Liesbeth let Hendrik go.
Hendrik got to his feet.
Both of them stared at the bottle, eyes agleam with greed.
“That’s it?” Liesbeth pushed past Hendrik and clattered halfway down.
“You’re shitting.” Hendrik’s voice was rich with disbelief—and hope.
It was too late to back away from Penelope’s offer, so Noah said, “You know it’s the right bottle… if you were listening in.”
“We lost transmission.” Hendrik took two steps down. “I guess when you came down to the basement.”
“This is it, the genuine article.” Penelope spoke in a soothing tone. “It was in the staircase.” She retreated, one slow step at a time.
Noah did the same, never looking away from Liesbeth and Hendrik.
As if pulled by a lure, Liesbeth came the rest of the way down to the basement. “Where was it?” she asked. “Where was the bottle?”
“In the bottom step.” Noah pointed.
Liesbeth looked at the long, narrow open coffin in the bottom step. She turned on Noah, her green eyes sparking with indignation. “How could you not have found it sooner?”
“I didn’t find it at all. Penelope did,” he said.
“You can have it if you’ll remove the bomb from Noah’s neck.” Penelope sounded so hopeful… when there was no hope.
Hendrik lifted his pistol. “I can have it anyway.”
Penelope retreated again, her hands steady, and she spoke to Liesbeth, not Hendrik. “Are you really going to let him kill your son? Your only child?”
Was Penelope playing them one against the other? It wouldn’t work, but… it was the only chance they had. “Mother, you always said the Propov family was the most important thing in your life. Everything you’ve done is to advance the standing of the Propovs.” Noah injected spirit and strength into his voice. “Penelope is carrying the next generation. She’s carrying your grandchild.”
“I don’t care about Liesbeth’s grandchild,” Hendrik snarled. “And I’m the one with the firepower here.” Yet he didn’t shoot. Not yet. He held the Glock steady on Noah as he walked down another three steps.
Beside the stairway, Noah saw movement.
Eli was alive. Noah could suddenly breathe more easily. His brother was alive!
Now… to keep him that way.
Liesbeth looked sideways at Eli; so she’d seen the movement, too. She glanced at Hendrik, but said nothing.
So. What Noah had suspected was true.
Liesbeth and Hendrik were no longer a team.
Desperate to distract Hendrik, Noah asked, “How much longer do I have? How soon will I be dead?”
“Not much longer.” Hendrik’s mouth curved in a cruel smile.
Eli’s bloody hand crawled toward the stairway.
“Maybe I won’t kill your girlfriend,” Hendrik taunted. “Maybe I’ll just wound her. There’s a real pleasure in screwing a woman while she writhes in pain.”
Penelope flinched.
“You’re going to die,” Noah vowed, and started toward him.
Hendrik lifted the pistol, pulled back the hammer, and pointed it at Noah’s forehead. “What was it you said to me this morning? Oh, yes, I remember—run!”
Instead, Noah prepared to pounce.
“Catch it!” Penelope shouted.
Hendrik and Noah turned, surprised, confused.
Penelope tossed Massimo’s bottle high in the air. The long green glass rose in a curving arc toward the stairs, toward Hendrik.
Too many things happened at once.
Hendrik lunged for the bottle.
Noah lunged for Hendrik.
Liesbeth shouted, “No!”
Hendrik shot—at Penelope. He caught the bottle in the other outstretched fist.
The two men collided in midair, then hit the concrete floor, the dull thud of flesh against flesh knocking the air out of them both.
Something in Noah’s shoulder tore.
Didn’t matter.
Hendrik had killed penelope. Hendrik wanted to kill them all.
The bottle was positioned between Hendrik’s body and Noah’s body.
Hendrik still held the Glock.
They rolled.
Noah smashed his head into Hendrik’s face. Blood spurted. He grappled for Hendrik’s ear and yanked. More blood.
Hendrik howled and slammed his pistol into the side of Noah’s head. The metal grip made contact.
Noah saw stars.
