“It is a closed-door deal,” he answered. “The deal is that you’re all going to die so we can continue our business without your interference.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carter interjected as he held Eva close to his side. “My wife and I just want a child. You said you could give us a child!” He was good. If I didn’t already know what a smart-ass he was, I would have been tempted to believe he was just another pretentious businessman used to getting whatever he wanted.
“Please. You said you could help us,” Eva added, looking distraught.
“My goodness, Carter. That is one of your best performances yet!” Damon said as he sauntered through the doorway, gun in hand, three more henchmen fanned out beside him. As Ian, Carter, and Eva pulled their weapons, the armed men pointed their guns at Claudia and me. Damon trained his barrel on Gil. “You can put those on the floor and slide them over now, thank you.”
“You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going to hand over my weapon,” Ian said harshly. His right arm flexed as he tightened his grip on the handle of his gun.
Damon motioned to the henchman guarding me, and I felt the firm grip of his hand on my bicep. In response, Ian took a step toward me while keeping his gun pointed at Damon. Carter and Eva alternated their aim between Paolo and the henchmen.
“I don’t want to, but I’ll kill her if I have to,” Damon said flatly.
Ian looked at me as he, Carter, and Eva laid their guns down and kicked them away, but not without Carter using every Italian curse word he knew.
“You’re working with Paolo, Damon? How could you?” Eva demanded.
“I’m not working with him,” Damon replied. “He works for me.”
Ian’s nostrils flared and his face flushed with anger. Damon was the mysterious figure Ian had been chasing. All this time, he had been right under his nose.
“You should go say hello to your sister, Gil. She’s traveled a very long way to find you,” Damon said, his voice dripping with false sincerity.
“What the hell is she doing here, Ian?” Gil barked as he rushed across the room to me.
“Trust me, I tried to send her home,” Ian told him. There was a bite to his tone, angry that he hadn’t been more forceful or I hadn’t been more agreeable.
Gil threw his arms around me. He stroked my hair and held me tightly to him. “Why didn’t you listen to him? This wasn’t how this was supposed to play out. You were supposed to tell him about Maria and he was supposed to send you home!”
“I wasn’t going to just leave you—” The thug who had my arm let it go when I yanked it from him to hug my brother. I had missed Gil so much. I studied his face and brushed his messy hair to the side. He looked the same, but there was a hardness in his eyes that I didn’t remember.
“When did you know Damon was part of this?” I asked.
“The Cappolas had me forging immigration documents for Paolo,” Gil began. “When Damon showed up, I thought Ian had sent him to get me. He made it clear that was not his intent when he took his gun and cracked me on the head. I escaped a few days later and sent you the journal.”
“I hated to be so aggressive with you, but I thought it best to establish what our relationship was going to be like going forward,” Damon said plainly, his lips curling up slightly at the corners.
“Going forward?” I questioned.
“Yes,” Damon answered. “I trusted Paolo to keep a hold on Gil, but apparently that was a difficult task. Now that both Paolo and Gil have learned their lessons, I do not anticipate any more trouble.” I looked at Paolo and noticed that a bandage on his left hand covered the place where his pinky finger should have been. “It took us some time to find him. Fortunately for us, he never made it to the US Embassy in Rome.”
“But you were part of this team—this family,” Ian said with a glance at me. He finally got it. “I trusted you.”
“And that was your mistake.” Damon’s stone-cold face matched his icy tone. “I did what was necessary to find out how close INTERPOL was to finding me. Being on your incredibly boring team gave me the access to everything I needed. Although I will say that things got much more exciting when Victoria showed up.” The snakelike grin crossing Damon’s face made me want to throw up.
“So what now? You’re going to take Gil and just kill the rest of us?” Claudia challenged. “That’s not very creative of you, Damon.”
He let out an annoyed sigh. “You’re right. It’s not.” He grazed his eyes creepily along the length of my body. “I’m taking Victoria with me, too. I showed her picture to a few clients, and I’ve got a buyer lined up already.”
