Lorenzo may have escaped, but we destroyed his plans, saved each other, and broke the chains of his manipulation. Tony is free. We’re all free.
Ricardo’s men left standing are cleaning up, moving with practiced efficiency.
Body bags.
Gasoline to burn evidence.
I should be horrified, but I’m too numb.
“Come on,” Mikhail says, his arm around my waist. “Let’s go home.”
Home. The word sounds strange but right. Not my old apartment or my dorm room, but the mansion where Mikhail and I have built something unexpected and complicated and real.
Tony walks beside us, and I reach for his hand. He squeezes back, and despite his wounded shoulder and the blood staining his shirt, he smiles at me.
My brother.
Alive and himself again.
We’re almost to the vehicles when I notice the broken window on Ricardo’s black SUV.
The glass is shattered, scattered across the ground like diamonds.
“When did that happen?” I ask, but even as the words leave my mouth, I see it.
The red dot.
It appears on Tony’s chest, small and precise, and my heart stops.
“Sniper!” Mikhail’s shout comes too late.
Tony sees the laser sight tracking from his chest toward me, and his eyes go wide.
“No!” He shoves me hard, sending me stumbling backward into Mikhail’s arms.
The shot cracks through the still air, impossibly loud.
And Tony crumples to the ground, blood blooming across his chest.
26
MIKHAIL
The surgical room lights burn my eyes as I pace outside the reinforced steel door.
Blood—Tony’s blood—stains my shirt, my hands, everything.
I can still feel the weight of his body as I carried him from the street, Sophia’s screams echoing in my ears.
My personal surgeon emerges through the door, his surgical gown splattered with crimson. “I was able to remove the bullet and repair the damage to his lung, but the next forty-eight hours are critical, and he’s lost a significant amount of blood.”
“Will he survive?”
“I can’t make any promises. The bullet missed his heart by millimeters. If it had hit even slightly differently…” He trails off, but I understand. Tony should be dead, so he could push Sophia out of the way.
I sink against the wall, the weight of what this is doing to Sophia dragging me underwater.
This is my fault.
