Athena
The revelation shook the hell out of me. To say I was stunned was a fucking understatement. I stared at him in disbelief.
“No,” I laughed, shaking my head. “Quit joking around-”
“There are about fifty guns pointed at me currently. Do you think I have the liberty to joke, Athena?”.
“There’s no way you knew…” I shook my head, trying to run through all that had happened since then! That was such a fucking long time ago! “There’s no way you knew all along and didn’t do anything about it!”
“Are you sure about that?” He grinned before slipping the coldest face I had ever seen on.
“No … I know you…” Yet even as I said those words, my stomach bottomed out as I realized I didn’t know the man before me. I had only seen the side of him that he wanted me to see.
If what he said was true, if he was right, then I had been fooled. Fuck! I had been a damned idiot all along.
“Would you like an explanation?”
“Fuck yes, I would!” I spat. “You pretended not to know shit all these while?!”
Luciano shrugged. “I didn’t know it all at first. I knew you were after something However and after a little digging here and there, it wasn’t hard to get what your motive was. Especially after discovering those wiretaps and microphones in my room and office.”
“Shit,” I mumbled. I should have suspected right from when they went missing. But hell I had been relieved that he hadn’t caught me. That was fucking all.
“I mean come on, Cara,” he mumbled, the coldness in his eyes dimmed a little. “I am a fucking Mafia Lord. If I didn’t suspect shit about the people around me, I wouldn’t last this long now, would I?”
“Athena, we do not have time for this!” Frederick yelled behind me.
“I want to know!” I yelled back, my eyes fixed on the man who held me in his arms with a stupid smug look on his face that I desperately wanted to punch off.
He fucked around with me! Me!
“What happened when I followed you?!” I screamed. “The harbor-”
“I knew it was you honey. Why do you think I came for you? If I hadn’t put up all that show, Marcus would have found out and then the whole mafia would find out. You would not be safe.”
I laughed dryly. “You expect me to believe that you had been trying to protect me from your people?”
“I protected you when you got exposed in the mafia house didn’t I? I caused that damned ruckus with Luca because you were there, woman. You think I would have fought my best friend for a meager shit like disrespect?!” He asked, raising his hands in the air agitatedly and shaking his head. “I did it all for you. I chased Giorgia off to Italy because she was close to your scent. I exposed the mafia house and had her show you the way in and out of the resort without the guards knowing. I knew everything about Athena Hernandez and I must be a damned fool for overlooking it all because it was you! Fucking shoot already!”
My hands trembled as he pressed his chest against the Glock in my hands.
“Go on Athena,” Luciano whispered, his voice dropping octaves lower before sliding a hand around my waist. “Shoot me. This was what you wanted all along wasn’t it?”
Tears ran down my cheeks. My hands trembled with the gun. He was right. This was what I had wanted. This was the plan all along.
“Athena,” He leaned forward, burying his face in my neck, his hands around me tightening. “Shoot already. End this. For both our sakes,…”
Do it, my mind urged. Just do it. One clean shot and we’ll be on our way!
“Athena!” Frederick yelled and I closed my eyes trying to silence the loud voices, and the chaos that ensued in my head. Everything suddenly felt loud and noisy and my head turned light.
I can’t!
All for me. He did it for me. Why would he do all that… Hell, he hated my guts… None of this would have happened if he hadn’t killed my father. Memories assailed me.
His constant words that I would be the death of him. The eerie calmness when I found the mafia house. How he treated me like that never happened. The obstacles I had faced, obstacles that had threatened to blow my cover, Giorgia, Marcus, he removed cunningly.
All along I thought I was fooling him. All along I was fooling myself instead.
“Athena gets the hell away from him!” Frederick yelled again.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t shoot him. I opened my eyes to see his dark ones looking at me, soft and mellow, like the way they had gazed at me the past three days. Tears slid down my cheeks on droplets and as if in a trance, he reached for my face with his palm to wipe the tears and then he whispered something in my ears.
Suddenly the Glock in my hands disappeared and was suddenly pointed at my head. In a blink, Luciano turned my back to him, wrapped an arm around my neck, and held the gun to my head.
“Let her go!” Frederick yelled. For the first time, I could see the angst on his face. And yet I felt nothing.
“How about we play this nicely? Anyone makes so much as a scuffle and I blow her brains out!”
One of the Italian police yelled something in Italian that I couldn’t understand. Luciano retorted.
“Back off! Right now!” Frederick ordered. The police obeyed and slowly withdrew. My Foster father’s eyes met mine and I mouthed I was sorry. If I had shot Luciano, we wouldn’t be in this fix and none of this would have happened.
As they moved back, something crashed through the window, landed in front of Frederick, and rolled on the ground. My eyes widened and I screamed.
“Get down!”
For what seemed ;like freaking eternity, there was silence. I must have collapsed to the floor or something because I couldn’t move for a long time. Something wet and sticky dribbled down my forehead and my head throbbed like hell. There was dim ringing in my ear that grew louder and louder until it exploded into a plethora of shooting sounds.
Gunshots.
So many of them all over the place. My eyes were open but yet I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Something blocked my vision, something huge-
“Raven!” Someone whispered in my ears beneath the raging sound of gunshots. “Stay with me! Stay with me Cara!”
I wanted to. I terribly wanted to. I tried to move my head everywhere trying to seek him out, but it was hopeless. All I could hear was hi8s voice. His whispers. And It unsettled the shit out of me. I closed my eyes trying to will the pounding in my head away. I tried to focus through the damned noise. I needed all my senses with me. Who exactly was shooting. It couldn’t have been Luciano right? There was no way he would have compromised his safety by sending his men to throw in a grenade. He was too damn selfish for that.
Selfish but he is still by your side, A voice in m y head quipped. I supposed it didn’t get destroyed with all that pounding.
And it definitely could not be Fredserick. He would never put my life on the fucking line. Hell he could have shot at Luciano all through the time that we talked, That man was one of the best snipers in the world. He could have taken out Luciano. He must have been afraid though. Afraid that he could and would make a mistake and shoot me instead.
That left out the police.
But I didn’t think it could be those wimps. They had had the mafia on their soil for as long as anyone could remember and hadn’t succeeded to do so much as send them into hiding. They didn’t have the balls to do a massive shootout putting the lord of the mafia and the American FBI at risk. There was no way to do this.
Then who the fuck did?
My body was suddenly heaved off the floor, intensifying the pounding and a sharp pain exploded at the back of my head. I groaned at the impact but it was cut short by a hand clamped on my mouth.
“Quiet if you want to live,” Luciano growled somewhere around me and well I wanted to live so I clamped my mouth shut and opened my eyes. Blinking rapidly, I tried to make a sense of what was happening. The loud gunshots had stopped and as Luciano pulled us into a corner of the destroyed cabin, It was barely standing, my eyes fell on one man amidst the bodies of both the Italian police and the FBI. An howl left my lips.
“NO, NO!” I moaned as Luciano dropped me on my feet and buried my face into his chest.
“Sshh, don’t look at him. Don’t look at anyone,” He whispered. “Do not look there Cara, okay?”
“Frederick,” I sobbed, clutching his shirt. “Luciano, Frederick… He’s dead. He’s dead,”