Gio, I stock my cargo pants with weapons I find on the ground. Some of them I recognize as my own, the ones discarded by Vitale’s men upon my arrival. Others I grab from the bodies of dead soldiers as I make my way around the house toward the woods. By now, all of Vitale’s additional forces are inside and have their hands full with Cassio’s reinforcements. There’s a clear path to the tree line, which I’m thankful for given my still-bleeding shoulder.
As I move through the woods, I see why it took Gio so long to reach his position. The dark night may serve as excellent cover, but it also makes it impossible to see clearly more than a few feet in front of you. Not to mention thorny brush, long hanging limbs, and uneven terrain make moving quickly troublesome. One wrong step and you’ve got a broken ankle. All of this slows me down in catching up with the group, but it also means Vitale couldn’t have gotten that far given his age and weight.
I crouch down to make my body a smaller target in case Vitale somehow called his men to come find him. Keeping my pistol pointed to the ground yet my finger ready near the trigger, I slowly move through wet grass and fallen pine straw, thankful the snakes have already entered their time of hibernation. As the wind kicks up, the trees begin to dance. I stop and press myself against the rough bark of a nearby tree as the swaying limbs cast shadows that look like men upon the poorly lit ground. I move my finger to my gun’s trigger in an abundance of caution.One. Two.I step from the cover of the tree out into the sliver of moonlight with my pistol raised to find no one nearby. Though, the moment of silence and stillness does give way to another sense. I turn, lowering my gun to my side, as the sounds of voices, no, grunts, make their way through the towering, slender trees to me.
“Gio, do you have visual on Vitale?” The sounds grow louder and more precise, and I move toward them. It isn’t just grunts of exertion I hear, but a sort of scraping, as if someone is dragging something or someone across the forest floor. “Gio?” I ask again.
“Negative. Sophia thought she saw something and took off after it before I reached her and Cassio. We’re trying to find her now, but she…she isn’t responding to comms.”
As Gio’s words hit me, bone-chilling fear courses through my veins accompanied by a wave of nausea. I move toward the sounds that seem to grow louder by the second as déjà vu riddles my mind.
My legs go numb as Sophia’s dark hair and sparkling dress come into view. I nearly trip at the sight of her. She lies on the gravel path just up ahead. She isn’t moving. She—
“Sophia!” I yell and sprint the last few steps to her. I drop to my knees and immediately pull her into my arms. Her body is limp. “Sophia! Sophia, wake up. Wake up!” I shake her, managing to fight through my fear long enough to realize she’s still warm. “Gio, check for a pulse,” I say as he drops down beside me. He brings his fingers to her neck as I hold her, unable to let her go.
As memories of the night I almost lost Sophia, to Vitale no less, crash through me like waves on a beach, I break out into a sprint, heading toward the sounds that make me fear the worst. Like the night I sprinted from Laroux House through the gardens, I nearly trip in pursuit of my sister, catching myself against the rough bark of the trees as I search the shadows for her. By taking Ariana hostage and holding her over two hours outside of the city, Vitale forced me to make a choice. Either come alone, leaving my defenses with my sister, and die. Or come with an army and leave my sister unprotected. No matter which choice I made, he knew he would capture at least one of us, the last remaining Amato heirs. But I made a choice he didn’t expect, one far too long in the making, and yet, one I pray I don’t live to regret.
As movement in my peripheral vision draws my attention, I turn to watch Christio Vitale, pale, blubbering, and struggling to walk with an arrow through his leg, fall face-first to the ground as another arrow soars through his shin. He lands among the pine straw and the moonlight reflects off his pale suit as if seeking to wave the white flag of surrender on his behalf. With Vitale on his belly, finally put in his place after twenty years of scheming, treachery, and heinous, despicable murder, this war is finally over. But who is responsible for its end?
