Page 96 of Last Hand

“No,” she answers calmly, and I don’t like it. She doesn’t belong down here, and I have hated every time she comes down here. What she is asking us to let her do now, though… I shake my head.

“I’m not asking,” she says, holding my gaze.

Milo looks at me, eyes wide, silently asking me to fix this.

I step forward, grip her chin, and tilt her face up toward mine.

“Let one of us do it,” I murmur. “You don’t want his blood on your hands.”

Her jaw clenches. “I already have it there.”

I look into her eyes and know right then—she won’t back down.

So I nod to Milo. “Let her try.”

He hesitates… then slowly releases her wrist.

I follow behind her, ready to take the knife, knowing she'll falter. I know how wrong it’ll feel in her grip—the same hands that cradle our son, that run over my chest when she rides my cock. The same hands that have only been gentle, even when the world around her has been rough.

The blade shakes in her hand, and I grab it. Her trembling stops. “You don't have to do this part, you've done enough.” I lean down and whisper from behind her.

She says nothing, and when I try to take it from her, she refuses to let go. I sigh, deciding to let her try.

Igor snorts. “You’re gonna do it? You? You know how much you want me dead, girl, just hand it over to one of your husbands and be done with it. I don’t have time to watch some little woman poke me to death. You’re no killer. You’re a woman,” he laughs.

He smirks before continuing when Fallon steps that close, he is forced to stare up at her.

“I'm no ordinary woman,” she tells him, and I furrow my brows as she steps between his legs. I expect him to fight her, kick her away, but he has long accepted his death.

“Really?” he snickers. “What type of woman are you, then?” He seems to find her words hilarious.

“A Pressutti one,” she spits at him. And he laughs, glancing at me.

“Put your woman back on a leash before she hurts herself, Leone. You and I both know women create life,” he sneers. “They don’t take it.”

Fallon plunges the knife straight into his chest, and I jump, not expecting her to go through with it.

Milo sucks in a sharp breath. I don’t move, frozen in horror.

Igor chokes on his own blood, eyes going wide. Fallon doesn’t flinch as she tilts her head, watching him choke.

She leans in closer, twisting the blade slowly as she drives it deeper.

“Exactly,” she says, her voice even. “We create life. Until someone threatens that life.”

She shoves the knife deeper, all the way to the hilt—blood bubbles at his lips and spills down his chin, dripping on her hands and arms.

“You threatened to take my arms, so I could watch my baby grow without ever holding him. So I took yours. And made you watch him grow inside me.”

She jerks the knife free.

Igor gasps, gurgles, and slumps forward.

She watches him die.

Not with pleasure. Not with tears. With a scary calmness. I glance at Milo who stares at her stunned; I'm stunned myself but I now understand what he did to piss her off. I thought it must have been because he shot her mother, that was all she let slip all these months, he killed her mother. She never told us this part, and I understand why; one of us would have killed him long before she got the chance.

Finally, she lets the knife clatter to the floor. Turns back to us, eyes calm, chest rising and falling like she just finished a walk in the park, as she moves to the small sink and washes her hands.

She glances at Maria, who’s standing frozen at the edge of the room with Luca, horrified at what Fallon just did.

“Coffee?” she asks Maria, who can only nod and stare at her like she doesn’t recognize the woman standing in front of her.

Fallon then walks out, leaving both Milo and me stunned.