Page 264 of Like Grim Death: Part One
She’s kept things from me, but for a reason, and I think the reason is the very boy she’s being traded for.
I open my mouth to tell Cain to go fuck himself when a thud resounds in the silence, then a shot goes off.
A scream rips from someone’s mouth as I jump in front of Ella, trying to shield her body when I spin around because I don’t think Ophelia is brave enough to pull the trigger of the fucking gun.
I watch Sevryn drop the lamp, one of the guards face down on the floor as Sevryn snatches up the gun, aiming at Mikhail as he leaps over the prone guard, but the other guard is pointing his own weapon at Rain, and Mikhail’s fingers are still around his throat.
Sevryn’s chest rises and falls, heavy and fast as he backs up toward us, his eyes drifting to me for one moment when he glances over his shoulder. I notice with startling clarity his irises are not gray.
They’re blue.
My heart drops, and I don’t know why, I’m not sure what the fuck is going on until Mikhail says, “I will not ask again.”
And Cain shoulders past me.
I don’t think.
I jump on him, dropping my weapon. I want to get to Ella. I cannot let her be taken. I won’t.
Cain staggers under my attack as my fingers come to his throat, my chest to his back, but Lucifer shifts his position so he’s behind me and he hooks his arm around my neck, hauling me backward. I elbow him, a growl leaving my lips, but Cain gets away, and Sid is running to Rain, shoving Sevryn aside.
Ella is given to the guard at the same time Sid clasps onto Rain’s body, her gun out of her hands now, I know she dropped it to grab for him. And before Lucifer can aim properly at Mikhail’s head—he’s going to kill him for what he did to his sonandhe’s going to get Ella back—his own gun between his fingers, arm still around my neck, there’s a clattering sound at the entranceway to the living room, leading into this hallway, startling us all and smoke begins to fill the corridor immediately, blurring my eyes and blocking my vision of Ella.
I don’t care.
I dive away from Lucifer, toward where Ella last was. My hands reach blindly as footsteps thud, shots ring out, making my ears hurt, my body flinch, but I’m still running into the gray smoke, coughing as I cover my forearm over my mouth, trying to keep breathing.
Ella, Ella, Ella.
No. You can’t have her.You fucking can’t.I don’t feel the pain in my body, I don’t feel anything and I haven’t since I saw her on the floor in the hall.
I have damned her entire life.
She might die thinking I gave her up.
She might die believing we aren’t her family, and we are.We fucking are.
I’m running so fast in a short distance, aiming for the living room—the place Mikhail could escape with Ella—but I can’t see, and when I collide with someone, my hands around their throat, shoving them into the wall, I think it’s Mikhail and I’m squeezing so hard I’m going to kill him, but the voice that hits my ears isn’t Boaz’s.
“Maverick.”It’s my sister. “Maverick.” Her fingers scratch at my arms. “Maverick, stop.” Brooklin’s voice, choked.
I blink through the smoke as Brook slumps against the wall when I loosen my hold. I catch her blue eyes at the same time my mind hooks backward, to Sacrificium. Sanctum. A smoke bomb.
“Hello, Daddy.”
Brooklin, helping Sid escape with J.
Did she… “What did you do?” I gasp it. I turn from her, intending to tear off after Ella again into the darkened living room, but Brooklin grabs my wrist, jerking me backward, further into the hall, and I would fight her, but bullets spray, ricocheting from the entrance. They’re covering their tracks, ensuring we don’t follow.
Brooklin keeps pulling me, pulling me, past my room, as bullets lodge into walls and the ceiling overhead, drywall raining down, but we’re past the archway and they can’t reach us.
I see Lucifer, Sid, huddled over Rain, gasping near the end of the hallway.
Cain, Ezra, Atlas, standing further down the hall, in the direction Sevryn came from, are staring at me.
I turn to my brother again. Past him, Ophelia is on the floor, her hands over her head behind Sid, Lucifer, and Rain, no gun in her reach, just a mass of blonde hair and black clothes as she sobs even though she has no fucking reason to cry except for the fact that… She’s going to die, and I think I’m going to be the one to fucking kill her.
Brooklin grabs my biceps, shaking me in the dim light of the expansive hallway, a gilded painting beside her head. A red brick house. A home.
