All while Malcolm had the most dangerous weapon of all in his hands.
Aria — the one thing Damian would never risk.
He tried to see the chessboard. Aria, his queen, everyone else a pawn to be used to save her.
“This is a losing situation,” Damian said. “If you hurt Aria — either of you — you’re dead seconds later. Cole will put a bullet in Malcolm’s brain, and I’ll have the honor of finishing you, Primo.”
He looked at Malcolm as he talked. Primo wasn’t a man of reason. He might kill Aria and then himself just for the hell of it. Just to prove a point.
But Malcolm hadn’t come this far with a madman like Primo because he was crazy. No, he’d used Primo’s madness, had calculated that it gave him an advantage in building an empire of his own, one he could take over after Primo’s inevitable demise.
Malcolm didn’t care about Primo. He didn’t even really care what happened to Aria. She was just a piece on his chessboard.
A disposable one.
“You know it’s true,” he said to Malcolm. “Do you want to die for this crazy bastard?”
Damian had to hand it to him: Malcolm’s expression was unreadable, not a trace of indecision on his narrow face. Damian kept talking, forcing his voice to remain dispassionate, the voice of a negotiator rather than a man under threat of losing the woman he loved.
“No one is coming to save you,” Damian said. “At this very minute, every operation you run is under assault. You can either live or you can die here. The choice is yours. Everything else has already been decided.”
“Why are you listening to him?” Primo screeched. “You work for me. You do what I say, remember?”
Malcolm gave Aria a shove and started backing for the door.
Aria stumbled toward Damian. He forced himself not to look at her face and check her for injury. He shoved her behind him instead.
Then everything fell apart.
Damian had tried to shield her behind his body, but she could see enough to know that Primo was raising his weapon. She saw the barrel of it swing up, linger on her face behind Damian’s shoulder, and pivot to Damian.
She caught movement in the loft and remembered Cole.
He would shoot Primo but it wouldn’t be fast enough. Primo’s hand was tightening on the gun in his hand, but that wasn’t the part that scared her.
It was his face.
A moment before it had been contorted in rage at Malcolm, but as he turned the weapon on Damian, there was nothing but peace in his face. He knew he would die. He didn’t care. That he’d chosen to kill Damian instead of her hardly mattered.
He might as well kill them both.
If you’d died, I would have died too.
She only had a second. Not long enough to draw her weapon, but long enough to step out from behind Damian, pivot in front of him as the almost silent thud of the weapons held by Damian and Cole mingled with the roar of Primo’s weapon.
She was surprised by the faint sting in her chest. It was so subtle she wondered if the bullet had grazed her, if it might have missed her entirely.
The floor rose up to meet her, warmth seeping through her body.
She lifted a hand to her chest. She would be okay. It didn’t even hurt much.
“No…” Damian’s voice came from far away. “Call a fucking ambulance. Call a fucking ambulance right now, Cole!”
He sounded scared. She wanted to tell him not to worry. To tell him that she wasn’t in any pain and if he could just get her back to the house in the country she would rest for a few hours and be fine. Tomorrow she would work in the greenhouse, start planting seeds for spring.
Everything would be fine.
She opened her mouth to say it all but the words wouldn’t come. She felt her body lifted, looked up to see Damian hunched over her, felt his hands around her shoulders.
She tried to reach up and smooth the fear on his face, but she couldn’t make her arms work. Couldn’t make anything work.
“Don’t you fucking do this, Aria,” he murmured, rocking her. “Don’t you do it. If you die, I die too. Remember?”
Something wet was falling on her face. She thought she might be crying but when she looked up she realized they weren’t her tears at all.
They were Damian’s.
She willed herself to speak but the darkness was closing in, a soft vibration building through her body as it overtook her. She was tired. So very tired.
She would sleep for awhile. Just for awhile.
35
Aria wanted to open her eyes. She was swimming her way up from the darkness, her body weighted and heavy, soft pressure on a part of her body she thought might be her hand.
Her eyelids felt glued shut. It was like one of the dreams she’d had after Greece in which her body was paralyzed, her mind trying desperately to pull her from the nightmare while her body remained unable to respond to the command.
She forced herself to stay calm.
I’m awake. I’m awake, dammit…
And then she thought she might be looking into the sun. Everything was so bright she had to resist the temptation to shut her eyes again.
“Aria?”
It was his voice.
Damian…
She let her eyes sweep the long, white ceiling, past the window and an array of plants and flowers lined up on its sill.
