A Love Most Fatal (Morelli Family #1)

44. Nate

44

NATE

As soon as we hear a door slam shut behind them, Mary curses and springs into action. Everyone does, either stalking to a different corner of the church or, in the case of Willa and Maxim, taking out their phones and making calls for backup.

“Nate,” Mary barks, and I follow behind her. Willa wouldn’t let Mary take her arm out of the sling that secures her elbow to her torso, but Mary is a pretty good shot even with just one hand. She looks like a ball of wrath, so I hurry.

“We split up. You take that staircase, I’ll go outside,” she says. “Whoever finds the bastard first gets to shoot him.”

I nod in agreement and slink away. There was a small battalion of men outside when we got here, but Maxim and Mary are fucking beasts and took out ten of them on their own. Willa and Sean, too. Between the four of them, there was only the man inside the church left by the time we set up the explosives, and he got taken out by Maxim as soon as the bombs went off.

My heart has been jackhammering in my chest, but my options are do nothing and let him take Vanessa, or do something and hope it’s enough.

I creep up the stairs and hold my breath once I reach the door they disappeared into. I can’t hear anything on the other side, but that doesn’t mean Cillian isn’t waiting with his gun still to Vanessa’s head. I hold up my gun, and before I can count all the way to three, push the door open in a rush.

It’s quiet, no movement, nor sign of life other than a heavy wooden door left ajar on the other side of the room.

With the windows shattered and a slight evening breeze slipping through, the room feels haunted. I gulp and take another slow step forward into the room.

Still nothing. Their dad’s pistol is heavy in my hand and the handle is hot from my grip, but I keep it ready to shoot.

There are a few pews here, and an ornate wooden confessional booth. I step past all of them and peer through the door. This one leads down a narrow hallway with old creaking stairs down and out of the church.

I am alone in the outdoor corridor, only one of Cillian’s men lying face down in a patch of darkened grass. I look around me and my arms shudder involuntarily.

From here I see only a small building that must be the priest’s apartment, and what looks like the entrance to. . . a cellar?

I storm for that door, pulling it open not at all gracefully before stomping down the few stairs until I reach a stone hallway. Not quite a cellar, unless cellars are old stone corridors beneath old stone churches. Tunnels.

When I force myself to still for a moment, I hear something—a scuffle, a voice—quiet, but here, underground.

I curse and follow it, moving as quickly as I can without stomping like a horse. I have to use my phone’s flashlight as I get farther away from the light of the entrance. There are lights on the walls but they’re all off, and when I come to an intersection of crossing paths, I hold my breath, listening for anything at all other than my jackhammering heart.

There. Something like footsteps, down the hall to my left. I turn course and follow, speeding up slightly. The hall turns once more and—how long have I been walking? We’ve most certainly extended beyond the church grounds. Geography has never been my strong suit, so unless I close my eyes and retrace my steps mentally, I’m not even sure which direction I’m headed.

With one last turn, I stifle a gasp and halt my steps. At the end of this corridor, a yellow light emits from behind a cracked door. I can hear footsteps and the low murmuring of a voice I am almost certain belongs to Cillian.

I turn off my flashlight and silence my phone before creeping as quietly as I can forward towards the room. My shoe hits something like a pebble that skitters across the floor and I freeze, but the sound in the room goes uninterrupted.

Stepping carefully, I venture closer. And if I hold myself against the stone wall, I can just barely see inside the room—a chamber? Nothing down here looks like it was built in the last century, save for the addition of electricity.

“I’ll call them off,” Vanessa says. “I’ll explain it to them.”

“You won’t need to explain anything to them because they’ll each have a bullet in their skull?—”

“Can you blame them for being worried? You didn’t let me call them, or even try to convince them.” Vanessa’s frantic voice breaks. “I’ll fix it, I promise they’ll listen to me. Just, please don’t hurt them.”

Cillian is quiet, and I worry I’m breathing too loud, or that he can just intuit that I’m in the hallway. But after a moment, he steps just into view, prowling towards where I imagine Vanessa stands. He doesn’t look murderous, he looks calculating.

“If you kill them and you take over the business, you’ll lose everyone’s trust. It might take years to get that back, if you ever do,” Vanessa says. “I will help you spin the narrative.”

“I can make it look like an accident,” Cillian says.

“And if you do, then you might as well kill me too,” Vanessa says. “They live, you get my cooperation. They die, you will get my corpse.”

Cillian blinks at this, then throws his head back in a laugh. I am close enough that I might be able to shoot him, but I would need to fling the door open first. Cillian still holds his own pistol, ready to fire at any second.

