by Scott, Ada
Either way, it didn’t matter, because that heavy thing hit me on the head again and I went down like a sack of shit. Blackness and blurry shouting washed over me and a few stray boots found the time to kick me in the ribs, but I was drifting far enough away that I could barely feel them.
Rough hands picked me up and dragged me to the other side of the room before dumping me on to a small chair, where they held me still and others tied me down. The ropes dug in and burned my wrists, bringing voices back into focus.
“Al, Tony, search this joint. Kill anybody you find. The Kung Fu Fighter over here’s gonna learn a lesson when he wakes up. I’ve been waitin’ to talk to this motherfucker for a long time now.”
That could only be Santino Picolli, the Italian Ninja himself.
Chapter 30
Jace
The water felt freezing when it hit me, and I gasped for air, hallucinating for a moment that I’d fallen off a ship somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The reality was much worse.
I didn’t know how long I’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for, but it couldn’t have been more than ten or fifteen minutes because the first thing I heard after “wakey, wakey, motherfucker” was Tony, or Al, telling Santino that there was nobody else in the cabin.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to not let my relief show. I should have been given an honorary entry into the Poker Hall of Fame.
I allowed myself to have one last memory of her, taking those barriers down and letting herself love me. I wore it like an impenetrable fortress around the very core of my being. They would take my life today, but they’d never break me. I’d be in there to the end. With Kendall.
“I said wake up, you little bitch.”
Santino gave me a slap across the face while I tried to muster up as much swagger as a soaking wet man tied to a chair could while regaining consciousness. I twisted my head to each side, making the vertebrae in my neck crack, and looked up at him.
“Santino. How’d you manage to find time around your busy cock-sucking schedule to come here?”
“Oh you always were a funny son of a bitch, Jace. Truth is, I’ve been dreaming of this ever since you bit the hand that fed you. You knew your days were numbered, right? You didn’t really think a piece of shit like you could bring us down forever, did you?”
“Sure did fuck up your day though, didn’t I?”
“A hundred and ten years we’ve owned that fuckin’ city, and we’ll own it for a hundred and ten more with you out of the way.”
“You know, I had a picture of your father painted in my toilet bowl so I can piss on him every morning?” I asked.
Santino’s brow furrowed and I saw his skin move a few shades closer to red. He cocked his fist back and punched me in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me.
It took me a few seconds, but I laughed as soon as I could breathe. If I could get him blind-angry enough, he’d snap and kill me quick, rather than dragging it out over the course of hours or days. That was preferable.
“You punch like a Picolli. Where the fuck have you rats been hiding these last couple years?”
“You’ll be beggin’ soon enough, motherfucker. We had to call in some old favors, and promise some new ones, but we managed to regather in New Ashby.”
“New Ashby? Oh yeah, Gavino Bertolini always did like the special way you had of licking his gooch, Santino. I bet he’s letting you know all the time how much better the Bertolinis are than you, huh? Especially while he’s got your wife and daughter giving him a tag-team rim-”
Santino punched me in the face and I was reacquainted with visions of stars. The pistol-whipping under my eye he followed up with was going to swell it shut soon enough too.
I clenched my teeth, holding in the grunt of pain. On the inside I was climbing the winner’s podium. This final gloat of his wasn’t going anywhere near as well as he had no doubt imagined it. It was a shame my prize was only going to be a quicker death.
“Shut your worthless fuckin’ mouth. At least we’ve got some fucking allies. You’ve got nothin’, punk, you think any of the other families are gonna shed a tear when we go on tour with your rotting body?”
“Should I give a fuck?” I asked.
“Even your own people would rather see you dead. Lorenzo’s been feeding us information, bet you didn’t know that, huh? Must sting to know that even-”
“I killed that piece of shit this morning. Give me your address and I’ll have my people send you his shiny bald head in a little box with a pink bow.”
Santino faltered for a second, I could see him getting hot under that collar and edging towards the danger zone, but he shrugged and tried to regain his composure.
“Well, we would have ended up killin’ him for runnin’ with you in the first place anyway, no big deal.”
