Love and Lead

by June, CoraLee

  “She’ll stay here with you,” Gavriel said before giving instructions to someone on the line.

  Fuck, this was happening—and fast.

  “I’ve got a few contacts not too happy with Santobello’s recent reign. I’ve had them on the backburner in case I had something concrete. We’re going to leak the video to every major news station the moment that meeting starts, as a backup.”

  “I know a few fighters in the city that aren’t too fond of Santobello. They owe me favors. I’ll have them stationed at the building with Sunshine and Callum,” Ryker answered before kissing me on the cheek and standing to leave. “I’ll head to the gym and talk to them.”

  Things were moving fast, but the video of my father was still at the forefront of my mind. “You okay?” Blaise asked, his voice only a whisper. I grabbed his hands and squeezed. It was traumatic, watching my father in his element. I fought with closure, knowing that ripping apart closed cuts just made the scars bigger.

  “I’ll be fine,” I whispered.

  One. I’ll be fine.

  Two. I’ll be fine.

  Three. All hope abandon, ye who enter here.

  Twenty-Five

  I paced the floor, counting each step. I had gotten to number four thousand five hundred and seventy-two but had to stop when Callum distracted me with a phone call. Listening intently, I stared as he spoke.

  “Yeah. All clear here. Okay. Goodbye.”

  One. Two. Three. “They’re fine, Sunshine,” he said with a smile. This compulsive counting thing was happening too often now. I was leaning on the crutch of something I could control, and it scared me how much relief I felt when I counted all the mundane things in my life.

  We were still at Gavriel’s interrogation property. I’d since learned that he used this place to hold people he needed information from. The basement Lilly kept me in was soundproof, so despite my screams, no one could hear. Despite my reservations, it made sense to stay where the guys found me. It was reasonably hidden, and even though Lilly knew where we were, I didn’t think she’d let that information leak to Santobello any time soon. The plan was airtight.

  Four. No one could get to us. Five. My men were safe. Six.

  Pretty soon I realized that it was late. Very late. Later than I expected them to be. They decided to wait and leak things to the press once the meeting was done. If it weren’t for the light pollution of the city, I was certain that I’d see bright stars littering the sky from the crowded balcony. Callum eventually called again, and when they didn’t answer, I resumed counting.

  Four hundred and seventy-four. Four hundred and seventy-five. Someone knocked on the door, but it wasn’t the secret knock we developed at the start of this. We were like middle schoolers thinking we were smart and cunning as we told each other not to open the door unless we heard the familiar rhythm. We were fucking stupid. Callum looked at me and stood before positioning himself in front of me.

  They knocked again. “Go to the basement,” Callum urged me while pulling out the gun in the holster on his hip. It should have been a simple order, one we discussed beforehand. But the word basement mixed in with my adrenaline was a trigger of massive proportions, so instead of following his directions, I started counting my rapid breaths.

  One. Two. Forty-five. Ninety-seven. Fuck. The person stopped knocking and started kicking at the door. Whoever was on the other side didn’t mutter a word. And then the doorframe splintered as a harsh force kicked open the bolted lock. I breathed in the smell of tobacco and sweat as a group of men surged forward, making the small apartment feel even smaller.

  Two men, both with dark, curly hair and tan skin, walked in and adjusted their suits while standing over me. I knew we should have never done this. “Put your gun down,” a rough voice I vaguely recognized ordered Callum. Santobello then entered the room with a crude smile.

  Naturally, Agent Mercer didn’t comply.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Oh, I guess you’re going to give me trouble like the others.“ Santobello didn’t seem amused by Callum’s display of disobedience. I got the sense that he wasn’t used to people defying him. My stomach immediately sank. The others? Oh God, what happened to Ryker, Blaise, and Gavriel?

  “Oh Summer, you look just as I’d remembered. You’ve got your mother’s eyes. But they’re empty like your father’s,” he said while observing the dusty room with annoyance. He wiped his hands on his suit pants as more men piled in from behind. I thought Ryker said he had some men watching the building?

