I find the gun on the floor.
Two shots.
Then one more for the first man who was almost on his feet again.
The cabin goes quiet.
I'm on my hands and knees on the hardwood floor with my shoulder screaming and blood running down the side of my face and Isabella is crossing the room fast, dropping down in front of me, her hands going to my face.
"Where are you hurt?" Her voice is steady but her hands are shaking hard. "Enzo. Look at me. Where are you hurt?"
"I'm fine." I push to my feet and the room tilts slightly but holds. "We have to go. Get your shoes, get whatever you need, ten minutes."
"Let me look at your?—"
"Isabella." I meet her eyes. "Later. I promise. We have to move right now."
She holds my gaze for one second. Then she nods and goes upstairs.
I collect the guns from the floor, check the door, check the windows, and when she comes back down two minutes later with both bags in her hands I feel something move through my chest that I file away for later.
We go out the back into the dark.
I drive for forty minutes without stopping, taking back roads, doubling once, watching the mirrors with the focus of someone running the numbers on whether we were followed.
Isabella is quiet for most of it, her knees pulled up, her arms wrapped around them, staring through the windshield at the dark road.
Then she says: "Who were they?"
"Killian's men, most likely." I keep my eyes on the mirrors. "I didn't have time to check."
She nods slowly, processing that. "Is this how it's going to be?" Her voice is quiet. Not afraid, just honest. "From now on. Is this what our days look like."
I glance at her.
She's looking at me with those eyes that have never once let me get away with the easy answer.
"The only thing you need to know," I say, "is that you will be protected. As long as I'm breathing, nothing gets to you." I hold her gaze for a second before I look back at the road. "That's the only thing that matters right now."
She's quiet for a moment.
Then she turns back to the windshield and doesn't say anything else, but something in her posture shifts, some of the tension going out of her shoulders, and I watch it in my peripheral vision and say nothing.
A gas station appears out of the dark after another ten minutes, small and fluorescent and completely isolated, a single pump.
I pull in and kill the engine.
We sit in the sudden quiet.
"Okay," she says, and she's already reaching into the bag at her feet, pulling out the small first aid kit. "You promised."
I look at her hands, still slightly unsteady but sure, and I think about the sound that vase made, think about what would have happened if she hadn't been awake and present and exactly herself in that moment.
"Okay," I say.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"After I refuel," he says, when I open the first aid kit in my lap.
