Page 57 of A Trap So Flawless

Now that we’ve nearly reached the steps to the front door, it’s like some invisible leash between Valentina and me snaps. She takes off running up the steps, leaving me there at the bottom. I’ve only got my foot on the first step when the front door opens from the inside.

I don’t see her mammy.

For a moment, I don’t see anyone inside. Valentina is blocking my view. And she isn’t that tall. So unless a child answered the fucking door, something is very wrong here. I don’t see a child’s legs through Valentina’s. I see the glint of rounded metal and rubber, and a pair of expensive Italian leather shoes hovering a few inches off the ground.

Men’s shoes.

I hear someone bellow Valentina’s name, echoing in at me as if from a great distance. But the voice is mine, the accent shaped by both Dublin and Toronto.

Valentina stumbles backwards, but it’s too late. The man in the wheelchair grabs hold of her.

Valentina falls into her father’s lap.

Her living father’s lap.

A trap.

I almost want to laugh at how I’ve fallen into it. I would if it weren’t so pathetic, so grim. If Valentina weren’t caught in it, too.

She lands awkwardly, one knee going between Vincenzo’s thighs, her other foot still planted on the ground. I’m halfway up the steps already. My gun is in my hand.

I promised her if he still lived then I would kill him myself. He stole her from me after he promised me her hand. He orchestrated the death of my grandda.

He used his own death as bait to get her back. He knows that, at her heart, she’s loyal. And that even after everything, she loves her family. And that makes her weak.

Not that I can blame her.

I love her. So now I’m fucking weak, too.

My chance is now. Revenge is at hand. I’ll watch the light go out in his eyes. Make sure it’s real this time.

But I don’t have a clear shot. Because even though Valentina struggles, even though Vinny is weakened by his recent brush with that biker’s bullet, he’s still strong enough to hold her. His thick, hairy forearm is locked around her waist.

If he were holding anyone else…

I’d empty my gun into them both.

But she isn’t anyone else. She’s Valentina. My golden-eyed pet, my principessa in the dark, and no matter how much I hate her daddy, no matter how much I’ve hated her, there is nothing in either this life or the next that would have me risk her just to take my shot. A bullet in her body is just as good as one inside my own.

Holy fuck. This is it, isn’t it? This is what my grandda was protecting me from. This is what he was trying to prevent.

I really have become my own father. In that moment, I know that if anything ever happens to Valentina, I will kill whoever is responsible.

And then I will kill myself.

And just like that, I see how poorly my grandda’s methods have failed. Because why would I care about keeping townhouses and pubs and all the many euros in his many bank accounts, when I would blow my fucking brains out over her?

Valentina is the only goal. The only answer. She is everything.

And that makes her the perfect fucking shield for Vinny.

Everything slows. She remains pinned by Vinny’s unyielding right arm while his left arm raises a gun and aims it right at me.

I know what’s coming. I don’t bother looking at the gun, or at the man holding it whom I loathe more than anything in this world. I only look at her.

I want her to be the last thing I see before I die.

But I don’t even get that much. The shot drives me backwards. My body tries to keep me upright, my legs lurching like the jerking pistons of an automaton. But I’m on the stairs, so I step back into dead air, and then I fall. The ground slams up to meet me. It knocks the breath from my lungs and the sense from my skull. There’s ringing in my ears. Or maybe screaming.

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