  “You look confused,” Santobello said with a grin. “Oh, are you wondering about the men standing watch? Anyone can be bought or blackmailed, Summer. That’s a lesson your father should have taught you.”

  Callum shifted closer to me, to further block me from Santobello’s view.

  “Where is Gavriel?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if Santobello was familiar with Blaise and Ryker yet, and didn’t want to give him further ammunition to hurt the people Gav cared about.

  “Gavriel is probably dead by now,” Santobello said while polishing his nails on his suit jacket. My breath caught at that admission, and he continued, “Of course, I don’t know for sure though. My men like to keep things quiet. It’s sometimes better not to know, and I don’t make a habit of dirtying my hands very often.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut while trying to steady my breathing. One. Two. Three. Four. “Are you stupid? I’m talking to you,” his harsh voice said before a hard slap was delivered to my right cheek. I opened my eyes as tears flooded my vision. He’d hit the exact spot where Lilly did just a few days ago. “I said, it was easy to find you. Damn, what’s with women being so disobedient these days?”

  Another guard huffed in agreement. One of the guards lunged for Callum, and they jerked the gun from his grip before yanking his arms back. Within seconds, Callum was being held back by one of the larger men, and a gag was shoved in his mouth before another man in a black suit put duct tape over his lips.

  “Now, please focus, Summer. I’m sure you got some of your mother’s self-preservation in there somewhere,” he said with a cynical smile. “Where is the video?” he asked. “And I want you to think very hard about how you want to proceed with this. You could survive tonight. Live a long, happy life. I owe that much to your father. I’m an honorable man.”

  He patted his chest in a dramatic display of genuine compassion that felt as fake as his toupee. A tear slipped down my cheek. There was no way we could take these men. No way we could get out of here alive. But maybe, as long as we dangled the SD card, we could buy us some time.

  That’s all we really needed—time.

  “You want the video?” I asked.

  “I don’t make a habit of repeating myself, girl. Give me the fucking evidence.”

  “Fine.” I felt the knife in my pocket. I knew each groove in the blade by heart now. I could practically sense the handle sliding into my palm. I knew its weight.

  It always came back to a basement and a knife.

  Like my father, Santobello underestimated me. He wouldn’t expect me to lunge at him. Powerful men were prideful like that. “Fine. I’ll show you where it is, but you have to let Callum go,” I said before staring at him. If I didn’t survive this, I didn’t want him to have to watch. And maybe if he was outside, he could at least get away. Santobello considered my offer for a moment, looking me up and down. He lingered on the bruise on my cheek, likely assessing that I wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “Fine. I’ll play.” He looked to his guards before speaking. “Take him outside. If I’m not there in ten minutes, kill him.”

  Fuck. I had ten minutes to kill Santobello then rescue Callum. The gruff man complied, as he and three others started dragging Callum out of the tiny apartment. It reminded me of the night Gavriel forced him to watch him murder Santobello’s son. We’d come full circle now. “Hurry,” Santobello ordered.

  I felt the barrel of a gun at my back, and I made my way down the hallway. I stopped at the s
teep stairs, descending them slowly while trying to come up with a plan. It would take me a moment to grab the knife in my pocket. I would need to get close enough to stab him but avoid getting shot. It felt impossible.

  I was shaking so badly that I was sure I’d drop the knife or crumble from the pressure. I couldn’t do this. I wasn’t strong like the Bullets. I wasn’t capable of killing someone. Swallowing, I made my way down the small hallway until we arrived at the door of Gavriel’s interrogation room. The same place I had been locked up in.

  But it felt like the cabin basement. It felt like Paul Bright was at my back. For a moment, I lost myself to the fear and suspense of the moment. I shivered while trying to compose myself, freezing cold sweat trickling down my forehead like icicles.

  “All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” a cruel voice whispered in my mind.

  Santobello wasn’t my father. Paul Bright was a ghost. He was a nightmare. Santobello was just the puppeteer. I was created in my father’s mage, wasn’t I? He groomed me to follow his path. He forced me to perfect myself, to never fail. “ ‘Through me you pass into the city of woe,’ ” I whispered.

