Page 85 of The Mad Don
By now, you’ve seen your brother. Kirill and I got him free together. Forgive me for making you play my demented games.
Have a good life, Lupa. I love you. I think I have for a while. It just wasn’t written for us.
A tear hits the paper, and the ink runs.
I look up at Lucia. “What is happening? I saw you — they said you were dead.”
I turn to Christov. “You too, I?—.”
The flight is called overhead.
Annika wipes her face; she is red from crying because I am crying. “Kirill says to tell you — choose carefully.”
And it all drops onto me at once. I shot him. If Christov was alive the whole time, if the body was staged, then I shot Giovanni for nothing. I put two bullets in him over a brother who was alive the entire time. He had a plan as I was screaming at him over a corpse that wasn’t real.
I look at Lucia. “Tell me — Tell me what happened.”
Her voice comes out in pieces. “Fabiano was going to get rid of you and me —”
She doesn’t have to say the rest. I see it. Giovanni staged her death, got her out. Did the same with a body for Christov, used it to drag Fabiano’s whole focus onto himself, pulled every blade in the city toward his own back so that Christov and I could walk into an airport and disappear.
The flight is called again.
I wipe my face hard with the heel of my hand. I turn to Annika.
“Take Christov and Lucia. I’m staying.”
Christov says. “I’m not leaving without you.”
“Me too,” Lucia says.
I take Lucia’s hands. “You’re not recovered. Do you want your brother spending whatever time he has left worrying about you instead of fighting?”
She breaks. “I wanted to stay with him. He wouldn’t let me. He begged me to go.”
I pull her in. “I’ll make sure he’s okay. I swear it to you.”
“Please.” Her whole body shudders against mine. “I can’t lose him. I can’t.”
I turn to my brother. He’s shaking his head before I open my mouth.
He says, “I’m not leaving you. I worked for the Italian cartel, Yana. I know exactly what he’s walking into. You are not going in there alone.”
I look at him, and there’s no moving him, none; it’s the same set to his jaw I had at twelve, so I nod.
Annika touches my arm. “Be careful. Both of you.”
She takes Lucia and Dimitri. Christov follows at my side.
And I run. My legs find something I thought was gone, and I run, and Christov runs with me, out through the terminal, past the gates, toward the doors.
Fabiano was going to attack Giovanni. Looking back, Fabiano had given me that gun to make me shoot him. How could I miss this? I weakened him, falling right into Fabiano’s trap. I got it all wrong.
Hold on,I think, shoving through the doors into the light.Hold on. I’m coming. Don’t you dare die before I get there.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Giovanni
