“Ohoho,” laughed Montana, “I have no intention of killing you, my boy... No one, and I mean no one, ever leaves the Red Death Syndicate before the time of my choosing. Your lady friend, though. Now, she has to die, on top of you giving me the money you owe me. I truly would have released her unharmed had you simply cooperated. I wanted to release her unharmed. I really did. But you forced my hand, exactly the way I told you not to.”
“I was never one of you!” Luc shouted at him, hands curled into fists, the guns rattling on his person in frustrating proximity. There was no possible way he could reach for them without Montana shooting first. “I wasn't a killer! I never spilled blood for you! I made some dumb, shitty decisions, I wasted my money, and I poured your shit into my veins... But I was never a part of your Syndicate! And I never will be!”
Again Montana laughed.
“Not a killer,” he scoffed. “Look around you! See the bodies piling up this very evening! It's in your nature, my child. And you've even got this one doing it now! Of course you are a killer! I could see it in your eyes, the first time I ever saw you. Those cold, cold blue eyes... I can see it when you're out there on the football field. That violence. Those animal instincts. I never would have brought you into our fold with us, where you belong. Don't act all innocent now that you're cornered. You've never been innocent. And now you'll never be innocent again!”
“No!” Luc shouted. “You're wrong! That's all bullshit!”
“There's only one murderer in this room!” I finally shouted from behind Luc, to his clear horror. “But he won't be for long!”
I leapt out from behind Luc and fired my stolen pistol at Montana, sending him staggering backwards into the hallway. His own pistol went right off as my own shot missed him, the shot avoiding the crown of my head by inches, but slashing into the underside of Luc's throwing arm. He howled out in pain.
“Luc!” I screamed, realizing all at once that all hope was now officially lost.
Montana had fallen into his ass outside the room, and was rising slowly, creeping back toward the entryway.
“That,” he snarled, his eyes narrowing with hatred, “was a very big mistake.”
He lifted his arm up. Pointed the barrel of the gun at me. I closed my eyes, sure that there was no way out this time.
“Goodbye Luc. Thank you for everything...”
BANG!
12
Luc
Montana's body hit the ground. There was no struggle. No suffering. It was better than he deserved, frankly. There was just a big, gaping hole in the side of his head, so massive that you barely even noticed the chiseled surface of the rest of the face any more.
I looked back over my shoulder at Sylvia, and to my great relief saw that she was okay, completely unharmed. Then I snuck a quick look down at my own chest and saw that, aside from the bullet in my arm, I was otherwise unharmed.
This wasn't adding up. Where the hell had that shot come from? And from that angle?
But then it all made sense– except, really, it still didn't...
A massive figure suddenly filled up the doorway, and at first I thought it might have been the Influencer, shrouded as his features were by the light from the hallway. But no, I realized. His frame was too slight. Still large, but not the bull of a man Pete Riley was.
It was only when he stepped into the room over Montana's dead body that I saw who it really was.
“Stevens?” I asked, remembering his face from years ago. He still had his gun out and pointed at us, but only for a fraction of a moment. He quickly holstered it, then extended a hand forward in my direction.
“You look like you could use some help there, Hoss,” he said. Sylvia and I exchanged glances.
“But– but you were the one who kidnapped me in the first place,” she said. “And now you're helping us?”
Stevens clicked his tongue and shrugged. “I was only following orders. I always thought Montana's plan was asinine, and I told him as much, repeatedly. We live in the twenty-first century, not the fucking wild west... And now look at us! You fucked us up good, I don't mind admitting to you. If he'd actually used an ounce of goddamn sense this whole shit show could have been avoided. A man with that little foresight doesn't deserve to be at the head of an organization like the Syndicate. And I, being the next in the line of command after three or four other idiots you conveniently put bullets in for me tonight...”
I gaped at him. “You weren't saving us,” I said, wide-eyed. “That was a power play...”
Again he shrugged. “A little of one thing, a little of the other. I had to stop the bleeding before things got any more out of hand than they already were. And honestly, I was rooting for you two to make it at this point anyway. It's obvious you aren't really one of us. You never were. You seem like good kids who got in over their head, and I can sympathize with that.”
“Y– you mean you're letting us go?” asked Sylvia, as astonished by all of this as I was.
“I am,” he said, nodding. “And as far as I'm concerned, all debts are forgiven. Consider your once active membership with the Red Death Syndicate cancelled, Mr. Stalworth.”
“And what about all this mess we– I made for you?” I was worried that Stevens' pleasant idea of my walking out of here to lead a life as a free man might end up being complicated by the number of deaths I now had on my hands– not to mention Sylvia's. Our actions had been entirely in self-defense, of course, but under the circumstances I was anything but confident that the law would see it that way.
Stevens' lip curled, as though he was considering a rather unpleasant task ahead of him that he was not looking forward to in the slightest.
“It'll all be taken care of,” he said. “I plan on making some pretty big changes in our organization from here on out as far as violence is concerned. But even so, I think everyone involved here tonight would just as well prefer it that the details of this incident didn't make it out to the public. By which I of course mean the police. Which reminds me...”
