25. Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

Dominic

I spit more blood out of my mouth.

Will has been toying with me, enjoying punching me and kicking me for his own amusement and to make himself look tough.

Over and over again, I have had to prevent myself from lunging across the room and strangling him with my bare hands. I've been trying to count down the minutes since he started peacocking and beating me up.

I think it's almost time to take the situation back into my own hands.

"And now, to everyone who has ever wished to be lucky enough to get the Reaper into their clutches, I will prepare for the final, killing blow. Should I do this executioner-style? Or should I be more direct? I want you all to enjoy this as much as I am enjoying it," he says lustfully.

He's panting, and I can't tell if it's from exertion or his evident excitement that borders on sexual.

He comes to stand behind me, and I hear him take out his gun. It's almost time for me to act. My fingers wrap around the handle of my concealed knife. I already know what I'm going to do.

I hear the pistol cock, and I draw in a deep breath.

"Time to say goodbye, Reaper," Will says breathlessly. "The Cobra has removed the Reaper from this earth."

My mind is cold and clear. I can practically hear his skin slipping over the trigger, preparing to squeeze. I lean slightly forward, as if I'm bowing to my inevitable defeat. I stare at the drops of blood on the floor. It's my blood. The same blood that flows through the veins of my unborn child.

I am not ready to give up on this life yet.

The shot rings out at the same time that I roll rapidly to the side. I kick out as hard as I can, catching Will in the legs. With a shout, he slams to the floor, and the pistol slides away across the metal floor.

I roar as I roll onto my knees and tackle him, my hands going around his throat. I wonder in a vague way how the viewers of Will's live feed are feeling about this sudden change in circumstances.

"You promised me! You gave me an oath!" Will manages to say despite the hand gripping his throat.

I prepare to drive the knife into his ribs and I lean closer to him. "My oath is as good as your sullied soul," I hiss at him. "A wooden penny for both, eh?"

Suddenly, there's a searing pain in my side. My eyes fly open wide as I see the intense satisfaction in Will's eyes that are still hidden behind the mask.

He twists the knife into my ribs, and I gasp, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. My lung. He must have punctured my lung. Black dots swim before my eyes, and I roll to the side, struggling to breathe.

"Not so tough after all, eh?" Will snarls at me as he gets to his feet. "The big, impressive, infallible Reaper, lying on the ground, drowning in his own blood." He tsks at me, a crazy look in the eyes behind the mask.

My vision swims again, then rights itself. I still have my knife clutched in my hand.

He leans closer to me, continuing to mock me, and I manage to grip the back of his neck and stab upward with the knife. It's Will's turn to look shocked as he stumbles away from me, blood oozing through his fingers around the handle of the knife buried in his side.

"This is all turning into a very surprising confrontation," he says for the sake of the camera, before coughing sharply. He looks down at me, then closes his eyes as pain washes through his body.

I manage to struggle up onto my knees, hoping to be able to defend myself if he comes after me again. I didn't have a lot of power behind the thrust, but my concealed knife is very sharp and deadly, thin like a stiletto, and longer than the knife that Will used to cut me. It is surprising what a honed instrument can do in the right hands.

"Dom!"

The voice is Gianna's and I hear her shout just as I hear the metal door bang open with a crash. I want to tell her to run away, want to plead with her to get out of here, but I can barely breathe and my vision is starting to go dark at the edges.

"Oh my God!" Gianna cries out, seeing the blood running down my side. "Will, what have you done?" She hunkers down next to me, clutching at me, patting her hands all over me looking for injuries.

"Only what everyone else in organized crime has been dying to do for years," Will snaps back. "Ridding all of us of the ‘charms' of the Reaper is important work, and I will get all of the credit."

"Everyone watching this tawdry performance should know what they are looking at," Gianna snarls.

She rises to her feet, and takes two quick steps toward her brother to rip the mask off his face. "The Cobra is William Bianchi," she says loudly. "To anyone who would like to take care of my family's most embarrassing member, go right ahead. He's dead to me and mine now."

I watch Will's face contort with anger as he glares at his sister. A shocking range of emotions sweep over his face as he tries to decide what to do. Gianna glares at him, her feet planted wide, looking for all the world like she doesn't have an arm in a sling and broken ribs.

Will's face stiffens into an expression of pure fury, and as we watch, he slowly pulls the dagger from his side. He gasps as it comes free, blood pouring out after it. He toys with it, then looks at his sister with a curious kind of affection in his gaze.

"You know, I always did love you, sister," he says menacingly, his soft tone making the clear threat in his words terrifying to hear. "I didn't know that you would betray me like this."

"Takes one to know one, maybe," she shoots back as she takes a step away from him.

I want to warn her that he probably has other weapons hidden on his body, but I just can't form any words with my thick tongue.

I try to reach for her, and the tiny movement challenges my balance too much. I topple to the floor with a loud clunk, and Gianna looks down at me with concern.

That's the opening that Will was waiting for, and he lunges for Gianna, my dagger pointed right at her chest. I see my own hand lift toward Gianna, as if I can protect her in some way.

I feel broken inside. She's going to die because she loved me. Our baby is going to be cheated out of the chance to be born. I feel like a failure.

But Will doesn't stab her. He stops dead with a cry, his mouth going wide with shock. I blink furiously, trying to hold onto consciousness long enough to figure out what is going on.

"You…" Will mumbles out, wavering on his feet. "How could you do this? How could you betray me like this?"

I narrow my eyes and watch as Gianna steps away from her brother, revealing the knife that he stabbed me with, lodged in his chest, dangerously close to his heart. She must have picked it up off the floor when she was kneeling next to me. Will never even knew that she had it in her grasp.

"No," she says to him forcefully. "You betrayed all of us. You disgust me. I hope that you rot in hell for shaming our family."

Will tries and fails to say something else, blood spurting from his mouth instead. Gianna takes another step away from him, her face going pale as she watches him struggling to speak.

"Goodbye, brother," she whispers, just before Will pitches forward onto his face and goes still.

The world around me is spinning, and I can barely focus on Gianna as she races over to me and presses a hand onto the wound on my side. I'm dimly aware of her yelling at people who have come into the room, and I see Vince's face swim into my line of sight.

"Nothing but a scratch," Vince says to me in his booming voice. "We'll get that fixed up in no time, m' boy."

"I love you," Gianna is chanting over and over again as I'm lifted off the ground and carried down the hallway. "Don't leave me. I love you."

"I…" I try to speak, but I can't get enough air into my lungs to form words. I want to say that I love her. I want to tell her that she's the best thing that has ever happened to me. I want to tell her to let Vince help her raise the baby and remember me when I'm gone, but I can't get any of the words out of my mouth. I close one eye to look at her beautiful, pale face as she hurries alongside me down the hallway.

I smile at her as I feel myself losing grip on my consciousness. If her face is the last thing that I see before I die, I can leave this earth a happy man.

"I…love...you," I manage to say, just before I pass out.