23

23

STACEY

Everyone dies at some point. It’s inevitable. Death is strange and unavoidable. The endpoint to every living thing. There will be a quiet moment in our lives when the world stops moving, our lungs stop working and we close our eyes for the last time.

And that terrifies me.

When my mother died, I was young. I cried. Missed her like crazy. Cried some more. And when we moved away, I tried to forget about it all. Her pale skin and her blue lips, long after the doctors called her time of death.

I tried to forget what her voice sounded like.

How her hugs felt.

The way she always made me feel better on my bad days.

Moving on was impossible for such a long time – it took me months for a single day to pass that I would feel okay. I never felt complete until I was dared to kiss Kade, then he cornered me in the kitchen and kissed me again and again and again. Everything went uphill from there.

Until I lost my baby girl, then Kade, then my dad. Then everything just fell like tattered dominos into a blazing inferno of fucking oblivion.

I wanted death a few times but never followed through with the dark thoughts that plagued me. There was one moment I let the voices win, and I was fully prepared to jump into the abyss and end my life. But Jason talked me down from the edge of that bridge and proved just how much I wanted to live.

And I didn’t want to die anymore, as much as it hurt to keep breathing at the time, so I held on to life with a firm grip. I kept my heart beating even though it was broken, fractured, bleeding from losing everything I had to look forward to.

But that’s not always the case, is it? People die every day. Every hour. Every minute. Every second.

One moment, we’re here. Next, we’re not.

Where does one go when they pass?

Their memories stay with us, their lifeless bodies waiting to be buried or cremated. But what truly happens? Do they become stars? Are they ghosts who stand by our sides when we need them the most? Are psychics legit, and do the dead communicate during readings?

When we get a shiver up our spines and the hairs rise on our arms, is there someone with us?

One blink, we have a life and a future and a purpose. We can breathe fresh air into our lungs and listen to the rain pattering against a window. We meet someone amazing, go on dates and get to know them until the butterflies are unbearable. We buy books that sit on our bookcases and gather dust. We can listen and sing along to our favourite songs until our throats get sore. Watch movies and cuddle on the couch until we fall asleep. We can walk our dogs under the pale moonlight and laugh with our friends while living in the moment.

Make plans for the future and celebrate milestones. Study and get our dream jobs. Mortgages and car finance to put us into more debt. Fall in love, get married, have kids and watch them have their own lives. Watch them make their own achievements and mistakes. Their own families and careers. Or we can choose a completely different path that’s no less fulfilling.

In one stilted moment, we can see the world and all its colours and smell the oceans and flowers. We can eat junk food until our stomachs are full. And dance in a studio, in front of a crowd, or in the kitchen while we cook. Maybe in the shower if the mood strikes.

And in the next, it can all be taken away by a bad decision, an illness, a fatal accident, old age.

In this case, the deadly pull of a trigger.

Jason was getting clean. He was going to therapy, he’d started back at the gym and had a goal to be better. Not just for the woman he loved but for himself.

He was supposed to live. To get his life back. To help Kade get his life back and fix his relationship with his brother. He isn’t supposed to be gone. He wasn’t supposed to jump in front of a bullet for me.

But he did. And now he’s dead.

A bullet that was meant for me has penetrated Jason’s skull, and he’s dead. He’s had his final blink. His last moment. His milestones and achievements abruptly halted.

Muffled voices echo around me, and there’s a piercing ringing in my ears so powerful my vision blurs. I don’t blink. I don’t even breathe, though my lungs plead with me for air.

I’ve seen death. I’ve killed before and watched Kade murder, but nothing could have prepared me for this. My body is shaking as my eyelids manage a single, hard blink that restarts the chaos all around me.

There’s so much blood.

My hands, clothes, face, the floor – all stained with Jason’s blood while he lies limp in Aria’s arms. I stare at his lifeless body in complete shock, unable to look away.

I don’t even realise there’s a war going on around us until bodies start to drop, windows smashing from a spray of bullets, pelting us with fragments of shattered glass.

Does Tobias know Bernadette lied? That she killed Jason despite agreeing to leave his family alone? Is he outside fighting like the rest of them?

Someone stands close to me. Black, shiny shoes with suit trousers. His fingers clutch a radio as he pulls another magazine from his stash and reloads his gun.

It’s Barry. He cocks the weapon and calls for backup, ordering them to stop the cars from leaving.

“The Russians are here,” I hear over the radio, and Barry gives us one last look before taking three quick breaths and running into the war zone outside.

He has a wife and baby waiting for him in his safe house, and he’s running outside where bullets fly like birds and take even more lives.

I pray he survives.

A radio nearby beeps, and a voice confirms that they successfully stopped one of the cars, but not the one with Bernadette and Tobias inside. They’d ploughed over one of the new guards and vanished.