Hendrik tried to pull his hand back far enough to aim the gun.
Noah moved in close, punching with all his skill and fury and anguish. He used moves Hendrik himself had taught him, moves he’d learned in every self-defense class since he’d left the Propov gang, moves he made up now in the heat of battle.
They rolled into the wine rack.
Hendrik brought his elbow up under Noah’s chin. Noah’s head snapped back. Bottles clattered. Fell. Shattered. Glass flew.
Something stung Noah’s cheek. A sharp shard sliced him open. Warm blood coursed down his face.
Yet… this wasn’t right. Noah couldn’t figure it out.
He was taking a beating. He was. But Hendrik, faster, more skilled, more practiced, should have already killed him.
Then Noah realized—Hendrik was using one hand. In the other, he held the bottle of wine.
The second Propov rule: Always bring home the treasure.
Noah’s ire cooled to the ice-cold reasoning of a condemned man. Without Penelope, without their baby, he didn’t give a crap about the pain, about the breaking bones or the blood splattering the floor. He sure as hell didn’t give a crap about Nonno’s bottle or the diamond contents. He let Hendrik strike again and again with his free hand, and when he saw his chance, he grasped Hendrik’s wrist. He used the pressure point that his mother had taught him all those years ago, twisted, and snapped.
Hendrik jerked, kicked, struggled, dropped the pistol.
But he also dropped the bottle. It thunked on the concrete and rolled. Somewhere in the distance, Noah heard someone yelling a protest.
He caught a flash of someone dashing down the stairs. An old man. Grabbing the bottle.
But Noah couldn’t take his gaze from Hendrik’s bloodshot eyes as the two men rolled on the floor, brutally punching and kicking.
Hendrik no longer cared about watching Noah die from the bomb around his neck. He lived to kill.
But Noah had three minutes left in his life.
And if it was the last thing he did, he was going to protect what was left of his family from this monster.
He owed Nonna.
He owed Penelope.
And one thing he knew without a doubt: He was smarter than Hendrik, and he had more at stake.
This time when Hendrik grabbed for him, Noah whimpered and tried to crawl away, toward the stairway.
Hendrik laughed.
The dumb-ass laughed.
Getting to his feet, he grabbed Noah’s ankle in his good hand and dragged him backward.
Noah twisted and begged, rolled and fought, an actor in the role of a lifetime.
They reached Nonna’s wine rack against the long wall.
Noah staggered to his feet and faced Hendrik, hands loose at his sides.
Bruised and bloody, Hendrik laughed again and charged.
On one foot, Noah spun in a circle. He used his momentum and his hand on Hendrik’s shoulder to propel that brutal, grotesque face into the bottles protruding from the rack.
The rack shuddered from the impact.
Hendrik backed away, staggering, shaking his head, trying to clear his brain.
But Propovs were bred for fighting.
Even before he recovered, he attacked.
Grabbing two of the bottles by the necks, Noah smashed them against the sides of Hendrik’s head.
Glass shattered.
For a split second, Hendrik remained on his feet, staring at Noah. But the wide green eyes were vacant, seeing nothing. T
hen he folded like an accordion and dropped face-first on the concrete.
Noah stood, gasping, waiting for Hendrik to rise again.
Nothing.
He had intended to strap bombs on his body and take out the Propovs in one magnificent explosion. Instead, he had defeated his enemy in a fight that raged between intelligence and brute force.
Noah was victorious. He had saved his family… perhaps.
He had failed Penelope… totally.
He touched the collar at his throat. Death couldn’t come soon enough.
Then… he heard the distinctive click of someone drawing back the hammer of a pistol.
Chapter 65
Noah spun.
Penelope stood, covered with blood, pointing Hendrik’s pistol at Hendrik’s inert body.
Liesbeth sprawled facedown on the floor, unmoving.
Eli sat propped against the stairway, white faced but conscious, holding one of Nonna’s clean rags against his bloody shoulder.
“Penelope…” Noah whispered. He couldn’t believe it.
She was alive.
