Aria Ruso
In the situation at hand, I shouldn’t have fixated on the words he spoke to me, but I clung to them, unable to understand how he could possibly love me when I’d caused all of this. “But I-”
His hands rested on my cheeks as he leaned slightly over the platform. “We’ve all done things we regret, and we don’t blame you. As long as you get out of here alive, you’re forgiven.”
Carter’s voice came from the other side of the room. “They’re all tied together,” he said. “Both pressure plates are tied into the same bomb. I need a few minutes to get all this disconnected.”
Cade whipped his head around. “We don’t have a few minutes,” he snarled.
“We’re going to have to. Because if I rush through this, the entire place will blow,” Carter replied.
I could see the panic on Cade’s face-the way he continued looking between his sister and me. All I wanted was to see them all safe and out of here. I didn’t care what happened to me-not when the three people who meant the most to me were involved. And judging by how long he spent on my wrists, I didn’t think he’d be able to untie them without coming closer. “You have to get her and go,” I told him. “Please. The second it’s disconnected, don’t waste time on me.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Cade finally snarled, forcing my face up to his. “I’m not going anywhere without you, Aria. You’re my wife, and you mean more to me than anyone.”
“How sweet.” The voice at the front of the warehouse had me and Cade simultaneously whipping our heads toward it. “Burns has another weakness.
I can take care of two birds with one stone because of it.”
Cade had a gun in front of him, aimed at Matteo’s chest in two heartbeats, but my brother only laughed. It wasn’t the laugh I recognized. It was frantic and disturbing. Unhinged.
“Give me one good reason not to shoot you where you stand.”
“The second a gunshot is heard, the guards surrounding this building will swarm, and they have orders to shoot the pressure plates first.” Matteo’s smile only widened. “Boom.”
And the second gunshots were heard, I had no doubt that Cade also had teams ready to move. That was the last thing we wanted while these pressure plates were still active.
I noticed that where Carter had crouched was concealed by a sub wall, and Matteo couldn’t see him. He didn’t even seem to notice that anyone else was there. If he knew that the pressure plates were being deactivated, I knew he wouldn’t have come in here so calm and collected. Cade seemed to realize it, too, and he took a step forward as if to draw Matteo’s complete attention. I didn’t fail to notice that he stepped between my brother and me, despite the way my brother didn’t hold a single weapon.
“This ends today,” Cade said.
“I certainly hope so. I’ve been working this plan out for too many years for it to continue now.”
“We were friends. What the hell happened?”
I recognized it for what it was-stalling. We only needed a few minutes, but that felt like an eternity as I sat, my hands bound behind my back. I tried and failed to release the binds too many times, but I still wiggled my wrists as if it would do something. They were looser after Cade’s attempts at releasing them, but they were still too tight to unwind.
“Friends?” Matteo scoffed. “That was over a decade ago, and I paid dearly for that friendship. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Dad killed your dog,” I reminded him. “That’s hardly paying dearly.”
Matteo’s eyes shot toward mine, and Cade made sure to adjust himself between us. But I couldn’t help myself. Some people endured real tragedy, and I was sick of Matteo using small inconveniences as a reason to do horrible things.
“You think that’s all I went through?” he asked, his jaw ticking. “He wasn’t the same father to you as he was to me, Aria. When he learned of my betrayal, he launched attack after attack on the Burns family. And he made sure to capture the people I knew and cared for first. I watched him torture them, and when I protested, he did the same shit to me.”
I was inclined not to believe him, but when he reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head, I gasped at the expanse of scars over his chest and sides. It looked like hundreds of thin slices and a handful of long, gruesome ones.
“Matt,” I whispered.
“It was what I fucking needed,” he said with a shrug. “Now, I enjoy the game. Capturing and torturing people isn’t what I’d once seen it as. And the
Irish? You all make the most interesting pets.”
Cade tightened his grip on his gun. Carter needed to hurry because I didn’t think he’d last much longer being taunted like this.
“Dad forced me to start, but over the years, it’s become entertaining.
Even more now that everything is coming full circle.” “Full circle?” Cade asked.
Matteo’s eyes moved to Elizabeth. “Did you know that the first time I ever heard Elizabeth’s name was from the mouth of her husband? He begged for his life, saying that his wife, Elizabeth, would never get over his death.” He chuckled. “I had no idea that the same Elizabeth would be your sister. I wondered if she would squeal the same way as he had, but she held out for longer. She’s tougher than I expected.”
