I repeat what Silvano told me. Lynch coughs again but then smiles. “It’s true.”
I am so angry that the only thing I can think to do is put a bullet in his brain, even though he would have been dead in minutes anyway. Lynch goes limp.
I race over to Dom. “Where are you shot?” I say.
Dom doesn’t open his eyes. “My chest and my leg,” he answers faintly.
The wound in his leg seems to be bleeding more, so I start to apply pressure there.
“It’s okay, boss,” Dom says. “Now that the shooting has stopped, it’s quite peaceful.”
The shooting has stopped. I hadn’t even noticed. I hear footfalls approaching and whip my gun up, hands shaking from the adrenaline searing through my veins, but I’m relieved to see my own men jogging toward me and not Lynch’s.
I turn my attention back to Dom. His skin is pale and waxy. “Dom. Open your fucking eyes.”
He does, though his eyelids seem heavy. He has always been a good soldier.
“We’ve been through far too much together,” I hiss. “You don’t get to throw in the fucking towel now. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” he says in a gravelly voice.
Gio kneels down beside us and presses on the wound in Dom’s chest. “We’ve cleared the area,” he informs me. “The rest of them ran off when it became obvious it was a fight they wouldn’t win.”
“Felicity?” I ask.
Gio shakes his head. “No sign of her.”
“Fuck.” My head swims with everything that I’ve learned, everything that has happened. I can hardly believe that Lynch is actually dead.
Before I can think about anything else, I need to gather up the wounded and get my men out of here. It could be only a matter of minutes before the Irish return with reinforcements.
“Can we move him?” I ask Gio, who has some medical training.
He nods. “We have to.”
The two of us carry Dom out while Antonio pulls out the rest of the men, coordinating the removal of the dead and wounded and setting fire to the warehouse once everyone is out. Dom groans and hisses the whole way to the waiting SUV, but I take that as a good sign. He’s going to make it. He has to.
I can’t lose anyone else.
Gio manages to stanch the bleeding in the car, and we drop him and Dom off at a private medical center for further treatment. On the way, Antonio reports three dead and five more wounded, though none as bad as Dom. All in all, the attack was a success. I wish we had been able to take Lynch alive though. Felicity will go into hiding now, and without her lover’s help, I doubt we will be able to find her.
That’s a problem for another time. Right now, all I can think about is getting home to my family.
When we reach the mansion, I hop out of the SUV before it has even come to a complete stop. I rush up the front steps and into the foyer. For the first time, I regret having such a large house. Is she upstairs in the nursery? Or downstairs in the living room?
Angelo and Clara walk into the foyer from the direction of the living room.
“Alexis is through there,” Angelo offers.
I nod to him and dart down the hall. It isn’t until I’m in the living room that I realize Angelo and Clara were holding hands.
Alexis is sitting on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knee when I enter. There is an open bag of Twizzlers next to her, and one is dangling from her lips. She looks up and smiles, biting off the end of the Twizzler and chewing as she closes the lid of her computer and sets it aside.
“Hey,” she says, as though she isn’t at all surprised to see me alive. As though she had full confidence that I would keep my promise and come back to her. As though it doesn’t faze her to see me covered in blood.
She unfolds herself from the couch and picks her way through the room until she is in front of me, her small hands resting on my chest.
“It’s not yours, right?” she asks.
I look down at my shirt and hands, stained brown with dried blood. I shake my head. “It’s not mine.”
I need to tell her. I need to tell her what Kevin Lynch confirmed with his last gurgling breath.
“I missed you,” Alexis says, and pops up on her toes to press a soft kiss on my cheek. My heart thuds, and I pull her into my arms.
I need to tell her. But not tonight.
29
Gabriel
The problem with the calm before the storm is that even though you know the storm is coming, the calm still feels good. You still want to relax in it. Revel in it. Enjoy that even just for this moment, the chaos cannot reach you.
I have had a week of this calm since I killed Kevin Lynch. I can tell that something big is brewing. Fuck, I can practically taste it on the wind, see the clouds gathering on the horizon, bloated and gray. But it still feels good not to spend my days in chaos, and to be able to take the time to enjoy some of life’s more subtle pleasures.
Like bringing my woman flowers.
I knock on the door to Alexis’ room, the scent of roses tickling my nose from the bouquet in my hand.
“Come in,” she calls.
I enter. Alexis is sitting at her desk, typing on her laptop. She has been threading together all of her research to write a follow-up article to the one that caused me so much trouble the last time. She worries she will never finish it because, in her mind, the only appropriate ending would be a happy report that purple heroin has been pushed from New York’s streets forever. In the past week, the market has been flooded with the drug, which is partly how I know the worst is still yet to come.
“Hey,” she says without looking up.
“Where’s Harry?”
She jabs her head in the direction of the nursery. “I literally just got him to go to sleep, so don’t start screaming or anything.”
I approach the desk, and Alexis finally looks up from her work. Her face splits into a wide grin when she sees the roses.
“Are those for me?” she asks, closing the lid of her laptop.
“No.” I bring the roses up to my nose and sniff them thoughtfully. “They’re for my other girlfriend. Do you think she’ll like them?”
I can see Alexis’ attention snag on the title of girlfriend. We rarely ever talk about what we are, and almost never broach the subject of what we feel. Girlfriend feels like an extraordinarily weak descriptor for what Alexis is to me.
“You’re a dog.” She snatches the roses out of my hand and cradles them to her chest. “Did you purposefully get me the same kind of roses as the ones you sent when I was living in the apartment?”
I can still remember the delight on Alexis’ face as I watched her on the screen, receiving her flowers, the way it made my stomach flip and I didn’t know why.
“Yes,” I say. “Because as it turns out, I’m not terribly creative.”
She laughs and sets the roses on the desk, walking around it to place her hands on the lapels of my jacket. Alexis senses the oncoming storm just as much as me, but over the past week she has become a more relaxed, joyful version of herself. When she looks up at me now, it is with bright blue eyes that sparkle with mirth and a cheeky tilt to her full lips.