Page 244 of The Carnage We Keep

And after all the lives I’ve taken, knowing hers is the one I saved is enough.

Somehow, I drag one last little blip of energy from deep inside me. My knuckles scrape across the pavement before my fingers curl into hers.

No matter how much time we had together, it was never going to be enough.

So I’ll take what we got.

My eyes close, and the darkness swallows me whole.

42

BELLA

I’m conscious through all of it.

Utterly frozen, trapped in my body like a statue, at times not even able to open my eyes.

But I’m wide awake when Damiano plunges into the blood beside me. I’m silently screaming in pain as he disconnects the chain, agony exploding through my shoulder as I try not to think about the fact that there’s a gaping hole torn through it and I’ve been submerged in literally hundreds of gallons of blood.

I can feel him struggling as he carries me from the building, his own strength finally leaving him as we collapse outside.

My eyes are shut, but I hear everything. I mentally flinch when I hear the gunfire erupting around me.

Then I scream silently again when Kodra gives Damiano one dose of the antidote to the poison coursing through our bodies.

“Good luck with your choice, Mr. Barone.”

I’m a frozen fucking statue lying on the ground, gradually feeling my lungs stop working as I hear Kodra walk away.

Dame’s fingers ghost against my lips, checking for breath.

He groans in agony as he shifts closer to me.

The cap of what must be the injector pen pops with a plastic sound.

You motherfucker.

No.

Don’t you dare fucking give that to me.

Save yourself. Please save yourself.

The urge to scream slams up against my inability to even open my eyes, let alone speak.

I need to speak.

Even if it’s just to tell him I love him and have been in love with him since before I could figure out how to say it or even think it.

If only one of us gets to walk away from this, it should be him.

Me, I’m just a little terror everybody learned to live with. A fucked-up girl with a fucked-up past and fucked-up wiring no amount of therapy or medication is ever going to fix.

I’ve always known there are parts of me that will stay broken, and that’s fine.

But him…

He’s worth saving.