“Yeah, true. Hey, if we’re coming clean, let’s talk some more about your daughter. Did you know I corn-holed that bitch? Man, she cried when she took it, but she was back for more the next day. The last thing I wanted was a worthless slut like that again though, so I told her to fuck off.”
Santino’s eyes went from attempted-smug to murder in a blink. With a shaking hand, he brought his gun up and held the barrel against my forehead. The various Picolli, maybe some Bertolini, soldiers leaned forward, enthralled, waiting. Checkmate, motherfuckers.
“Everybody here knows you’re too big a pussy to do it,” I said.
I could feel all that rage in every quiver of the muzzle against my skull, and time slowed to a crawl. Every blink I took seemed to last for minutes. Every breath, for hours.
My job was done. I let my mind wander and memories of Kendall drifted in front of my eyes, blurring reality. I was lucky to have had that, to have had her, even if it wasn’t for long enough. Forever wouldn’t have been long enough with a girl like her anyway. Fuck sake. Goodbye.
Bang!
Chapter 31
Kendall
Jace’s gun kicked back and I wasn’t able to completely halt its momentum before it struck me right in the middle of the forehead. I flinched at the impact and then held the gun out again as quick as I could, smelling a strange burning odor.
The way things looked, the trigger on the gun might have been connected to time itself. Nobody was moving. Jace was still tied to the chair, head bowed, while mobsters in suits stood watching the impending execution with several of their colleagues dead on the floor.
Even the one holding the gun to Jace’s head still stood there, still as a statue. The only difference was that I could see a red hole just behind his ear, and a spray of gore on the wall opposite.
Holy shit! I shot somebody!
All at once, things started moving again. The older man started to tumble as Jace brought his head up, eyes narrowed in concentration.
The Mafia men started turning around, reaching inside their jackets, and I aimed at the closest one. Terror gripped me with every squeeze of the trigger, replacing the desperation with which I had pulled it the first time.
The noise was terrifying and after the second shot, I sprayed bullets almost randomly, looking out at the chaos through squinted eyes. Men were diving and falling in every direction, some of them still oblivious as to what was happening.
Jace leaned forward, standing to his feet with the seat still strapped to him, before throwing himself backwards to the ground and breaking the flimsy old chair into a million pieces. The last thing I saw was him struggling with ropes before my nerve broke and I stumbled to the side of the doorway, cutting off my view.
To my ears, the noise in the other room was no quieter than inside that car with Jace when the Picollis attacked us with those machine guns. Gunfire, screaming, crashing, thumping. I clutched Jace’s gun, my lips pulled back in a petrified grimace as tears streamed down my cheeks.
Through the doorway came a man with his hand clamped against his belly, on top of a dark red stain that was quickly spreading. Looking around in a daze, he soon spotted me.
He tried to aim his gun in my direction, but raising his arm seemed to be causing him some incredible pain and it was slow going. I screamed, pointed my weapon and pulled the trigger.
Click.
In quiet horror, I stared up at inevitability. I could almost see the line between the gun and where it was aiming, but there was nothing I could do about it. The floor, now my foot, now my knee…
A blur of muscles and tattoos charged through the door, taking the Mafioso off his feet. He and Jace crashed to the ground with grunts of pain and whooshes of knocked out breaths.
Jace was just beginning to scramble to a kneeling position when I heard a gunshot go off, and he slumped back down. Three more followed and then all was silent.
The two of them went still. I heard myself make a strangled sound that would have meant “please, no!” in a time before language, as I dropped the gun and crawled over to them.
With a trembling hand, I pulled on Jace’s shoulder, rocking him a little before getting a better grip and pulling harder. He was so heavy, but he unceremoniously rolled off the man below him on to his back.
I saw his chest rising and falling as a red patch, similar to what the other man had come through the door with, spread over his shirt. He was alive, and the other guy was dead. I almost fainted in relief.
“Please be OK, Jace, please!” I sobbed.
“Not out of the woods yet,” he said softly. “Help me… to the window.”
I pulled on his arm and he sat up, a warm gush of red flowing between his fingers when he did so. It was a thick enough flow to start a new wave of panic rising in me.