“Like hell you’re taking my sister anywhere!” Gil shouted as he stepped protectively in front of me.
“Take them,” Damon said flatly to his henchmen. Within seconds, the thugs had Gil and me by the arms and were dragging us toward the front windows. The others made moves to save us, but their efforts were futile. Without guns, there was nothing they could do.
“It’s going to be okay, Victoria,” Ian said as reassuringly as he could, his eyes catching mine from across the room.
“I know,” I lied.
“What do you want, Damon? You want to run? Run. Just leave Gil and Victoria. They’re not part of this team,” Ian argued.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt them. Gil is far too valuable to my business. As for Victoria, if you come after her, I’ll kill her. You’ve all come to love her too much to risk her life. Isn’t that right, Ian?
Ian looked at me with soft eyes. Did he regret meeting me? Everything he told me—that you couldn’t have friends in this business, that feelings just got in the way—was proving to be true. But we had found something in each other we didn’t know we had been looking for. That was worth it, right?
And Gil. I had finally gotten him back, only to lose him again.
I wondered if Damon was right. Would they all stand down just because they didn’t want to risk me getting hurt? Or was I simply collateral damage, something not worth risking their entire operation for? Suddenly, I felt terrible, like I had compromised the integrity of the team. I worked to break down Ian’s emotional wall, but I should have left him alone. I was the key, as Bianca told me. I was the weakest link.
“He wasn’t there,” Bianca said, storming in from the back room.
“What do you mean he wasn’t there? Adam never breaks protocol. You must have been on the wrong roof,” Damon chastised.
“I wasn’t on the wrong roof. He wasn’t there,” she reiterated aggressively.
Claudia and I assumed they had already taken Adam out when he didn’t save us from Bianca. If he was safe, we actually had a chance of escaping.
Damon thought for a moment. “Okay. Let’s move.” He motioned to the men holding Gil and me, and they pushed us forward. There was no way in hell I was going with Damon. I’d rather die than be treated and sold like property. More than that, I wasn’t going to make the team compromise the mission. They had a job to do, which was to take Damon down and end his human-trafficking ring. I was just one person. The lives of countless children and their families were worth saving.
I looked down at the gun pointed at my side. Someone forgot the second rule of gun safety. I gave Ian a determined look and took a deep breath. He must have seen me evaluate the gun because the last thing I heard was Ian yelling for me to stop.
I grabbed the gunman’s hand and jammed my finger on top of his in the trigger guard and pulled. I fell to the ground, the pain exploding in my body like a bomb going off. I gripped my side and saw warm blood seeping through my fingers. My vision blurred. I didn’t know what damage I had done, but it didn’t matter. With me down, Damon’s card was out of play for the moment, and Ian and the others could act without hesitation.
I lay in a heap on top of the gunman for only a moment before Ev
a kicked him in the face. His blood spattered across my neck. He got up as fast as he could, rolling my body off of him. He was barely on his knees when the sole of someone’s shoe connected with his chest and he went flying through one of the windows. He tried to come back through, but suddenly he fell, his lifeless body folded over the window frame, blood dripping down the shards of broken glass.
The door shattered around me like it had been broken from the outside. Wood from tables and chairs ricocheted around the room as they were hit by bullets meant for human targets. Bodies slammed against the display cases, splattering glass and pastry remnants everywhere. Then the gunfire stopped. All I could hear were the sounds of punches and kicks making contact.
Blood flowed from Paolo’s face as Ian held him by the collar and punched him repeatedly. Paolo grabbed Ian’s shirt and head-butted him, knocking Ian off balance for only a split second before Ian’s retaliatory blow sent Paolo crashing into the already destroyed dessert case. Pastry bits exploded into the air, sweetening the iron smell of blood and gunpowder. When I licked my lips, I was taken back to my birthday dinner with Tiffany when we indulged on huge slices of cheesecake.
