Page 111 of The Pawn
I turn to her.
Beneath me she is still. I’m afraid to look. Afraid to know. My world can change in an instant. My life as good as over. But I feel the warmth of her. And I think, if I listen hard enough, I think I can hear her heart beat.
I draw back slowly, still using my body as a shield. Still not trusting that it’s over.
Allegra is huddled beneath me.
“Allegra.” I touch her hair, tuck it behind her ear. Something I have liked to do from the beginning. From when we were enemies.
She turns her face to look at me through tear-stained eyes. She straightens. Her arm is broken. I see it. And I see her pain on her face. A quick inventory tells me she’s not shot. The bullets didn’t hit her.
I untie her wrists, careful for her arm.
“Are you all right?” I ask her, touching her face gently, seeing the line carved by a knife. It will scar her. She’ll be more beautiful for it. More fierce.
“Just my arm.” Her gaze searches me, too. “Cassian.” She turns wide eyes to me, lifting her hands to my face, wincing with the pain of her broken arm. “You’re shot all over.”
The adrenaline rush is subsiding, and I can feel each of those bullet wounds. Each and every one.
“I’ll live,” I say, touching her again, not quite believing she’s safe. I pull her into my arms, careful of her broken one, and hold her to me. I close my eyes and just breathe her in, cradling her.
Malek groans, interrupting.
We both turn to look at him.
This isn’t over.
I have one more promise to deliver on.
41
ALLEGRA
Malek bleeds out while I watch.
While I kneel at his side, my bare knees soaked in his blood and watch. His eyes never leave mine. I hope it’s not comfort I’m offering him.
Cassian drapes his ruined shirt over my shoulders and stands at my back ready to pounce. Ready to protect.
Malek opens his mouth to say something, but when he does, I pick up his gun discarded nearby and push the barrel into it. I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to hear what he has to say. He doesn’t deserve a single one of the breaths he’s taken since he orchestrated the brutal murder of my mother and yet he’s been allowed to take them. For years he’s been allowed to take them.
There are two reasons I won’t pull the trigger and blow his brains out. Amal and Daniel. I won’t have them know that I was the one who killed their father because no matter what, he was their father.
How simple it is to speak of someone hated in the past tense. How comforting.
Cassian crouches behind me, his big body solid and warm at my back, his arms a band of safety around me. He looks down at Malek.
“It’s a slow death,” I say, my eyes on Malek’s, the picture of him like this, dying in agony, burned onto my brain. The feeling is dark inside my chest. I don’t know if I thought I’d feel satisfaction. A righting of so many wrongs. I don’t. I feel nothing. Maybe that makes me a monster like my father. Maybe.
“We need to get your arm looked at,” Cassian says.
“Just a few more minutes.” I cock my head, knowing the end is near. Hearing it in his breaths. Seeing it in his eyes.
Cassian will keep a promise today. He will make a widow out of me.
But I won’t ask him to keep the other. I don’t want any pieces of Malek Lombardi. And when he takes his final breath, when his eyes go flat, I don’t close them like Cassian did Enzo’s. I stand, Cassian with me. He watches me closely and I feel his hand slip around mine. Feel him take the gun from me without once breaking eye contact.
His eyebrows furrow, but he nods. “Your arm, Allegra. We need to get it looked at and set now,” he repeats.