Jace staggered to his feet and I draped his arm over my shoulder. He was leaning on me so heavily that I could barely shuffle one foot in front of the other, and when I looked up at his face I could see a cold sweat on his brow.
He sank down next to the broken window and took a few deep breaths before turning his head and shouting out. Compared to how he looked, I couldn’t believe how strong he sounded.
“You fuckwits still out there? I’ve got Santino! Anybody approaches the cabin and I’ll shoot his balls off. Step inside and he’s dead! Fuck off and we’ll negotiate for his life some other time!”
“Fuck you, Barlow!” came the response. “Let him talk so we know he’s alive!”
“Hold the line!” shouted Jace.
Every word he spoke seemed to make more blood flow out of his belly and his skin took on a sick, clammy, appearance. He slumped lower against the wall.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he whispered. “So close.”
I knelt by him, cradling his head against my chest, dripping tears into his hair. My stomach was churning so much I thought I might throw up as I looked around the room in desperation. There was nothing to help us.
“What do we do, Jace?”
“You. Find another gun. Hide again. Don’t come out. Live.”
Jace seemed to be deflating a little more with every breath, every word he spoke was weaker than the last. My stomach went from a swirling turmoil to a painful cramp that made me wince.
“No! Please be OK! I love you, Jace, I love you! Please!”
“I guess… you know now… why you have… to fight. Love you. Go.”
“Shut up! Hide with me! Come on!”
I tried to stand and lift Jace but, if he was heavy before, he was the proverbial immovable object now. Even when I tried to drag him, I could barely get him away from the wall.
On the ground, I thought I heard Jace say something. It sounded like “What’s taking them so long?”
As soon as he said it, I heard something in the distance but getting closer. Motorbikes. So many that the deep rumble was soon loud enough to feel under my feet.
It sounded like an army was arriving.
Chapter 32
Kendall
Months Later
I turned side-on in the mirror and put my hand on my belly. Anybody else might not have known the difference but, in the last couple of days, I could see it.
Growing inside me was the son or daughter of Jace Barlow. I was going to be a mommy.
After all the death and destruction I’d witnessed, and even participated in, it was so incredibly uplifting to play a part in the creation of new life. A lump formed in my throat, and I blinked hard, wafting at my face with one hand. The last thing I wanted was to streak my make-up with tears. Not today.
Regaining some measure of control of myself, I pressed two fingers against my lips and transferred the kiss to my stomach. Instead of crying, I spoke to my unborn child for the first time.
“One time, in a cabin in the woods, I promised your daddy something. I’m going to promise you the same thing. I love you, baby. I’ll kill for you, and I’ll die for you. Nobody will ever hurt you while I breathe and have the courage to do anything about it. I love you so much.”
A knock on the door made me look up, and my dad poked his head in.
“It’s time, you’re fashionably late.”
“OK.”
I took a deep breath and pulled the veil down over my face, before picking up my bouquet and following my father out the door. My heart was fluttering and I had to fight back the tears of joy time and time again.
I couldn’t believe it was already my wedding day. Part of me was still that girl trapped in Woodville, surprised anybody wanted to marry me at all, but this wasn’t just anybody, this was the greatest man I’d ever known.
Jace had hired out The Plaza and spared no expense in preparing the venue for our special day. Waiting behind those giant wooden doors for the first notes of the song that had made billions of girls sigh dreamily was utterly surreal.
Now, it was my turn. On the other side of those doors was the aisle. At the end of the aisle was a tall, handsome, muscular billionaire who was going to promise to love me and forsake all others forever.
Afterwards, we’d celebrate with friends and family, then our limo would drive off into the sunset along streets lined with a biker gang revving their engines. Officially, they were there to peacefully protest big business. In reality, Jace had paid a hefty sum and a fulfilled promise for added security along our route.
Our private jet was going to take us somewhere that Jace had kept as a surprise, so I had no idea where my honeymoon was going to be, but the look in his eyes told me that this was one bride who was not going to get much sleep on her wedding night. I couldn’t wait.
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