Page 82 of Deadly Alliance
"Get out," Dario barks at them, waving the gun toward the corridor. "Out! If anyone follows me, I shoot her."
The guards back out of the room slowly, leaving me entirely alone with the man who sold my husband to the Russians.
Dario slams the doors shut behind them and locks the deadbolt. He turns to me, his chest heaving, a desperate, hysterical smile twisting his handsome face.
"Noemi," he gasps, leaning back against the wood. "Thank God you're here. We have to leave. Right now."
I don't move. I study him. The boy I used to watch from across the ballroom, the boy who used to make my cheeks flush with a single glance. I used to think he looked like a prince out of a fairy tale, a golden escape from the miserable, suffocating reality of the Genovese household.
"Where exactly are we going, Dario?" I ask, my tone conversational, though my pulse is hammering a vicious beat.
"Anywhere," he insists, taking a step toward the desk. His gun lowers slightly; his desperation is overriding his logic. "My father threw me to the wolves. Cassio knows about the routing numbers. The Commission is going to put a hit out on me by morning. But if I have you... If I take you with me, Cassio will negotiate. We can trade you for my life, and then you'll be free."
He actually believes it. He believes I am still the pathetic, trapped spinster praying for a knight in shining armor to drag her out of the tower.
"You want to use me as a hostage," I state, piecing together his pathetic, cowardly plan.
"I want to save you!" he argues, his voice cracking. He stops a few feet from the desk, reaching his free hand out toward me. "He is a monster, Noemi. He locks you in this house. He uses you as a pawn. I can give you a normal life. Just come with me."
A bitter, hollow laugh escapes my throat.
I look at his outstretched hand. I remember the girl I used to be. The quiet, overlooked older sister, wearing modest dresses, standing in the shadows while my father paraded Lucia in front of the eligible bachelors. I remember wishing Dario would ask me to dance. I remember wishing someone, anyone, would look at me and see something worth keeping.
That girl is dead.
She died the night she ripped her wedding dress. She died when she packed a bullet hole with combat gauze, her hands stained to the elbows in the blood of the man who finally saw her worth.
"You don't want to save me, Dario," I say, pushing away from the desk. I stand tall, my spine straight, exuding the authority of the empire I am fighting to protect. "You just want to save your own miserable skin."
Dario flinches, his hand dropping. "Noemi, please. You don't understand—"
"I understand everything," I interrupt, stepping around the desk. "You sold Cassio's convoy route to Volkov. You set the ambush. You knew the bullets were coming, and you tried to pull me off the terrace so you could play the hero while my husband bled to death."
"He forced you to marry him!" Dario yells, raising the pistol again, his hands shaking so badly I am genuinely worried the gun might go off by accident. "I was doing you a favor!"
"He gave me a crown," I correct him.
I reach behind my back. My fingers wrap securely around the grip of the Glock 19 tucked into my waistband.
"Put the gun down, Dario," I warn him, my voice dropping to a dangerous, freezing pitch.
"No! You're coming with me!" He takes an aggressive step forward, his finger tightening on the trigger.
I don't hesitate. I don't flinch. I draw the weapon Cassio gave me with a fluid, practiced motion, bringing it up to eye level in a fraction of a second.
I don't give him time to react. I don't give him time to realize the spinster he came to kidnap is actually the executioner he should have been running from.
I pull the trigger.
The gunshot is deafening in the enclosed space of the study.
The hollow-point round catches Dario perfectly in the center of his chest. The impact lifts him off his feet, throwing him backward. He crashes into the heavy oak doors, sliding down the polished wood, leaving a thick smear of crimson in his wake.
His silver pistol clatters harmlessly onto the floorboards.
I stand completely still, the Glock still raised, a thin wisp of smoke curling from the barrel. My ears are ringing. The scent of sulfur burns the back of my throat.
Dario is gasping, his hands clutching the gaping hole in his ruined suit jacket. Blood bubbles past his lips. He stares up at me, his eyes wide with shock and a profound, agonizing betrayal.