She stopped when she landed on his face, peering at her with a mixture of fear and love and relief. A mixture of all the things they’d ever said and all the things they hadn’t had time to say.
She tried to smile but her face felt stiff and funny. She wasn’t sure it could follow her commands.
“You’re here,” she finally said.
“You’re here,” he said.
She nodded, wincing as pain shot through her chest. She lifted a hand to it, gingerly touching a thick swathe of bandages wrapped over her breasts and rib cage.
“What is this?” she asked, trying to lift her head to see it.
He kissed her hand. “That’s what happens when you take a bullet for someone.” He dragged in a breath. “When you take a bullet for me.”
She let her eyes travel over his face, down his body. “He didn’t get you?”
Damian shook his head. “No, but Aria…”
She forced herself to say the words. “I know he’s dead.”
Her voice cracked as she said it, a maw of loss opening inside her.
“I’m so sorry.” He hesitated. “I didn’t think I would be, but I’m so fucking sorry, Aria.”
She remembered his words in the kitchen before he’d left to begin the takeover of New York.
I want to make sure we’ll survive whatever happens today…
They had survived. Against all odds, they’d survived together.
It had been a long winter, but now it was time for something else.
Time for life.
She reached up to touch his face. “You’ll have to help me in the greenhouse when we get home,” she said. “We have to start planting for spring.”
He lay his head on her stomach and her hands went to the silky hair at the back of his head. She pretended not to feel his tears fall on the blanket between them.
Pretended not to feel them seep through to her skin.
Epilogue
Aria winced as she pushed the magazine into the Luger. It wasn’t the first time she’d done target practice since her release from the hospital three weeks earlier, but she still had to brace herself against the pain in her upper body when she moved her arms, lifted the weapon, pointed it at the target.
It wasn’t the only place she spent her time. True to her word, she’d been working in the greenhouse every day. She’d ordered a fresh shipment of soil when she got home from the hospital and had spent the first week planning and ordering seeds while Damian watched her like a hawk.
After a week of being waited on hand and foot, she’d had enough.
They’d started with slow walks around
the property, their conversation turning to Primo and everything that had happened. It still hurt to talk about him.
She could still see him as a curly-haired little boy, could still feel his small body nestled next to hers on the sofa while they watched cartoons on Saturday morning, could still feel his arm across her shoulders during their parents’ funeral.
It hadn’t been all bad. It had become important for her to remember all of it.
All of him.
None of them were just one thing. They were all an amalgamation of their DNA and experiences, a mysterious combination of light and dark.
Damian wanted to move her into the light. He wasn’t ready to hear the truth.
Because the truth was, they weren’t done. Malcolm was still out there in the dark.
So was Stefano Anastos.
They’d used her brother, had almost killed her.
She wasn’t afraid of them anymore. She just wanted them dead.
She hesitated at the long table she used to load and clean her weapons, letting her hand rest on her stomach as she thought about the life growing there.
She’d learned she was pregnant during a follow-up appointment after her release from the hospital. Her initial shock had been followed by euphoria.
Euphoria had been followed by determination.
Damian didn’t know yet. He couldn’t know.
Once he knew, he would have no patience for her mission of killing Malcolm and Anastos, and she had to make sure they were dead once and for all if she and Damian had any hope of living in peace with their child.
Which was why she spent equal time in the greenhouse and the firing range. Why she spent time planting for the future and plotting the destruction of those who might threaten it.
“Hello, beautiful.”
She turned to find Damian standing in the doorway of the firing range.
“Hey.”
She walked to the front of one of the firing lanes.
“Want some help?” he asked.
“I don’t need help,” she said. “Not with this.”
She felt his arms slide up her back, down her arms. Felt a lessening of the pain in her chest as he took some of the pressure of the raised weapon off her arms and chest.
“I know you don’t,” he said. “But maybe I just want to hold you against me.”
“Then I won’t say no,” she said.
She felt his hands close around her own over the weapon. They would find Malcolm and Anastos together. They would kill them together.
He would do it for her.
She imagined the life inside her — an innocent life, untainted by pain and fear.
She was going to make sure it stayed that way.
“Ready when you are,” Damian said, his voice soft in her ear, his arms strong around her.
She rested her finger on the trigger and squeezed.
The End
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Also by Michelle St. James
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Fearless
Lawless
Muscle
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Primal
Eternal
The Sentinel
Rogue Love
Rebel Love
Fire with Fire
Into the Fire
Through the Fire
Into the Fire (New York Syndicate Book 2) Page 16