“I love him,” I plead with my father and as I do, I belatedly notice a gun laying only a foot from where I am, so close I could reach it. What a useless thing to come to me now. If I let go, Carter will die. I know it deep in my soul.
If I were to reach it, to manage to grab it and kill my father to end all of this, what point would there be in living?
I’d rather die like this, doing everything I can to save the one I love, than live knowing I let him die.
My eyes move from the gun to the portrait of his family home and I close my eyes, pressing my cheek to Carter’s chest as I hold him tighter. I can’t feel his chest moving anymore though. I don’t hear him breathing either.
“Choose your family, Aria. Step aside and let me finish him. I forgive you,” my father stresses the last sentence. Slowly, I look to him. His eyes glass over as he grips the gun tighter. “It doesn’t matter what happened before, but now you need to listen to me. You need to act like the woman you were raised to be,” my father tells me and instead of hearing him I only hear Tyler’s words.
I can’t look at my father, or the gun.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Not to my father, but to the version of me that could have done better. To the hopes of what could have been and then I remember, I remember the small life inside of me and I cry harder. I mourn all of us and what we may have been had fate treated us better.
“Forgive me,” I cry into the crook of Carter’s neck and then I hear that voice again, the one I’ve only heard in my terrors. Hold him tight, or else he’ll die.
“I am,” I whisper to no one.
And with that I hear my father whisper how his own daughter betrayed him and then he tells me goodbye with a gunshot following close behind. The bullet is loud and it makes my shoulders jump, but I stay close to Carter, clinging to him with everything I have.
I know I heard it. I swear I did, but I felt nothing. Nothing at all.
My eyes open slowly, and I’m too afraid to breathe. I know I heard him shoot, but it didn’t hit me. A long moment passes before I hear a body fall. First a thud and then a louder thump. I have to turn around, to face the desk to see my father, laying on his belly on the floor, his eyes staring ahead of him but looking at nothing as blood pools around him, spilling from the hole in his cheek.
A second passes, tick.
I can’t do anything. The scream is silent.
Another second passes, tock.
And that’s when I notice movement from behind the desk.
My eyes travel up the suit pants, to the fitted shirt covered in blood.
Nikolai’s expression isn’t cold, it isn’t angry. He’s heartbroken as he lowers his gun and I watch him swallow.
“Do you want to tell them it was you? Or should we tell them I did it?” he asks me and his last word is strangled. He looks between Carter and myself and I can’t even answer him. I can’t think about anything but how long it’s been since I’ve felt Carter’s heartbeat.
A weak pulse is the only response I get at that thought.
“Help me,” I plead with him.
Chapter 22
Aria
They took him away. They took him away from me. Jase pried my fingers back and Sebastian pulled me away as I screamed. The memory loops over and over again, but it’s not me. I’m merely watching it happen like the scenes of a movie.
“It hurts so much,” I struggle to say out loud and I don’t know who can hear me because I don’t even know who’s around me.
“You need to change, Aria.” I hear Jase’s voice, and the tremors rocking through my body only pick up.
“Is he okay?” I cry the words and he lets me fall into his embrace. When I look forward, Nikolai is watching. He saved me. He saved Carter.
“They’re doing what they can,” is all Jase tells me in hushed words, as if we shouldn’t be talking and the tears fall, but I don’t cry any longer. Instead I take in the room. I take in everyone. How did I even get down the stairs? How did I get here, and why are Nikolai and my father’s men in the same room with Jase and Sebastian? There are other men here too. Men from both sides.
My face is hot; my pulse runs fast. Before I can beg him to take me to Carter, and bring him back to see me, I hear another voice.