0003 ~ Elodie ~ The gunshot exploded through the warehouse like a thunderclap.
For a split second, everything stopped.
My heart.
My breath.
Time itself.
Then Vicky started screaming.
Not the muffled, desperate sounds from before.
This was something primal, raw, a sound I didn’t know a human throat could make.
She looked down at her leg — at the dark bloom of blood spreading across her jeans, the torn fabric, the mangled flesh beneath and screamed louder.
“No, no, no…” I threw myself at her, my hands scrambling uselessly over the wound.
The blood was everywhere, hot and slick, pulsing out between my fingers no matter how hard I pressed down.
“Vicky, oh God, Vicky…” Two of Vincent’s men grabbed her, trying to force the gag back into her mouth, but her screams didn’t stop.
They just became more muffled, more desperate, more inhuman.
She thrashed against their hold, her eyes rolling back in agony.
I couldn’t think.
All I could see was the blood and my sister’s face contorted in pain.
This was real.
This was actually happening.
Mentioning that letter had been a mistake.
A terrible, catastrophic mistake.
I’d seen something shift in Vincent’s eyes the moment he recognized me, some dark satisfaction that had nothing to do with business and everything to do with old humiliations and settling scores.
“What did you do?!” The words ripped out of me as I spun to face him, my voice breaking.
“What the hell did you do?!” Vincent stood there, perfectly calm, the gun still smoking in his hand.
In the firelight, he looked less human than before.
His eyes had gone flat and cold, reptilian.
When he turned those eyes on me, I felt my blood turn to ice.
“She’s going to bleed to death.” He said it conversationally, like he was commenting on the weather.
He checked his expensive watch.
“I don’t have time to waste, Elodie.
I have a business to run.
So I can either end her suffering right here, right now…” He raised the gun slightly, pointing it back at Vicky.
“Or you could figure out how you want to compensate me for the loss of my men.” The silence that followed was broken only by Vicky’s muffled screams and my own ragged breathing.
I could feel my sister’s blood soaking into my jeans where I knelt, could smell the copper tang of it mixing with smoke and gasoline.
“I believe life is precious,” Vincent continued, his tone almost philosophical now.
Almost gentle.
“People deserve second chances.” He glanced at his watch again.
“But I’m running out of time.” The gun rose, steady and sure, pointing directly at Vicky’s head.
At this range, he wouldn’t miss.
One squeeze of the trigger and my sister — infuriating, reckless, impossible Vicky — would be gone forever.
“I should probably be merciful,” he mused.
“End her suffering once and for all.” “No!” I was moving before I even realized it, crawling across the blood-slicked concrete toward him.
“Please, please don’t shoot her, please…” My voice broke.
I hated how desperate I sounded, hated the tears streaming down my face, hated that I was begging this monster for my sister’s life.
But I couldn’t do anything but plead.
“Please, I’ll do anything, just please don’t kill her…” “Oh, don’t make me seem like the bad man here.” Vincent’s voice turned sharp, impatient.
“I gave you a choice, Elodie.
You have yet to give me an answer, and I don’t have another goddamn second to waste!” My mind was racing, spinning through impossible scenarios.
I couldn’t lose Vicky.
But Tom…
Tom, who was probably still awake, probably wondering why I hadn’t responded to his texts.
Tom, who’d already picked out the song for our first dance.
How could I marry someone else?
How could I possibly explain this to him?
The gun clicked as Vincent cocked it.
“Oh shit…” The curse escaped before I could stop it.
“What are the options?” I begged, my voice barely above a whisper.
Vincent sighed heavily, like I was a particularly slow student.
“Were you deaf the first time?” He crouched down so we were eye level, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes.
“Option one: you pay me one hundred million dollars to compensate the families of the men I lost right now.” He paused, watching my face.
“Option two: I cover that expense with my own money…
if you marry my brother.” His lips curved into something that might have been a smile on anyone else.
“I’m being incredibly generous right now, Elodie.
Most people don’t get options.” I was at a crossroads, suspended between two impossible futures.
How could I marry a stranger?
Someone I’d never met, never even heard Vincent mention back in ninth grade?
And what kind of man needed his brother to arrange a marriage for him?
Was he like Vincent — dangerous, cruel, soaked in blood and violence?
Or was he worse?
The questions tumbled through my mind, but before I could voice any of them, Vincent stood and fired again.
This time the bullet hit the concrete mere inches from Vicky’s head.
Fragments of stone exploded outward, cutting her cheek.
She flinched so violently she nearly knocked herself over.
“Oops!” Vincent’s grin was absolutely demonic.
“I missed!
Funny how that keeps happening.” He cocked the gun again, the sound echoing through the warehouse like a death knell.
“You have one second, Elodie.” His finger tightened on the trigger.
“One.
Second.” Vicky’s eyes found mine.
Even through her pain, through her terror, I could read the plea there.
Could see her begging me to save her, to be the big sister who always cleaned up her messes, who always protected her no matter what.
Family is everything.
Family protects each other.
“I’ll marry your brother!” The words exploded out of me in a rush.
“I’ll marry your brother, okay?
I’ll do it, just please don’t kill her!” Vincent’s smile spread slowly across his face — satisfied, triumphant, absolutely victorious.
He lowered the gun with deliberate care, sliding it back into a holster I hadn’t noticed beneath his jacket.
“Good girl.” The transformation was instant.
The cold-blooded killer vanished, replaced by something that almost looked like a businessman.
He straightened his jacket, brushed invisible lint from his sleeve.
“Come to the Lockwood mansion tomorrow at noon,” he said, his tone casual now, almost friendly.
He started toward the exit, his men parting to let him pass like the Red Sea.
“I’ll send you the details,” he said without looking back.
Then he paused, turning slightly.
“Oh, and Elodie?
Don’t get any heroic ideas about bringing in the police.” His eyes found mine across the warehouse.
“I have people everywhere.
In the hospitals, in the precincts, in places you’d never expect.
You run, you call for help, you try anything clever…” He glanced at Vicky, still bleeding on the floor.
“I won’t be aiming for her leg next time.” The threat hung in the air like smoke.
He took another step, then stopped one final time.
“By the way, congratulations, Vicky.” His voice carried across the space, almost cheerful.
“On having a second chance at life.” Then he was gone, disappearing into the night, and I was left in a warehouse that smelled like blood and gunpowder, with my sister bleeding out beside me and a promise I couldn’t take back ringing in my ears.
Two of Vincent’s men approached.
For a moment I tensed, ready to fight, but they moved past me to Vicky.
They worked quickly and efficiently, cutting her bonds, checking her wound with the practiced ease of people who’d done this before.
“We’re taking her to St.
Mary’s,” one of them said — the first words any of them had spoken directly to me.
“Boss’s orders.
Private room, best care.” They lifted Vicky carefully, and she reached for me as they passed, her blood-slicked hand grasping weakly at my sleeve.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice thick with pain and tears.
“Elodie, I’m so sorry.” I watched them carry her out to a black SUV idling in the shadows.
Watched the taillights disappear into the darkness.
And then I was alone with the dying fires and the weight of what I’d just agreed to.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
With shaking, blood-covered hands, I pulled it out.
Another text from Tom: You okay?
Getting worried.
Call me when you can.
I stared at the message until the screen blurred.
Then I turned off my phone, walked to my car on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else, and drove to St.
Mary’s Hospital.
I had less than twelve hours to figure out how to tell my fiancé that I was marrying someone else.
And I didn’t have the faintest idea where to begin.