Hands were suddenly on my shoulders, dragging me, leaving a trail of blood in my wake. My side was on fire, and I was immobile, defenseless. Panic filled my chest until Claudia moved into my vision and gave me a firm nod as if to say, “We’ve got this.”
Then she turned around and punched Bianca in the face, dodging the retaliatory fist Bianca threw back. A knock to Bianca’s stomach and then another to her chin sent the former Rogue agent flying. She hit her head on the counter and her body went limp.
On the other side of the shop, Eva gave a roundhouse kick to one of Damon’s thugs and then turned to right-hook another one. He punched her in the stomach, knocking her to the floor. Carter finished him off by twisting and snapping his neck.
I heard a gun fire again and knew it had to be Adam shooting from the rooftop across the street. The only intact front window shattered, and the thug whose nose I had broken took a bullet to his temple.
I couldn’t see Damon anywhere. Had he been taken down or did he get away?
Claudia swept the floor with her leg and knocked Paolo down, stomping on his injured hand. Then one of Damon’s thugs came behind her and got her in a chokehold. She fought hard, and I recognized some of the basic self-defense moves she used, but the guy had arms like tree limbs. Carter gave him a swift kidney punch, loosening his grip. When she was free, Claudia kneed him in the crotch and then palmed his nose.
Gil finally came into view. He was crouched down in the opposite corner of the room, and Ian was fighting off anyone who tried to get near him. Ian must have left his fight with Paolo to protect my brother. The last of Damon’s men were coming at Ian relentlessly. Blood trickled down his face, and there was a gash in his cheek. Carter pulled one of the men off and slammed his head into the exposed brick wall. Ian took the last man down with a final punch to the face that sent two teeth flying from his mouth.
Finally, with his chest breathing heavily, Ian stared down Damon, who had been hiding like a coward and waiting for the dust to clear so he could grab Gil and run.
“Give it up, Damon,” I heard Ian say. “You’ve got nothing left.” Carter, Eva, and Claudia had each picked up a gun and had it pointed at Damon. Their faces and clothes were covered in blood. The shoulder of Eva’s jacket was torn, and half the buttons on Carter’s shirt had been ripped off.
Ian held his arms out to draw attention to the defeat of Damon’s minions. Paolo was a disheveled mess on the floor, and most of his thugs were dead. Bianca, however, was nowhere to be seen.
“Not a chance.” Quicker than anyone could respond, Damon aimed his gun at Ian. At that point, my head became too heavy to hold. And as everything began to go black, I watched my brother’s body fly out across the room.
I tried to keep my eyes open as long as possible. I needed to know that Gil was okay. That Ian was still alive. I needed to tell them both how much I loved them before I died. It didn’t hurt as much anymore. I was cold and could still feel the warm blood oozing from my side pooling next to me and soaking into my pants.
As if from a long shaky tunnel, Ian was calling to me. “Stay with me, Victoria. Please stay with me.” I could feel myself being picked up. We must have walked outside because suddenly the light got brighter, too bright. I closed my eyes, my ears ringing with the echoes of gunshots or sirens, the bodies left to die in the obliterated pastry shop, my own life winding down.
“You didn’t leave me,” I managed in a breathy voice and laid my head on Ian’s warm shoulder.
“I’ll never leave you, Victoria,” he said softly. Then everything went black.
Chapter 21
The first thing I heard when I came to was a steady, rhythmic beeping. I breathed deeply through my nose, but something scratched against it annoyingly. My eyes fluttered open, disorientated in the bright white light. I lifted my arm to rub my nose, but I couldn’t bring it very far—it was covered in tubes and wires. It also made my side hurt. I had actually shot myself. But I was still alive.
I surveyed my surroundings. I was in a small room with tiled floors. A wooden door with a narrow window was to my left, and I could see people in lab coats and scrubs walking past. A hospital.
