Declan doesn’t question me. He doesn’t hesitate. He just shifts slightly, Conan mirroring him, both of them instantly alert.
And then I aim. I take clean head shots of the three men beside the decoy.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t even breathe. His eyes go wide when I set my aim on him. “Suffering is the price of salvation,” he says, almost like a prayer.
I don’t hesitate. I pull the trigger and watch the blood splatter, knowing Enzo has heard all of this.
Tatiana has delivered the Preacher. That’s all that replays in my head.
And I need to fucking get home.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Lily
I press the button to open the panic room panel, then place my thumb on the scanner. The door clicks open as I take a deep breath, pausing before I go in.
“Go. It’s just a precaution until the peace talk is over,” Dad whispers behind me.
I turn to look at him, seeing the gun now in his hand, and my eyes go wide. Precaution. The same word Drago used this morning.
Except nothing feels like one now.
A scream tears from me as I hear a gunshot go off, making my ears ring.
Dad jerks hard, like the sound has punched straight through him. His grip slips instantly, his gun clatters to the floor, skidding across the wood with a sharp metallic scrape.
His eyes go glassy with shock, and he clutches his stomach and stumbles forward, grabbing the panic room door and slamming it shut with everything he has left.
“Dad! No!!” I scream, banging my fists on the door.
The heavy steel doesn’t even shudder. It holds. It doesn’t care that my father is on the other side, bleeding.
The monitor flickers on. Black-and-white footage of the hallway outside my room. The angle catches the door, the corner of the landing, and the top of the stairs.
Dad is on his knees right outside the safe room. His hand slides down his stomach and comes away soaked.
Blood.
So much blood.
He tries to breathe, and it sounds wrong. Wet. Strangled. Like the air is tearing its way through him. “Lily,” he rasps, my name barely a sound.
“I’m here,” I sob, forehead pressed to the steel. “I’m right here. I’ll open it. I swear I’ll?—”
“Don’t,” he forces out, and it’s not a request. It’s a command, cracked and brutal. “Do not open?—”
Movement shifts behind him. A shadow slides into frame. And my whole body turns to ice because I know that silhouette.
Maria.
I will never call this bitch my mother again.
She steps into view like she belongs here. Like she’s just come upstairs to check on us. Not a single hair out of place.
Dad’s head lifts slowly.
Their eyes meet.
