“Shit,” Rex curses. “Bastard never sticks to the damn plan.”
“Aerin?” Falco wheezes underneath me.
I quickly pick myself up and return to untying his bindings, resorting to using Rex’s knife to slice through them, then together we help Falco to his feet.
“Can you stand?” I ask as he sways and leans heavily into me.
“I-I can’t believe you’re here.”
“Believe it,” I mutter. “We don’t have time for?—”
Falco’s good hand suddenly presses against my cheek and his touch rapidly silences all thoughts in my head and words on my tongue. He’s staring down at me with his only visible eye, and his jaw wobbles as he tries to talk.
“I-I’m sorry.”
Warmth suddenly surges behind my eyes and tears threaten at the corners. “Don’t,” I choke out. “Not here. After. I promise.”
“Promise,” he repeats.
“Hold up,” Rex barks and he throws himself away from us and toward the wall. “Someone’s coming.”
“Shit.” Unable to abandon Falco as he struggles to find his balance, I crouch and pick up my gun then stand half in front of him with all my attention locked on the hole we blew through the back door.
“What the fuck is going on in—Aerin?”
“Dad?”
“Aerin, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Me?” My gun wavers slightly as he steps through the hole. “You’re supposed to be at dinner with Mom.”
“We cancelled because I had to come here and—” Dad freezes as he makes the last step into the room and Rex, pressed flat against the wall, presses the barrel of his gun to Dad’s temple.
“Sorry,” Rex says. “But don’t move.”
“What the hell is going on?” Around Dad, his guards pour in like a black river, and they surge into the room with their weapons raised and trained on me, Falco, and Rex.
Rex doesn’t blink. “Ask your men to stand down.”
“The fuck I will.”
“Dad please!” I yell and my arm wobbles. “We don’t have time for this! The longer we stand here, the further away Giacomo gets!”
“Explain!” Dad barks. “Explain this betrayal, Aerin. Haven’t you broken your mother’s heart enough with that…” He glances down at my stomach and anger surges through me.
Coming here, risking my life and my baby, is worth it for Falco because I won’t let the man I love die for my brother. My brother, who I loved and admired since I was a child. He’s turned his back on me, spent these past months trying to kill me, and even twisted the wedding to his own advantage. It was painful and I spent a good few hours bawling into my pillow after Rex told me. But once I calmed down, the revelation taught me one thing.
Falco cares. He risked his life for me when he didn’t even know me. He gave me a new lease on life, and I’m returning the favor.
“Look, Dad. I know this doesn’t make any sense, but you have to trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing. It wasn’t Falco, and I’m not saying that because I love him?—”
Dad gasps in horror.
“I’m saying it because you’re about to make the worst mistake of your life. It was Giacomo, okay? The drug theft? The attempts on my life? Hell, it was even him that worked behind you to stoke this war with the Irish in the first place and I can prove it, okay? The man beside you, Rex, he’s a friend and he’s been helping me and Falco?—”
“Enough!” Dad yells, but it immediately triggers a coughing fit. He covers his mouth as one guard steps closer to him, their weapon trained on me.
“No, enough from you!” I yell back, even as pain floods me at how frail he suddenly looks. “Even helping me stand up to you about the wedding was part of his plan because if I have no husband, there’s no one to stop him from killing us both! Don’t you see, Dad? You’ve spent all this time torturing and breaking Falco and what’s happened? Have the Irish stopped killing our people? Have they pulled back? Did they even get the drugs recovered from the warehouse?”