Aria sobs in front of me. I sit back on my heels and watch her beg Jason to wake up, her words shattering. She’s grabbing his face and yelling his name, screaming for her husband, anyone.

And then the radio beeps again, and a voice says, “We’ve got Archie Sawyer.”

I should be pleased, but I can’t do anything but search for ways to comfort Aria.

Barry’s voice comes over the radio. “Restrain him and knock him out. Kill the rest.”

The radio goes silent, and more shots are fired in the distance. The fight is outside now, and the lodge is filled with whimpers. Our men confirm that they’ve killed the driver and two are on foot, running through the forest. Heavily armed but thankfully wounded.

But Bernadette is gone. Which means Tobias is gone.

And Jason is… gone.

He sacrificed himself for me. I should be dead. I should be the one lying on the ground. But the angle that he ran in front of me means his head was low enough to take the fatal bullet instead of his body.

I clamp my teeth together and try to breathe through my nose as my eyes burn and my nostrils flare, my ribs tightening with every agonising second that passes.

Aria brushes her fingers through Jason’s blood-soaked hair and shouts on Ewan again. He’s upstairs with Kade. He’ll want to come, but there’s no one else left to keep Kade safe.

I lean forward and rest my hand on top of Aria’s as she strokes her thumb over the top of Jason’s fingers. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

Killing yourself isn’t going to make it all go away. If you jump, then it might be done for you, but everyone who cares for you will suffer. Do you know why? Because you are loved, Stacey.

Look at me. Please, Stacey. I lost everything, too.

I lost my fiancée, who’s probably already pregnant. I lost my brother. And I’ve most likely lost the rest of my family. If you jump, then you’re leaving me to do this on my own.

My mind skips through every time we’ve spoken, stopping at one of the last conversations we had, and it echoes everywhere. It makes my chest crack, and my vision blurs with even more tears.

Even if that means taking a bullet for you…

Jason kept his promise.

It’s been mere minutes since the shot was taken. Aria’s cries grow louder, and her screams for her husband vibrate off the walls, then he’s running down the stairs with a confused look, freezing when he sees the scene before him.

His wife with his dead son in her arms.

The boy who was born when he was only eighteen. The kid Aria has raised with him since he was a few months old.

Dead.

“No,” he whispers, not taking his eyes off them as he takes slow steps forward. “No. Jason.” He falls to his knees by his son’s side in slow motion, hands raised, his eyes flickering between refusal to believe and brutal shock. “Jason?”

He grabs his face, and his gaze searches every inch of it, his fingers hovering over the bullet wound. His eyes go wide, his lips moving without any words coming out.

The bullet hole in Jason’s head leaks crimson as Ewan shakes his son and begs him to wake up. He shakes him again with a strangled sound in his throat, then lowers his forehead to his as a guttural sob fills my ears.

Ewan becomes erratic. “Wake up, wake up, wake up. You need to, son.”

Lu and Base appear in the room next, and she screams and covers her mouth, nearly slipping on blood as she runs to them. “Oh my God! No! Jason!”

I lower my head as my best friend cries for her big brother.

I remember he used to pick her up from dancing when we were fifteen. We’d all blush because of his good looks and giggle when he made jokes to Luciella. I always fancied her twin, but everyone noticed Jason. She’d call him when she was sad. He’d call her when he was drunk and needed someone to hear how badly he played the guitar. Because no matter how terrible it sounded, she’d clap and tell him to keep practising.

He FaceTimed her when he was going to propose to Giana, and she helped him pick a ring.

They were close.

Jason vanishing years ago hurt her more than she’d ever admit. He stopped talking to everyone when he fell into drugs, but recently, she was getting him back.

And I have no idea what to say or do. All I can do is sit here and hold my best friend’s hand while she hyperventilates into her dead brother’s chest. I’m not sure if it’s survivor’s guilt or not, but I feel like I’m intruding. Like it’s my fault he’s dead.

“Wake up! You need to wake up, Jason!” Lu cries, taking his hand and sobbing into his palm while Ewan begs into his shoulder. “Please. Please wake up! Call an ambulance.” She looks at her mum. “Call an ambulance! Do something. Why aren’t you doing anything?”

A radio beeps then announces that backup is on the way. One of the men in the woods was found, but the other is still on the run.

The TV screens on the table show the massacre outside the lodge. Bodies from both sides have fallen. A white SUV is smashed into a tree, and Archie is lying face down in front of it, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Barry punches him to shut him up.

My attention is pulled back to the family falling apart before my eyes as Lu hugs into Ewan’s side. Both are coated in Jason’s blood. Both in hysterics, both waiting for Jason to part his lips and take a miraculous breath.

