“Where are we taking her?” Bobby asked the question.
“Nowhere. We are doing this business here.”
“Here?” Gemma was confused. Here was the middle of the woods. Here was not the house. Here was wrong.
“What will you do now, Angelo? Kill me?” Willow asked the question with extreme elegance in her tone.
“I don’t know what choice I have with you, Willow.”
“Then let it be done quickly.”
Cold horror spread through Gemma as Angelo pulled a gun from its holster. He was going to do it. He was going to kill Willow. He was going to execute her in cold blood. That would certainly end things once and for all, but at what cost? As horrible as Willow could be, a lifetime of friendship was not going to end this way if Gemma could help it.
“NO!” Gemma threw herself in front of Willow. “You will NOT kill her.”
She glowered at him balefully, fully prepared to get shot again if it meant saving Willow’s life. Maybe they weren’t friends anymore, but she had no intention of allowing harm to come to her without a fight.
“Get out of the way, girl.”
“No! I didn’t agree to help you find her just to see you shoot her.”
“You didn’t agree to help. You were ordered to help, and you did as you were told. That is how things work in this world. I give the orders; you obey them.”
Gemma took in a deep, hissing breath. “I didn’t leave the Organization just to be your murder lackey, Angelo.”
“But you did,” Angelo replied coldly. “You may not have thought about what you were doing, but that’s because you failed to think at all. Now, go and wait, or stay here and watch. The choice is yours.”
Gemma refused to move. Angelo sighed inwardly. He had expected she might be a problem at the end, though she was smart enough to know that Willow could not be trusted.
“She is a threat to all things Vitali,” he attempted to explain.
“I don’t care.”
“That is because you have no responsibilities besides what you do for yourself, which is nothing. You are mine, Gemma; you belong to my boy. You have no say or standing here.”
“So these are the methods of the great and powerful Angelo Vitali, are they? Executing women?”
She was doing it. She was holding Angelo Vitali at bay with the sheer force of her personality. Gemma was going to save Willow’s life. She could feel herself winning.
“You don’t have to kill her. You can do what you’ve done to everybody. You can make her part of your family. Every family needs an eccentric British Aunt who might have you murdered, right?”
“Move aside,” Angelo insisted, though he did not make her move. He seemed reluctant to close the distance between himself and Willow.
“I am not going to let you hurt her!”
“Gemma, move!” Bobby tried ordering her as well, but it didn’t work. Gemma had planted herself in place and was not going to allow any more bloodshed.
“There’s been too much killing. Too much dying. We have to be better than this!”
And then it all became moot.
Because Willow pulled a gun.
Later on, Gemma would wonder if that was an oversight or a matter of giving her enough rope to hang herself with. At any rate, the handle of the umbrella detached, and the barrel of a pistol emerged, covered in polished oak.
Angelo pulled the trigger. The bullet skimmed past Gemma, barely missing her, and hit Willow.
“No!” Gemma screamed, before throwing up and passing out.
“As if I did not have enough to contend with in my life, you add another bullet wound to the mix,” Willow commented, wrapping her hand around her left upper arm where Angelo had wounded her. It was a futile attempt to stifle some of the blood which was spurting out in an aggressive manner.
“You always needed a firmer hand than most, Willow. Bobby, take that weapon, please.”
Bobby snatched Willow’s hidden pistol up without a word.
“Anything else on your person, Lady Willow? A poisoned hatpin? Cyanide capsule?”
“I rather thought the gun would be sufficient to put additional ventilation in your forehead.”
“Charming.”
He picked his bleeding captive up in his arms and carried her out of the forest. She did not do him the convenience of fainting as Gemma had. She remained vigorous for the next two minutes before fading from blood loss.
“Jesus fucking christ, Angelo!”
Bobby had known the attempt to catch Willow would be a grand clusterfuck. He had not suspected for a second it would be this much of a mess.
The journey back to their home had been a filthy one. Gemma was still passed the hell out in the van. Willow was god knows where. Angelo had put her into a different vehicle and taken his sweet fucking time about getting back home.
“What, boy?”
Angelo had the nerve to talk as if nothing was wrong. He walked through the front door with a great deal of blood covering his once pristine suit. Though he had tried to wipe it off his hands, some remained around the fingernails, smeared in a light pink mist across the back of his left hand, and his forehead where he must have pushed his hair back.