His words took a moment for me to unpack, and when I did, I felt pale. Nausea roiled in my stomach. Cade had told me that his brother-in-law’s death had been at the hands of my father, and it had been the reason for all of this. But Matteo…
“You killed Ferdinand?” Cade asked, his voice deceptively calm. I could hear the storm behind the words, though.
“It was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life.”
Matteo’s smile didn’t fade. An evil glint glistened in his eyes, and nausea boiled in me as I considered. I glanced at Elizabeth, relieved to find her still asleep. Had she known that he’d been tortured? Had Cade known?
“You’re sick,” I whispered.
He shrugged, unfazed. “Maybe, but I know what I will do to survive. I know what I’m capable of doing to get to the top. Can you say the same?”
In an instant, he pulled out a gun, pointed it at Elizabeth, and fired. The sound that came from me was animalistic as the nearly silent gunshot hit her in the leg. She jerked, but she didn’t otherwise move. She held still. Too still. She should have woken, but she didn’t, and I couldn’t decide if it was a mercy or an indication of something I didn’t want to voice.
Elizabeth couldn’t be brain-dead. She couldn’t be.
The nearly silent gunshot that came from Matteo’s silenced gun wasn’t enough to alert the men outside, but Cade’s gun would have been. Cade must have known that, as when Matteo pointed the gun in my direction, Cade dropped his own weapon and rushed forward, tackling Matteo back to the ground.
I didn’t process the second gunshot-not until Matteo easily found his way on top of Cade. How did Matteo find it so easy to subdue him when Cade had spent hours every day training for a situation just like this? It made no sense.
Then I saw the blood on Cade’s thigh.
The pain etched on every crevice of his face.
Matteo sat atop him, holding the gun beneath his chin. “Stop,” I begged, shouting the word at him. “Matty, please stop.”
“Matty?” Matteo asked, chuckling and shaking his head as he looked at me. “I’m no brother to you after you chose this coward. I’m your fucking enemy, and I’m going to show you exactly what your actions did.”
“Please, I’ll do anything,” I begged again, unsure of what else to say. I glanced over at Carter and found him working frantically. He knew that if he entered the fight before these plates were down, we’d all die. He couldn’t risk it.
Matteo turned his attention back to Cade and tilted his head, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a pocket knife. “If you had stayed in your lane a little longer, maybe you would have been able to hold the kid growing in her stomach right now.”
I saw him stiffen, and I sobbed, shaking my head and unsure of what to do. The adrenaline had me yanking at the ropes binding my hands without any regard for pain, and they loosened slightly.
“That’s right, she’s pregnant, but nothing will ever come of it. I’m going to kill you slowly, and she’s going to watch you bleed out. Then I’m going to let her watch your sister do the same. Then, I’m going to take my time killing her.”
Cade thrashed, but Matteo slammed the hilt of his pocket knife into his face, leaving a small scratch across his jawline. Cade only groaned.
“You’re not going to touch her,” Cade snarled.
“What the fuck do you think you’ll do about it? All of this started because of you, and it’s all going to end with you.”
I watched in horror as he dug the blade of his knife into Cade’s wrist and swiped upward, blood welling immediately.
“I’ll let her live with your death long enough that she will want to die.”
Cade groaned and thrashed, but I watched as the tip of the knife went into his other wrist. Matteo dug it in. If he slit the other wrist, I knew Cade would die. He was losing too much blood. God, what could I even do?
“No,” I shouted, my wrist binding breaking free behind my back. It took everything in me not to rush forward as he began slicing. “Cade,” I cried, my voice sounding more like a wounded animal than a human. I would have given anything to see him alive and well, but I could do nothing but watch as he lay on the ground, bleeding profusely from two slices in his wrists and a gunshot wound.
Carter came forward with his gun in a whoosh of motion, and he gave me a single nod as he fired three times at Matteo’s chest. My brother fell back and away from Cade, and I ran forward, knowing that Carter had deactivated the bomb if he was entering the fight. I dove atop Cade and put pressure on his wrists. There was so much blood, and I saw the way his eyes went in and out of focus.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“You’re pregnant,” he said in a slurred voice, and I nodded rapidly.
“Yes,” I said. “Carter, call 911 right now.”
Gun fall came down on us, and I threw my body over Cade’s. I didn’t care if I was shot as long as he was okay. As long as he survived. Let my body be peppered with bullets. Let them destroy me. I didn’t care, especially as his eyes closed and he went unconscious.
“You’re okay,” I whispered as the peppering of bullets filled the room and ricocheted off the pressure plate. “You’re going to be okay.” I hoped he couldn’t hear the lie in my tone.