My voice wavers. “You didn’t care when you were trying to kill me.”
“But not by my own hand. That’s different.” He lowers his fists and holsters his gun, then he steps over Falco’s bloodied form and approaches me slowly. “I’m your brother, Aerin. Look at me. You can’t hurt me.”
My grip tightens on the weapon, but with each closing step doubt sneaks into my mind. I’ve never killed someone with intent before. Never harmed someone with purpose.
“Stop,” I gasp. “Stop moving. Stop talking. It’s over!”
“Is it?” His lips pull into a smirk. “Do you really think I don’t have a way out of this? It’s bad enough that I spent years rolling over becauseFathernamed you the heir. Do you really think I’m going to keep rolling over and hand myself in because you ask me to?”
He steps forward and I stumble back. “Giacomo…please.”
“Go on,” he sneers. “Shoot me. Save your little boyfriend. Oh but wait…” He touches one hand to his lip. “If you kill me then there’s actually no one to save your boyfriend. Because without me to hang out to dry, someone has to take the fall, and doyou think Father will admit that I did all of this right under his nose?”
“Stop!” My voice is weaker, the word escaping me in a gasp as a lump forms at the base of my throat. “I don’t care what you say because I—no!”
In a swift move by swinging one arm up and the other down, Giacomo’s hands collide painfully with my wrist in such a blow that my fingers loosen and the gun slips from my grip. It clatters to the ground. In the same movement, he removes his gun from his waist. “Oops.”
Coldness drenches me as I stare down the barrel of the gun, my brother’s face twisting into a maniacal smirk just behind.
It’s over.
I lost.
“Why?” I croak softly. “What did I ever do to you?”
The gun tilts as he shrugs. “Exist? Say hi to Pidge for me.”
There’s a bang.
A single gunshot and I stare in utter shock while waiting for the pain to hit, but it never does.
In the same instance that Giacomo pulled the trigger, Falco surged up between us with my fallen gun clutched in his hand and knocked Giacomo’s arm out of the way, causing my brother to shoot nothing but air a few inches away from where I stand. Then, Falco’s arms come around me much like they did the very first time we met, and I stare up into his eyes.
He spins us around, placing my back between him and Giacomo, and a second gunshot rings out. A beat of silence passes, then theheavy thump of a body hitting the ground behind me reaches my ears, followed by the clatter of a gun.
I blink. Unshed tears are spilling down my cheeks. Falco’s other arm wraps around me, and he pulls me tight against his broad, bleeding chest.
I can’t speak. Distantly, my father cries out amidst an echo of thundering footsteps, but none of it matters.
Falco’s eye darts about my face as if he’s taking in every detail and imprinting it to memory, then his lips crash down against mine.
38
FALCO
Forty-eight hours of doctor’s treatments, painkillers, and sleep later, I walk toward Guido’s office with my heart hammering in my chest.
No one told me anything.
From the moment I was dragged back here, I was confined to the medical wing with a doctor who wouldn’t tell me anything and a guard who threatened to shoot me if I even looked at him wrong. The only information I was granted was reassurance that Bullet was alive. He was shot in the shoulder, a through-and-through that hit only muscle on the way through.
He’s alive.
The relief, along with a handful of pills, lets me sleep for eighteen hours straight.
Finally able to breathe on my own and walk without leaning too much, the doctor lets me out of the medical wing, but only because I’ve been called to Guido’s office.
Voices drift from inside as I approach. The closer I get, the clearer they become.