Base crouches behind Lu and kisses the side of her head, and I can see the rage building behind his eyes as they flick to the TV screens. He wants to go fight, but Luciella is his priority.

“You need to open your eyes, Jason. You can’t die! I need you. Please. Help him, Base,” she cries and falls back into him. “Please help him.”

Base looks at Jason then at me and shakes his head lightly. We both know there is no helping him. I think Aria is in shock. I don’t think she’s even breathing or blinking.

She very shakily presses two of her fingers to the side of his throat, even though it’s obvious he’s gone, searching for a pulse. A sign of life. A sign that the bullet wasn’t fatal. But his unseeing eyes and limp body tells a bigger, darker and harrowing story. When her bottom lip trembles, dimpling her chin, I know she hasn’t found any sign of life.

She moves her hand over his eyes, closing them. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she murmurs to him, a tear dripping from the tip of her nose and falling onto his face. “I’m so, so sorry we didn’t protect you. All of you.”

“Is he dead?” Lu asks in desperation, her eyes red as she pulls herself out of Base’s embrace. When her mother nods once, she cries even harder. So hard I feel splinters sinking into the centre of my heart. “No. There’s still a chance! Do CPR! Take him to the hospital!”

Aria slumps on her haunches, at a loss for words, splatters of ruby red all over her. She looks down at her soaked hands, the white dress now red, then shakes her head slowly. Her voice breaks as she says, “He’s gone. Jason’s gone.”

“No!” Ewan yells and pulls his son against his chest tighter. “No, no, no.” He rocks back and forth, tears soaking his cheeks as he mouths, Please, please, please, constantly. “Wake up, Jason. Wake up. I can’t do this without you.”

My chest hollows at the sight of him pleading with everyone to bring his child back.

“This isn’t how it should be. You can’t die, son. You can’t fucking leave me. Please. Please wake up.”

“What happened?” Lu croaks, her eyes swollen with tears. Base is still behind her, holding her, unable to speak as he rubs her shoulders, his jaw clamped shut.

“What happened?” she asks again. “Who did this?” Her words are angrier, louder, full of venom. “Who killed my brother?”

Tobias Mitchell’s genetics runs deep in her, and with the dark look on her face, the tension in her jaw and the tone in which she snarls each word, I can see that side of him everyone fears.

Luciella is her father’s daughter. Through and through.

“She…” Aria gulps, tears sliding down her face as she moves closer to her husband, linking her arm around his shoulder so he cries against her. “Bernadette. She tried to shoot Stacey. He threw himself in front of her. He… he saved her,” she says, and I close my eyes as Ewan erupts into a louder cry.

Jason McElroy is a hero. My hero. Everyone’s.

The wound in his head is still leaking profusely – blood is puddling beneath us. Our knees are stained crimson, the smell of copper filling our noses, but no one moves.

“I’ll get Kade. He’s still locked in his room,” Base says in a soft voice. “What do you want me to do?”

“Kill them all,” Ewan snaps, his eyes blazing as they lift to the Russian Scot. “You have power. You have two armies behind you. You want to help? You kill them all. I want that family to burn alive and be wiped from existence.”

“It was my team who stopped one of the cars,” he reports. This is a side of him I’ve never witnessed. Serious. Unsure. “I’ll see what else I can do, but I hold very little power until I’m fully sworn into the empire.” Base stands still, not blinking, his throat working on a swallow. “I’ll speak to my grandfather.”

He looks at Luciella for a second; nods to her as if to ask, Okay? And when she gives him a sad half-smile, he kisses the side of her head, snatches his phone from his pocket and walks back upstairs.

The shooting outside has stopped.

But Barry and his team are still hunting the forest for the final guard who managed to run when they stopped one of the cars. Ewan continues to cry for his son. I look at Aria, wiping under my eyes with my hands.

“What do we do about Kade?” I don’t even recognise my voice. “I don’t think he’ll survive this.”

He should know what’s going on. But I’m not sure if he’ll be able to handle any of it. This could be the very thing that knocks him off course, losing himself forever.

No one answers.

“I’m taking him to the hospital.” Ewan stands and lifts Jason’s body into him, barely struggling under the weight. His cheeks are drenched in tears. “I can’t just sit here.” Ewan settles Jason on the sofa, crouches beside him and rests his hand on his chest. “I need a car.”

When Base comes back in, he’s pale, and I know the call didn’t go well. “I can have you transported to the hospital,” he tells Ewan. He says nothing about the phone call, but he gives Luciella a look that says he’s failed.

“We need to tell Kade,” Aria decides, sniffing, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, smearing more blood. “He should know what’s happening.”

I get to my feet, but I’m unbalanced, and I grab the sideboard. “I’ll get him.”

“I can go to him, if you want?” Base offers.

I shake my head. “I’ll do it.”