  “What did you say, bitch?” Santobello asked, his voice shrill as I latched onto the doorknob and opened it.

  “ ‘Through me, you pass into eternal pain,’ ” I whispered before shuffling inside. The room was dark, the pitch black inviting me into the headspace of my birthright.

  “Turn the fuck around,” Santobello ordered. He was holding his gun up, pointing it at my chest when I turned to greet him. A confident smile was gracing my lips.

  “ ‘Through me among the people lost for aye.’ ” I removed the bracelet from my wrist. “My father taught me that poem, are you familiar with it?” Santobello’s expression was difficult to see with the light at his back. “Give it to me,” he snapped.

  “I never understood why it was called The Divine Comedy,” I added before taking a step closer. I knew the knife was just there, hidden in my pocket. It was hard to see, so I grabbed it, clutching the weapon’s handle in my palm as I spoke. “ ‘Justice, the founder of my fabric, moved.’ ”

  “Give it to me. I won’t ask again. All you Brights are fucking psychopaths.” Santobello’s voice held less venom than before, and I realized then the power hidden within my father’s routine. It was a haunting sort of poem.

  I took a step closer. “ ‘To rear me was the task of power divine.’ ” Another step. “ ‘Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.’ ” I was gripping the knife so hard my palms tingled. My lips trembled as I spoke. Another step. “ ‘Before me things create were none, save things.’ ”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Santobello screamed. “I’ll fucking blow your brains out.” I could feel his spit hit my cheek as he yelled. I was sure if I were closer, I’d see my target, his bulging veins pounding in his neck.

  I was close enough to press my chest to the barrel of his revolver. “ ‘Eternal, and eternal I shall endure,’ ” I whispered before lifting the hand that held Lilly’s bracelet. “ ‘All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’ ”

  I shoved his arm away, pointing the gun at the concrete wall. I then immediately sliced at his neck. The blade slid across his jugular with ease, and blood pooled down his throat. But I wasn’t done yet. I sliced again, then heard the sound of his gun fall to the floor. Then his knees.

  I sliced at his chest. I cut up his ugly face. I made him bleed till he looked like Paul Bright’s charred body then cut him a little more. And when he was dead, I whispered the words that held more power than anything my father could have muttered.

  “It’s over.”

  A gunshot went off outside. I turned my head towards the door then leaped over Santobello’s body to run towards the sound. I took each step upstairs two at a time. I cried out, picturing Callum’s battered body in a New York alley. I took too long.

  Once in the apartment, I dug my toes into the concrete before lunging for the front door, then made my way outside the building, running towards a side entrance I assumed they’d used for privacy. All the while, my chest constricted. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to scream.

  And when I tried to open the door leading outside, it stalled, pressing on a hard body that was blocking it. I screamed when I saw lifeless legs. “No. No no no no,” I cried out while shoving my way through the tiny crack in the door, as I wasn’t strong enough to push the body out of the way.

  My mind was a frenzy as I took in the barely lit scene around me. The man on the wet ground was one of Santobello’s guards. Blaise was hovering over another guard, clutching him by the shirt and screaming at his face. “Where is she?” he yelled. To my right, Gavriel was trying to wake up Callum.

  “Tell me where she is,” Gav pleaded. He was crying, real tears streaming down his face as Callum struggled to regain consciousness. His chest was heaving up and down, so I knew that he was alive. Ryker was running up and down the street, rubbing his hands over his scalp as he searched for me.

  “I’m here!” I screamed, tearing them from their intense worry. “I’m here,” I whispered again, mostly to prove it to myself. Blaise turned and looked over his shoulder at me, a wild sort of glint in his eye as he pulled a gun from his holster and shot the guard. The silencer covering his barrel made it a quick but silent death.

  Gavriel was on me in an instant. He ran his hands over my arms, and when he pulled away, he screamed, “Call an ambulance!” before cupping my cheeks. “Love, stay with me. Sit down.”

