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With each passing minute, my thoughts swirl, a maelstrom of memories and fear. Every sacrifice, bruise, and tear shed has always been for them, for Emma. The idea of failing her now makes me tighten my grip on the gun, the metal biting into my palm.
“Time won’t change anything,” Milo says calmly, his eyes never leaving mine. “You’re stalling and bleeding out, Fallon. Let us help you. Stop being so damn stubborn.”
“No!” The word is a bullet itself, shot from a place of raw terror. “You think I’m going to trust you? After everything?” I spit.
“Listen to yourself,” Leone chides, his tone almost bored. “You’re delirious. You need help.”
“From you?” I laugh, a sound edged with hysteria. “I’d sooner die.”
“I can get you some help,” Leone offers.
“So what, I can be your prisoner?” I rasp.
He shrugs. “You prefer to die?” he asks, and I blink, knowing I am not far from passing out. But if I kill them, his men will hunt down my family, yet I won’t become some tortured slave owned by Leone Pressutti either.
“How much longer do you think until you pass out from blood loss?”
The muzzle of the gun quivers in my grasp as I lock eyes with Leone, the man who has turned my life into a living hell. My arms are tense, every muscle coiled tight. I could feel the sweat beading at my temple and hear my pulse thumping rapidly in my ears.
“You think you can take us both?” His dark eyes gleam with amusement, and a slow, sinister smile spreads across his full lips.
“Shut up!” I snap.
He takes a casual step forward, and I tighten my grip on the gun. “So fiery, so full of life. It would be a shame to snuff out such passion.”
“Stay back, Leone,” I warn, trying to keep the tremor from my voice. Every cell in my body screams for me to run, but this is about more than just me; it is about my family, their safety dangling on a precipice.
“Or what, Fallon?” he mocks, his tone dripping with venomous charm. “We both know you won’t shoot me. Have you ever fired a gun before?”
I adjust the gun and aim it at the wall behind him. I pull the trigger. The bang is loud and far off from where I was aiming. Hitting the door behind him instead. Leone doesn’t even flinch. He glances at the door behind him.
“I have now, so try me,” I say through gritted teeth.
Leone laughs, a deep, throaty sound that vibrates with malice. “Wow, she knows how to pull a trigger, not rocket science, but can you kill someone?” he asks.
“Because that’s the only way you’re walking out of this room,” he warns me.
“Not that you’d get far. I doubt you would make it out of the building before my men hunted you down.”
“And then your family. Shoot me, and they’ll suffer unimaginable horrors. Put the gun down, and I may think of letting them live. Or pull the trigger, kill me. But either way, your family suffers. And it’s all because you couldn’t play nice.”
“You think this is a game?” I demand, my heart pounding against my rib cage as I glare at him. The man only smirks, making me want to smack the smug look off his face.
“Leone,” Milo interjects. “Maybe we should—”
“Silenzio, Milo!” Leone snaps without breaking eye contact. “I would like to savor this moment.”
Sweat drips down my spine as I weigh my options, each one bleaker than the last. The air is thick with my blood and underlying fear, but I make no move, the guns are the only barrier between me and the abyss of my death.
“Last chance,” Leone whispers, his voice a velvet threat. “Join me, or watch everything you love crumble.”
“I choose option three,” I tell him, and I lift one of the guns I’m holding to my temple.
Leone’s laugh, dark and menacing, the sound bounces off the walls. “Bravo, Fallon,” he says, a slow clap accompanying his feigned admiration. “But do you honestly think you can bluff your way out of this?”
“Who said anything about bluffing?” I retort, my gaze locked on his.
“Put the gun down, cara mia,” he coaxes, his tone dripping with deceitful warmth. “We both know you won’t pull that trigger. You’re too precious, too full of life to end it all here.”