“You’re such a bitch, you know that?” Cillian says. “I think we’re soulmates.”

Vanessa says nothing, and Cillian’s phone beeps. He pulls it out of his jacket and glances at it.

“Ride’s here,” he says. “Come.”

He walks out of my sightline, and I slide the last steps away from the door until I’m right in front of it.

“I can’t climb like this,” Vanessa says. Her hands must still be bound in front of her. “I need them free to get up the ladder.”

Cillian thinks on this before his voice gets so low I almost don’t hear it. “If you try something, I will kill him first.”

“I won’t,” she says. She sounds so dejected that even I believe her.

I need to barge in there. I need to act, I can’t just wait for an opening, but my limbs are frozen. If I go in too soon and he shoots Vanessa, it will be my fault; I need to be fast, and certain. If he’s climbing a ladder. . . maybe I can get him then. He will be distracted?—

An obvious scuffle sounds from the room, Vanessa grunting as what sounds like fists hit flesh. An instant later, she shrieks, and that’s all it takes for me to bolt into action. I shoulder open the door and raise my gun. None too soon because that prick is on top of her, his lip now bloody, but pinning her down with fury in his eyes. He’s choking her, tattooed hands around her throat.

I don’t think about it.

I line up my shot and shoot, then shoot again, both shots directly into his skull.

He’s the first person I’ve ever killed.

His blood coats the stone wall behind him, his body thuds onto Vanessa, who gasps for breath beneath him. I rush to her and push Cillian’s corpse off her, speaking incoherent comforting nonsense as I draw her close to me. There’s hot red staining the bodice of her white dress.

“You killed him,” she says. She grips my face with one of her hands, the other arm limp at her side. Her touch is a miracle to me. Everything about her alive in front of me is nothing short of a revelation.

“You’re safe,” I breathe, then say it five more times until I believe it.

She’s safe, whole in front of me, and Cillian is dead.

He’s dead because I killed him.

I killed him .

My eyes are stinging with relief as I bring her to me in a tight embrace, placing kisses on her shoulder and neck.

I killed Cillian.

I would do it again.

There is a time to do bad things. When the people you love are in danger, lines become blurred between good and bad—and I would do a great number of things to keep Vanessa safe.

A loud creak sounds above our heads, and a pit opens in my stomach.

Cillian had said their ride was here—they were about to climb the ladder to meet them?—

Vanessa grabs the gun I dropped at her side and points it to the hatch door that is heaving open above us. She cocks the gun but lowers her arm back to her side with a strangled sob of relief when the person who pokes their head in the room is Mary.

“Whose blood is that?” Mary demands. Her voice is frantic and loud. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” Vanessa says.

Mary’s gaze falls to Cillian and her eyes narrow into slits. I didn’t know a scowl could look so satisfied.

“Good fucking riddance,” Mary says, her voice wobbling. She swipes a tear from beneath her eyes and starts down the short ladder, a feat with only one arm.

“Vanessa?” Another voice calls, high pitched and panicked. “Is she down there?”

Willa’s face comes into view; she follows Mary down the ladder before she drops to her knees beside her sisters and me.

A steady pool of crimson seeps beneath us, soaking the hem of Vanessa’s white gown, but Willa and Mary just fuss over their sister, dropping kisses on her hair and wiping blood spatter from her cheeks.

Vanessa doesn’t let us take her from the room until she’s very certain Cillian is dead. She watches his body with wide eyes like he’ll rise again and shoot one of us, even with two bullets through his brain.

When Leo confirms that there’s no heartbeat and has us cover our ears while he shoots Cillian in the chest for good measure, she finally lets us lead her out through the tunnels, still holding tight to my hand, her nails digging crescent moons into my skin. Her other arm hangs limp and I tell the EMT’s to be careful with it.

They snip the puffy sleeves from around her arm and sure enough, her shoulder is dislocated. Her eyes are vacant as they assess her for other injuries and lie her back onto a gurney.

Her makeup from last night is smeared with blood around her face. Mascara surrounds her eyes and runs in black lines with Cillian’s dried blood down her cheeks and jaw. She’s alive, and she is beautiful.

They let me ride in the ambulance with her and she grips my hand the entire way.

I brush her hair off her forehead murmuring into her ear about how it’s alright now, she’s alright, everyone is alright.

Eventually, she closes her eyes. The paramedics sedated her; her heart rate was through the roof, and her muscles tensed.

She drifts into unconsciousness before we even get to the hospital.