Page 68 of House of Lies
He points the gun at me and pulls the trigger.
Because when I die, it will be by his hand.
CHAPTER 45
Kaz
I hope she will forgive me one day. I was forced to pull the trigger to save her from herself. Caelia crumples to the ground before I can reach her. Dom is injured, Dmitri and a couple of men have pursued Mattia, and the rest lie lifeless around me, yet all I can see is her broken body. My heart stops, and too many mixed emotions explode as I fall to my knees. Caelia doesn’t trust me, but she should trust my fury. Mattia will never see the sunlight again. By the time I’m finished with him, he will crawl and beg for death.
“Caelia?”
Her eyelids flutter—the only sign that she’s still alive. Her body is bruised and broken, and her face is barely recognizable. I apply pressure to her shoulder, the sickening warmth of her blood seeping through my fingers. I attempt to locate any part of her that remains whole. After retrieving my phone, I call Nikolai, but he doesn’t answer.
“Kill ... me,” her voice, filled with defeat, weakens me.
“Shh.” I lightly press my palm against her cheek. “Stay with me, Wildfire. Come on. Don’t you dare do this to me.”
She’s too weak to talk. It was a stupid move to shoot her; her body was already too frail from the horrors Mattia put her through.
“You did it,” she coughs. “You ... finally ... broke ... me.”
I can only guess what he did to her, and it’s not a good time to allow my brain to dwell on those scenarios. I snap out of my haze, cradling her in my arms. She needs to be taken to a hospital. She needs a lot of care, and the doctor won’t be able to do much for her at the penthouse.
“Please … Let me die.”
We will talk about her death wish when she recovers. I will explain everything to her.
“I won’t let you die on me, Wildfire.”
I carry her to the car, nearly colliding with Dimitri, who holds Mattia on his knees, his hands restrained with handcuffs. He is the sole survivor. I’m past talking with these bastards. He signed his death wish when he touched her. I might have been willing to speak with him before, to see things from his point of view, but now I almost take my gun out, so tempted to end it all right here.
“Not now, Kaz. You need to take Caelia to a hospital.”
Vanya holds the back door of the SUV open for me and holds up some keys.
“I got them from Mattia.”
He uses them to free Caelia from her chains.
“Is the bitch still alive?”
Dmitri hits Mattia with the back of his gun.
I move swiftly, aware that I will give in to my anger and kill him right here. I place Caelia in the car’s back seat, getting in with her. Vanya gets in the driver’s seat. Her head is on my lap, her blood soaking in my clothes. My hands are trembling. I push away the hair from her forehead, resting my palm on her cheek. Vanya drives like a madman, but the drive still takes ages. Or so it feels like. I keep checking her pulse, making sure she’s still alive. It’s faint, but it’s there.
“So, are we ever going to talk about what happened between you two?” Vanya shatters the silence.
“Do you really think now is a good time?”
“You’re driving yourself insane, so yes. Talk to me. Do you want to call Aleksandrov?”
“No. He still doesn’t know that I’m here.”
He’s talking about the Pakhan in New York, a good friend of my father’s, but it’s too late to make him aware of my intentions. And there’s nothing to talk about. I’m not sure Vanya would understand my obsession with this woman. I never told him how deep it runs, how it all began years before I met her, how she resisted me with every breath, the fire within her burning fiercely. Though she appears as a stranger to me now, it is still her.
“Caelia lied to me every step of the way.” I hear myself speak, my voice unrecognizable. “She fought so hard for her freedom. She even stabbed me with my own damn knife.” I let out a dry laugh.
“I thought you walked funny.” My idiot cousin smirks at me in the rearview mirror.