He dug into his pocket here, and handed what appeared to be a business card to Sylvia over my shoulder. “Don't take him to a hospital. Gunshot wounds have to be reported to police by law. Go to this address, where you'll find an all-night clinic for– well– people who would prefer to keep such matters quiet... People like us, in other words...”
“Alright,” Sylvia said with a nod. I stared up at Stevens for another long moment, still hardly able to believe the left turn things had taken. But as I looked up into his face I saw nothing but sincerity there, however gruff, and I knew that I could take him at his word.
“Thank you,” I said at last.
He answered with a nod and a grunt. Then the next thing I knew, he and Sylvia were helping me up onto my feet, guiding me down the stairs and out the front door of the warehouse. They eased me into the passenger's seat of the car I had waiting outside the gate, and at last we were off with Sylvia at our wheel, the warehouse shrinking into the distance behind us, along with this entire hellish chapter of our lives.
There was a great silence, which lasted for several blocks on end before it was broken by Sylvia at the wheel.
“I guess it'll be a while before you can throw a football again with that arm, won't it?”
It seemed like nothing more than small talk, wholly insufficient for the profundity of the situation in which we now found ourselves.
I sighed, and shook my head.
“Sylvia, I–“ I began to say. But before I could get another word out she had a finger against my lips, shushing me.
“Don't you dare say that you're sorry again,” she said softly. “Not right now. Not tonight. We have the rest of our lives to say I'm sorry. Right now I just want to be here with you. In this moment. I just want to rejoice in the fact that we're alive and together, in spite of everything.”
I smiled, and then laughed– I couldn't help it.
“The rest of our lives?” I said, and she smirked.
“Well,” she
said with a shrug, “There's a chance I might be thinking ahead just a little bit... Can you really blame me after the night we just had?”
I couldn't, and I didn't.
The two of us drove off into the night, still in so much pain, still with so much trauma to try and digest. But also with so much love, the only thing that could make it all better. The only thing that could make us both whole again.
EPILOGUE
Sylvia
I took a deep breath.
I closed my copy of The Professor.
I clicked save.
I sighed.
“I'm finished.”
“What's that honey?” Luc asked, lying shirtless on the carpeted floor with our two little boys, Peyton and Eli (his idea,) the three of them the picture of happiness as they played with their stuffed toys.
“I just finished writing my thesis. At long, long, long last!”
“Oh God, honey– that's terrific!”
He got up off the floor and came over to me at my desk, embracing me in those massive arms of his. “I'm so proud of you,” he said, kissing me in the center of the forehead.
“I couldn't have done it without you,” I said, and this was true– his season off from playing had given him time to look after our two little bundles of joy, and given me the time to concentrate that I needed in order to wrap that son of a bitch paper up once and for all.
“Oh, that's sweet... But sure you could have. You were already hard at it before I came along,” he said.
“That's sweet, too,” I said. “But fyi, it was utter shit before you came along. Now, though... I think this might be the best thing I've ever done! Well,” I corrected, staring over at the twins, my beautiful baby boys, who easily came in first place, “the best thing I've ever written, anyway...”
Luc laughed, and shook his head. “I'm so proud of you,” he said.
“I'm proud of me too,” I said, feeling neither modest nor humble for what might have been the first time in my life. I deserved that, I thought, after the road through hell it had taken me to get here.
Luc just grinned at me, running his fingers gently through my hair.
“This is huge,” he said. “We should celebrate.”
“We should,” I said.
“Why don't you let me put the kids to bed for their nap?” he said. “And then I can come put you to bed after that...”
A familiar tingle suddenly spread throughout my entire body.
“I was gonna suggest ice cream,” I said with a smirk, “but I won't say no to that...”
He leaned in and kissed me, his mouth a treasure to discover all over again every time he did so. Then he bent down and lifted up the twins in his powerful arms, the scar on his throwing arm briefly visible as he brought my little munchkins up to me to give them each a kiss. They cooed sleepily at me in response, their brown and blue eyes barely half open as they rested against their Daddy's chest.
“I love you both so, so much. And I love Daddy so, so much too,” I said, booping him on the nose with the tip of my finger.
“And Daddy's going to show Mommy just how much he loves her too, here in about a minute,” he said, and I bit my lip, watching him lustfully as he carried our babies off into their nursery, and shut the door gently behind him.
I truly felt like the luckiest woman on earth at that moment. It amazed me, how much light had come out of such thorough darkness.
I had known, simply known from looking into that man's eyes on that horrible, fatal night so long ago that he was a good person who'd simply made a mistake, and that he loved me every bit as much as he said he did.
And as I made my way our bedroom, sliding out of my clothes even as I went, all I could do was thank my lucky stars that I had learned to trust my heart, and that fate had brought us so happily together in the end.
As long and winding as the road had been to get here, I simply couldn't imagine my life without him.
THE END
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The Red Zone: Second Chance Sports Romance Page 10