It wasn’t until I tried to move my other arm that I realized Ian was attached to it. He was resting in the chair next to me, his body hunched over, his head on the bed, his hand clutching mine.
“You’re not drooling on my bed, are you?” I asked in a raspy voice. My throat and mouth were dry.
“Oh my God! Victoria!” Ian darted up. “You’re awake!” He stood up and looked like he was trying to figure out how to give me a hug. When it was clear that was going to be difficult, he leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Let me get a nurse.”
Ian opened the door to my room and called out to someone. “Infermiera! È sveglia!”
A middle-aged nurse with a tight bun in her hair came in and took my vitals. She said something to Ian, who then quickly turned his back to me, then checked my wound.
“La ferita si stia rimarginando. Sta guarendo bene,” she said to Ian. He must have told her I didn’t speak any Italian and not to bother talking to me. “Ha bisogno di riposo. Il medico la controllerà domani e le fa sapere quando lei potrà tornare a casa.” She smiled kindly at me and nodded to Ian before she left the room.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She said your wound is healing nicely, and that the doctor will check you again tomorrow and let you know when you can leave,” he answered as he brushed the hair back from my forehead sweetly.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Salvator Mundi International Hospital in Rome,” he answered.
“Rome? That’s hours away from where we were in Venice. How did we get here?” Feeling stiff, I shifted in the bed, but my body screamed out in pain. I grimaced.
“We had you airlifted.”
“Airlifted? How?”
“I know people, Victoria.” Ian smirked playfully, which made me smile. “I’m glad you’re okay. You had me worried.” Ian took my hand in his again. He lifted it to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
“How long was I out?”
“Three days,” Ian said quietly. He sat carefully on the side of the bed. “And you are officially the luckiest person on the planet. You managed to miss every major organ and your spine. You lost a lot of blood, but they were able to stabilize you in the helicopter and then replace what you lost when we got you here. I want to be furious with you—but you’re still alive. And since that’s all I’ve prayed for over the last three days, I guess I can’t be too mad.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
“Yes.” He nodded bashfully, making me smile just a little.
“I’m so sorry, Ian. I couldn’
t be the reason the team didn’t do their job. And there was no way I was walking out of there with Damon.” I took Ian’s hand and squeezed it.
“You made a call, Victoria. That’s what we do. Sometimes it works out perfectly. Other times, not so much.” He ran his thumb across the back of my hand and gave a small, reassuring smile.
“How is everyone?” I asked of the team. “They looked pretty roughed up.”
“They’re good, and tough. They’ve encountered worse, so they’ll bounce back just fine.”
“Ian?” I began. “What happened with Gil?”
He looked at me for several long moments, unsure how to answer. I could practically feel his heart pounding through our gripped hands. He looked down, forming his words carefully.
“When Damon took his shot, Gil stepped in front of me. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. There was nothing I could do.”
“So is he okay? Is he here in this hospital?” My heart was beating wildly in my chest, and it was all I could do to not rip the wires and tubes from my body and leap out of bed and find him.
“Victoria,” he said softly, looking me straight in the eyes. “Victoria, I’m so sorry. Gil didn’t make it. I promise you we did everything we could.”
“No! He can’t be dead. I just saw him, he was right there. . . .”
“You knew how much he loved you, Victoria, but he told me to tell you.”
“What . . . What else did he say?”
Did it matter? No, nothing mattered. Not anymore. My world was over. I had one job to do and I had failed. I failed everyone, especially Gil.
“He told me to take care of you.”
“And what did you tell him?” I asked.
“I promised him I would.”
Gil throwing himself in front of Ian to save his life replayed in my head like a nightmare. It was brave and selfless and stupid and reckless all at the same time. How could he do this to me? Why didn’t he let Ian do his job? Why didn’t Ian protect him?
“How could you let this happen?” The beeping of the heart monitor was rapidly increasing.
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