  “No, don’t call!” I yelled back. I looked down and realized what had Gavriel all out of sorts. I was soaked with Santobello’s blood. “It’s not mine,” I whispered. “It’s Santobello’s.”

  Ryker took one look at me then went inside to inspect my handiwork. Gavriel grabbed his cellphone. “I need a cleanup crew at my summer house,” he said, the words casual but seemingly encrypted. And when he hung up, I wrapped my arms around his waist. It was over.

  Ryker appeared a few moments later as a black Range Rover drove up. “He’s dead,” Ryker confirmed before lacing his fingers through mine.

  “What happened to you all?” I asked as five men got out of the black SUV and started assessing the alley. A second one pulled up, and Gavriel started pulling me towards it, his gentle guidance made me feel like a rabid animal, ready to strike or jump or flee at the first sign of being spooked.

  “What happened to you all?” I asked again. Ryker was carrying Callum to the car.

  “We were ambushed. We got out okay though. Blaise has a nasty cut on his arm that will probably need stitches.”

  Holy shit.

  We all piled into the SUV, then slipped into a contemplative silence that sat heavy on my chest. I realized that I was crying. I felt sick to my stomach and disgusted with myself.

  Was this how my father felt? No. I’d once read somewhere that murder was a natural high for serial killers, but I just wanted to die alongside my victim. And as odd as that sounded, that fact made me smile. “I…” I began while looking around the SUV at my men. “I’m not like him.”

  I didn’t realize how debilitating that fear was for me until that moment, and I welcomed the disgust I had with myself because every negative feeling just separated me from my lineage.

  Twenty-Six

  Six Months Later

  The news reporters were ruthless. I had a moment where I regretted sending the video of Paul Bright murdering an innocent boy to the masses. But that moment was short lived. Seeing his family suffer was like a knife in my chest, but when faced with the choice, I chose closure. I chose a painful truth for the thirteen boys murdered by my father.

  All of them looked the same. All of his victims had similar interests, similar family dynamics. They were easy targets. My father worked overtime, making sure their missing person's report was filed incorrectly or disappeared. He picked boys with a history of running away. He was smart, covering his tracks with Santobello’s help.

  We couldn’t be sure that there weren’t more.
Callum was still researching, still learning my father’s habits and preferences. There were hundreds of layers to his personality. His motives were twisted. People would be talking about this for decades. Every news station around the world was pulling apart how a man in power raped and tortured little boys.

  With each new name released, another family had to learn the part Paul Bright played in destroying someone they loved. It gave me the peace I’d been craving but also twisted me up inside. I was atoning for sins that didn’t belong to me. But it felt good to stop carrying my father’s victims metaphorically on my shoulders.

  I was standing across the street, staring at the house that belonged to the latest victim announcement. Their blinds were closed, but occasionally I saw movement shifting the fabric as the inhabitants looked outside at the frenzy of feral paparazzi below.

  “You good?” Ryker asked. He was the only one I let come with me to these things. After each reveal, I went to the house. While there, I spoke to the dead. I cried for their family and cursed my silence. Three victims had been found during the five years I was on the run. Three people—that we knew of—died because of my silence.

  “Yeah,” I replied, knowing that I had to let James McCarthy go. He was victim number thirteen, his body found next to bodies twelve and eleven in a plot of land owned by Santobello.

  We were in a town forty miles outside of Chesterbrook. Close enough for Chesterbrook PD to be called in as back up, but far enough to keep out of the thick of the missing person case. Dad was diabolical. We got in the car then drove the short distance to Chesterbrook. I’d decided last night that I didn’t want to come back here anymore. Callum assured me that there were no more victims to be found, but I think he just wanted me to stop hating myself.

  “It’s done,” I whispered to Ryker, who had one hand on the steering wheel, and another clutching mine.

  “Yeah, it is,” he replied.

  Since Santobello’s death, things had been a whirlwind. Alessandro stepped up as the rightful heir to Lilly's legacy. Gavriel reclaimed most of his accounts. Callum worked on Paul Bright’s case. Ryker stopped fighting. Blaise stayed by my side.