30. Nik

CHAPTER 30

Nik

“No!”

Brie is already in motion, launching herself at Holden, and I don’t dare fire for fear of hitting her. Holden shoves at her hard, both their hands on the gun, and then they go rolling off the bed where I can’t see them. I dash over, see them struggle to their feet together, still locked too closely for me to have a clear?—

A gunshot cracks through the room.

They freeze, pressed together in a grotesque parody of an embrace, the gun trapped between them. Neither moves. Neither makes a sound. They’re looking into each other’s faces.

A dark stain begins to spread across Brie’s bathrobe where their bodies press together, and her knees start to buckle. My heart stops dead in my chest until I realize—she’s not falling. She’s trying to stop Holden from collapsing.

She’s not the one bleeding. It’s Holden’s blood.

Brie moves with him, helping him fall slowly, gently, and they end up on the floor, Brie cradling him like a modern-day Pietà, her robe soaking up his blood as she looks down on him.

“I need medical in here, now!” I call out, knowing already that it’s too late. The blood is flowing too fast. I’ve seen enough deaths to know this one can’t be stopped.

Something haunted crosses Brie’s face, and I wonder what memories she’s reliving, if she’s recalling that night in the trailer park, the first time blood stained her hands. I see that sixteen-year-old girl in her face now, I think. But there’s someone else, too. Someone harder.

Someone who’s been there all along, waiting to emerge.

Holden starts choking, bloody bubbles forming at the corners of his mouth. Brie takes the hand that he holds out toward her, and I marvel at her capacity for mercy. Even after his betrayal, she won’t let him die alone. Her voice comes out steady, but I can hear the West Virginian drawl in it, pronounced. “Shh, it’s okay. It’s okay. Everything will be alright.”

He goes slack in her arms, but she still holds him tight, rocking slightly, like she’s calming a baby to sleep.

A guard runs up behind me. “Medical is on the way?—”

“Give us a minute,” I order. He takes one look at Brie, the blood all over her robe, and backs away with wide eyes.

I close the bedroom door. We’ll have seconds at most, but I want Brie to have the privacy she needs in this moment. She looks up at me as I walk closer, and my heart clenches at the vulnerability in her eyes.

“Nik, I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “About everything. About doubting you, about pushing you away?—”

I kneel beside her. “You just saved my life,” I say softly. “And your own. You have nothing to be sorry for.” I try to put everything I can’t say into my eyes—how proud I am of her strength, how I understand why she did what she did.

The door slams open again: Frank Colombo, frazzled and desperate. “Breezy! You okay?” He reaches for her, trying to pull her away from Holden’s body, but she transforms before my eyes into something magnificent and terrible.

“Get back,” she commands, her voice ringing with authority. Frank pauses, his hands dropping to his sides. “Holden confessed to killing Terry. I killed him in retribution.” She meets Frank’s gaze steadily. “I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow, but for now, all you need to know is that his body should be treated with dignity.”

“Breezy, we need to get you looked at—” he begins carefully.

She rises smoothly to her feet, the blood on her robe a powerful symbol. “I’m not hurt,” she says. “I’m going to take a shower and wash this off. Frank—you’ll need to deal with the police. Nik?” She turns to me, and I’m already moving toward her, reading her needs as naturally as breathing. “Please escort me out.”

We make our way into the hallway, leaving the chaos behind, as guards and paramedics mill around. “We’ll go to your dressing room,” I say quietly. “Avoid the public areas.” The private elevator at the end of the corridor will take us down into the staff-only corridors of the casino, past Terry’s old office, and into her dressing room. Less chance of being seen by anyone, and the casino staff are already experts at making themselves scarce.

She nods, doesn’t try to pull away from my sheltering arm.

Each crisis she survives, each test she passes, only proves what I’ve suspected since I first laid eyes on her—she’s so much more than anyone ever gave her credit for. More than even Terry probably imagined when he chose her as his successor.

The Colombo Family wanted a figurehead. They lucked into getting a queen.

And I’ll be damned if I let anyone stand in her way now.