But with each blow, my hands are getting weak. Warm blood trickles down my side, and soon enough, the punches that started like sledgehammers are landing soft now. Strength is draining out of me like someone pulled a plug.
I'm cold. I shouldn’t be cold—it’s summertime in New York. It shouldn’t be cold. But my fingers are going numb and my vision is narrowing at the edges like someone is slowly closing curtains.
Don Leo catches my next punch. His fat, cigar-stained hand wraps around my fist andholdsit, and his remaining eye focuses on me with a look of wet slimy triumph that makes my stomach turn.
Then, he punches me.
The blow catches me square in the jaw and the world tilts. I fall backward off him, and the back of my skull connects with pavement, and for a moment there is nothing—no sound, no pain, no Bella, no Don Leo, no long years of grief.
Just a vast and ringing emptiness.
I'm sorry.
The thought surfaces from somewhere deep inside of me. But I don't know who I'm apologizing to. Is it Gia, whom I failed to avenge? Or Bella, whom I'm failing to save?
Both, I decide.It's both.
Don Leo’s suffocating weight is on top of me, and now it’shis fiststhat are coming down like hail, hammering into my face and chest with the rhythmic, mindless fury of a man who has spent his entire life destroying things smaller than himself.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, ROMANOV?" He roars. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU MADE ME DO WITH THESE HANDS? TO MY OWN FUCKINGDAUGHTER?"
I try to block but I can't. I’ve lost too much blood.
My arms are heavy and they feel like they’re made of something that used to be muscle but are now just meat attached to a body. The blows keep coming and I can feel the world getting muffled and distant, like I'm sinking into deep water and the surface is getting further and further away.
Then the weight lifts.
I don't understand it at first. One moment Don Leo's bulk is crushing me into the asphalt, and the next he's being pulledbackward, his remaining eye bulging, his mouth opening in a gargling wheeze that sounds nothing like the words he was just screaming.
I blink. My vision swims. There’s blood blurring my eyes, blood in my mouth, and blood on the street beneath me seeping into the asphalt.
But even through the blood, I swear I can see a seven-pointed star. A diamond glinting at its center, catching the light and throwing prismatic sparks like a halo. It's pressed against the rolls of flesh at Don Leo's throat, biting against the fat folds of his neck as the chain attached to it pulls tighter and tighter.
Don Leo's face is red. Then blue. Then the gray-white of something dying.
And then I see Bella.
She has wrapped that chain around Don Leo’s neck, garroting him with the thin chain that threatens to break at any moment.
Her face is arranged in a mask of fury. Tears stream down her face, her lips are peeled back as she whispers curses in Don Leo’s ear, and every tendon in her forearms flexes as she pulls the chain tighter and tighter.
From down here, she looks like an angel of vengeance.
Like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
I would marry this woman on the spot if I could stand up.
The gunfire has stopped, and footsteps muffle by my ear. From my position, I see Nico and Lydia come rushing over.
Nico’s gun is drawn and Lydia rushes to steady me as I try to push myself off the ground.
"Don't," she says quietly. "You’ve lost too much blood."
The chain snaps, and the seven-pointed star flies across the air before it disappears out of my vision.
Nico walks up to Don Leo, and presses the barrel of his gun into his forehead.
Don Leo's remaining eye finds Nico and he laughs. Even now, on death’s door, the bastard delights in the cruelty he inflicts on the world.