“I’m fine.” Penelope took a sobbing breath. “I’m fine. The blood… is your mother’s. I’m sorry, Noah.” Her hand, the one that held the gun, shook. “She’s dead. She saved me. She saved the baby.” Penelope shook her head over and over. “But… without her…”
Without Liesbeth, there was no way to disarm the bomb at his throat.
Penelope was alive.
But Noah was dead, condemned by the death of his mother to a wonderfully inventive, absolutely bloody murder.
He could see the knowledge in Penelope’s eyes: the anguish, the dying hope.
Without volition, he glanced at his watch.
Less than a minute left.
Penelope lowered the pistol. She tried to come to him, hold him, hug him.
He gestured her away. “No. We don’t know how violent the explosion will be.”
“I don’t care!” She gave a sob.
“Penelope… it’s okay.” He patted his chest over his heart, overflowing with love for her. “Look at me. I mean, look past all the bruises and the cuts, and really look at me! You’re alive. That means my baby is alive, and that’s more legacy than I ever expected to leave. I’d do anything if I could stay here and be with you and love you every day. If I could watch little Sarah grow up, I would praise God every day in all humility. Instead I’m grateful for the time we had together, and the life we made out of our love.” He took a long breath. A last breath. “Wherever I go, I promise I’ll watch over you both, and I will always, always guard your happiness. You believe me, right? You can see it in me, right?”
She stared at his anxious, earnest face.
For all of their time together, Noah had pulled a veil over his eyes, never allowing her to see too deeply into his soul. Because always he had been hiding his past, the truth about his mother’s family, and his inevitably early death.
Now, however, he had nothing to hide. The veil was down.
She could see him: warm, tender, and so in love with her, her throat closed. “Yes,” she whispered. “I believe you.”
From the floor came a hideous groan.
Penelope jumped.
Noah turned with a snarl.
Slowly, painfully, Hendrik turned his head and whispered, “I wish the goddamned bomb would go off early so I don’t have to listen to that shit.”
Penelope lifted the pistol. She wanted to kill Hendrik so badly.…
From the stair, Eli said, “Have you ever shot a gun, Penelope?”
She shook her head.
“Then give it to me. I’m conscious; I’ve got a good aim—”
Penelope hesitated. Eli looked pasty white, but his brown eyes snapped with pain and fury.
Eli continued. “—and one more comment out of the little prick who murdered my grandmother and I’ll be glad to kill him.”
Yes. Eli hated enough to kill.
Penelope walked over and handed him the pistol.
Noah said, “Twenty seconds. Penelope, why don’t you go upstairs and…?”
“No. I’m not leaving you.” She went to him, and although he tried to evade her, she wrapped her arms around his waist. “I love you, and I need to hold you. I really need to hold you.”
“How brave,” Hendrik sneered.
“No, I’m selfish.” She buried her anguish in a deep, hidden part of her soul. She smiled up into Noah’s face, wanting his last view on earth to be a memory to carry for eternity. “I want to be close to Noah until that far-distant day when we’re together again.”
Noah seemed to want her here, and yet he wanted to send her away from this scene of impending death. “This explosion is small enough that it won’t harm you… if you can bear the sight of—”
“It’s not about me and what I can bear, is it?” she said fiercely.
“Then stand behind me and hug me—quickly!”
She did as he commanded, pressed herself against his back.
“It’s time,” he said.
She braced herself to hold him, to hold the sudden weight of his dead body. She braced herself for the pain of his passing, for the grief she knew awaited her. She tried to look ahead to that time when she would hold his child and see his green eyes looking up out of that tiny face… but nothing could surpass the barbarity of this moment.
Tensed against him, she waited, every second crawling into the next second, and the next, and the next.…
She started to feel embarrassed. Did they have the wrong time? Had someone set the timer incorrectly? Was she so impatient to get the worst horror of her life over that she felt as if time were crawling?
“Hey, Noah?” Eli said. “It’s about a minute past your D-day.”
“Hm.” Noah pulled away from Penelope and looked around.