My eyes drift from Vitale up through the arrow’s path to find Sophia. The one I’ve always sought to save is the one who ended up saving us all. She stands several yards away with her bow still trained on Vitale. Her body shakes as she appears to fight against her emotions in search of the restraint needed not to pepper him with more arrows. I’m not even sure if she sees me, but I see her—finally. She’s no longer the little girl who rushed out of her room at the sounds of gunshots in desperate need of protecting. She’s no longer the teenager who trusted too easily or the young adult who loved too hard. I see her now not just for her intelligence, beauty, and desire for independence, but for her strength, resilience, and capability to survive without me. I see her as the woman who saved me when the brotherhood had me bested and the woman who, with a single shot, ended a war twenty years in the making.
“Alister, do I really have to do this? It’s summer. I want to spend time with my friends,” Sophia says as I lug her bow and arrows down the gravel path of the tree-filled gardens at our family estate.
It’s a hot summer day here at Laroux House and our proximity to the lake only makes the mosquitoes worse. Still, allowing Sophia to skip her training isn’t an option, not only because Father declared it so, but because I’m set to leave for college in a few days. The thought of leaving her and Cara, who’s only five, behind, especially after— Anyway, it, um…it turns my stomach. Sophia is only thirteen, so Dad hasn’t yet begun her firearms training, but if I know she’s proficient with the bow, I’ll be able to sleep at night. At least, I hope so.
“Look, I get it. But Dad has a meeting, so he’s entrusted your practice to me. Besides, I’m leaving in a few days, and I want an excuse to hang out with you before I do.”
Sophia rolls her eyes but does as she’s told. She takes the bow from me and directs her aim at the nearest target set up about twenty yards away, half hidden by a tree. She nails it on the first try, turning to me with her brow cocked and an unimpressed smirk. That is, until movement catches her eye.
“What the Hell is that?” she asks.
“Language,” I scold her, despite knowing I would’ve said a lot worse. “I took the liberty of updating the course. You’ve proven yourself with stationary targets, but, in real life, your targets aren’t going to wait for you to shoot them. Some will run from you, others will run toward you, lunge at you, come at you from behind. The one thing they won’t do is stand still. So, now, neither will these targets. Now, you better shoot it before its timer expires. If you miss it, the entire course speeds up, increasing the difficulty just like if you miss a real target, allowing more to surround you.”
Sophia groans as she takes aim once more. Though, as she moves through the course, there is a sparkle in her eye that says she won’t be satisfied until she runs it perfectly. She’s competitive that way.
After over an hour of trying and failing, Sophia collapses in exhaustion and from the steamy Southern heat. I sit next to her on the concrete bench situated beneath a large oak tree in the formal rose garden. She’s red-faced and panting for oxygen as she inhales the water.
“Look, Dad and I are hard on you. We know that. But you understand why, right?”
Sophia only nods. It’s been two years since our mother was killed, yet it feels like just yesterday. All our emotions are still so raw, so much so that we don’t talk about them for fear of breaking. Instead, we train. We run, shoot, and study different fighting styles. The older we get, the more weapons we’re exposed to. My training as the heir to the family business has been the most extensive, but my father has insisted on Sophia taking part in certain activities as well. Cara is too young to do any of it, which makes him feel helpless, whether he ever admits it or not. I suppose his sense of helplessness in the wake of my mother’s death has somehow bled its way into me. I see how hard Sophia trains, and yet the thought of her truly having to put her skills to the test makes me queasy. I protected her the night the men came for us, the night our mother was killed. I will always do my best to protect her, but what if I can’t? What if I’m not there?
“I want you to run this course every single day, alternating between morning and night. It doesn’t matter if it’s one hundred degrees or flooding. It doesn’t matter if you have a headache or if you’re sick or if your best friend’s hamster dies. Your enemies will pick the most inconvenient times to attack, and you have to be ready to protect yourself, Sophia, at all costs.”
As I come to, Sophia lowers her bow, her eyes meeting mine. They are filled with sadness and yet not an ounce of fear. All the training paid off. “She was my sister too. She was my mother too.” Sophia stalks toward Vitale, who still tries in vain to escape us.
I move to assist her in restraining him, but am halted by the sharp, searing pain in my shoulder made more prominent by my reprieve. “Ah!” I wince. Though as my eyes move to assess my wound, my attention is drawn elsewhere.