He looked very odd, mouth puckered, eyes thoughtful. In a sudden motion, he reached up, pulled the latch free, and flung the necklace as hard as he could into the corner.
The dog collar hit the wall, landed on the floor, and just… sat there, innocuous and unexploded.
Hendrik’s vile curse made Penelope realize—Hendrik had expected it to blow up.
Why hadn’t it exploded?
Picking up a shard of glass, Hendrik focused on the necklace, and, on his hands and knees, he crawled over. Taking the leather in his hands, he started at the left side and counted the studs, and using the glass, he cut one particular stud free. He rolled it in his palm, examined it, then looked at Liesbeth’s body with such virulence, Penelope feared for her. “The bitch disarmed the necklace,” Hendrik said.
Noah laughed incredulously. He laughed again in absolute amazement. “My mother—she lied to me. She gave me the collar knowing it was a dud. She lied.”
“She lied?” Penelope couldn’t believe it. “She tried to control you by threatening to kill you? And she lied?” She was indignant. Not about the fact that Liesbeth had sabotaged the bomb at Noah’s throat. But that Liesbeth had been willing to destroy Noah to rebuild him in her image.
What a lesson for Penelope, facing all the long years of child raising.
Noah moved toward Eli, his palm extended.
Eli handed over the Glock; then, in slow motion, he slithered down onto the floor, his strength gone.
Noah touched him briefly, a single gesture of reassurance, then moved back toward the middle of the basement.
“She lied.” On his hands and knees, Hendrik scratched at the collar, ripping off the studs one by one.
“I never said she was a good mother. More like the witch who tried to bake Hansel and Gretel in the oven.” Noah laughed some more, low and deep, as if this moment meant something great to him.
Probably it did. Better to find out your mother didn’t try to kill you than to know she did.
Penelope’s nerves winched tighter. Something was going to happen. Something so terrible it would play in her nightmares forever.
Noah winced, put his hand on his neck as if
it hurt, and winced again. Yet all the while, he kept his gaze on Hendrik. “My mother. God, what a piece of work.”
“Liesbeth. She disarmed the necklace before she ever gave it to you. You!” Hendrik rose to a sitting position. He glared at Noah. “You little nancy-boy.”
Noah still chuckled. “Poor Hendrik. It must sting to be defeated by a nancy-boy.”
Hendrik lumbered to his feet, his malevolent eyes fixed on Noah.
Abruptly, Noah stopped laughing. “My mother tried to convince me to kill you and take over the gang. Did you know that, Hendrik?” Blood smeared his face, dried on his collar, colored his taunts with crimson. “Liesbeth didn’t trust you. She didn’t think you were good enough to take her place.”
Hendrik’s swollen features resembled a prizefighter’s. “I’m going to slaughter you.” His fat fingers reached out—and he charged at Penelope.
She screamed.
Gunfire roared through the basement.
With her hands over her ears, Penelope dropped to her knees.
Noah had fired the Glock.
But when she opened her eyes and looked… on the stairs, Rafe stood, dirty and scraped, holding a large-caliber pistol. And he had fired, too.
It was over.
Hendrik was a crumpled body on the floor, his malice vanished, and he… not even a memory.
But Noah… was alive.
Chapter 66
By the time Penelope’s ears stopped ringing, Rafe was at the bottom of the stairs, lifting the rag Eli held over the wound, looking and talking. “Bao and I caught two of those bastards sneaking toward the house from the vineyard. Caught them by surprise. They didn’t expect resistance. They fought. Dead, both of them.” He probed Eli’s shoulder with his fingertips. “Hey, brother, good news. This gunshot wound—it’s a through-and-through. That’s good.”
“Chloë?” Eli gasped.
Rafe gave a brief laugh. “She’s fine. She and Brooke followed two of the others—”
Eli groaned. “The woman is trying to kill me.”
Rafe continued. “They drove cross-country in Chloë’s Porsche.”
“Dragged bottom?”
“Totally. They ran down the guy. He’s got critical injuries. The female got away.”
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