Page 24 of A Trap So Flawless (Titans and Tyrants #4)

Darragh

T he air is cool, the sky almost neon it’s so bright and blue. The trees in Toronto are starting to take on the orange hues of autumn. All in all, it’s a picture-perfect sort of day. The kind you’d immortalize in a painting and hang on a wall in a boring, generic hotel.

I already hate it.

Because Valentina is in the car beside me and I am driving her to the last place I’d ever want her to be.

I won’t leave her there overnight. I don’t care what she says or how angry she gets.

We drive from Forest Hill in Midtown, then drive north and east, passing lush parks and golf courses. The green spaces remind me of the first day I had her with me in Dublin, backed up against the trunk of that old tree on St. Stephen’s Green.

I glance at Valentina, who is looking out the window in silence. She had a quick shower and got changed before we left, because, despite her haste to go home, she snarkily told me that she refused to stand before her grieving mamma with my come dripping out of her.

So she’s all fresh and clean in her seat, with every foul physical trace of me washed off of her.

Her dark hair is damp and tied in a loose braid.

Little stray bits around her temples curl, and I want to tug on them.

Tight jeans hug her shapely legs, and the cropped, knitted sweater she’s wearing is a warm rose pink.

When she gives a small sigh, her shoulders shift, which makes the back of the sweater gape for a moment.

Before it settles into place on the back of her neck once more, I glimpse the tag. Made in Ireland.

One of the things I bought for her in Dublin.

My body has a sharply aching response to that. I nearly pull over. Just to hold her.

I don’t.

We’re in the Titones’ neighbourhood now. We pass by the property I know belongs to Elio, then turn onto the drive that will take us to Vincenzo’s.

“I guess you didn’t need any directions,” Valentina says as we approach the gate. “I almost forgot you’ve been here once before”

“It’s been more than once.”

“Really? You had more than one meeting here?”

“Only one meeting.”

“Then how…”

We’re nearly at the gate. I don’t see a soldier in the booth ahead. Which is good, because it means no one’s going to be shooting at us before we even enter the property. I guess Elio really has commandeered all the men for Deirdre and Montréal.

Even more reason not to let Valentina stay here without me.

“Maybe I visited you in a dream.”

“A dream?” The flawless arches of her brows draw together over those skeptical golden-brown eyes. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that someone should move the patio furniture below your balcony.”

It was always far too easy to climb up to the Titone prinicpessa’s tower while she was sleeping.

I know she wants to ask me more, but we’re at the gate now, and without a soldier there’s no one to open it.

“It’s OK,” she says, undoing her seatbelt. “I know the code.”

“I don’t want you going out there.” Unease spikes along the back of my neck. “Tell me the code and I’ll do it.”

She hesitates, then shakes her head. “I can’t tell you the code.”

Too fucking smart. Even though Vinny’s dead, and Valentina’s in my car, and there’s nothing I want in that house now, she’s too clever to willingly give me something that could be used against her family.

She slips out of the car and does a hurried little jog-hop-walk thing that’s so fucking cute it should be illegal. She punches in a number on a security pad. When the gate rolls open, she walks through it instead of coming back to the car.

Instead of coming back to me.

For fuck’s sake.

I turn off the engine and abandon the vehicle, stalking through the open gate after her with long, angry strides.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask, catching up to her.

“We should have driven up to the house. That car has bulletproof windows.” I put an arm around her shoulder, drawing her close against my side, as I scan the sunlit property.

Ahead, the house sprawls, big and beige, like a castle.

There are trees, dense around the edge of the property, but they don’t offer us any protection where we are now.

We’re in the middle of the driveway. Wide fucking open.

“What?” Valentina says, walking ahead once more. “It’s not like Mamma’s a sniper with the barrel of her gun aimed out the window at us right now.”

Goddamn. I haven’t even looked at the windows yet. I do so now, but I don’t see anything or anyone. None of the windows appear to be open.

“She’s your mammy, and she’s survived multiple decades married to your da,” I point out as we reach the top of the drive. “So she’s probably capable of just about anything.”

“Yeah, well. She hates guns. She thinks they’re crass.”

Crass they may be, but guns are what bought her this giant fairytale house.

Now that we’ve nearly reached the steps to the front door, it’s like some invisible leash between Valentina and me snaps. She takes off running up the steps, leaving me there at the bottom. I’ve only got my foot on the first step when the front door opens from the inside.

I don’t see her mammy.

For a moment, I don’t see anyone inside.

Valentina is blocking my view. And she isn’t that tall.

So unless a child answered the fucking door, something is very wrong here.

I don’t see a child’s legs through Valentina’s.

I see the glint of rounded metal and rubber, and a pair of expensive Italian leather shoes hovering a few inches off the ground.

Men’s shoes.

I hear someone bellow Valentina’s name, echoing in at me as if from a great distance. But the voice is mine, the accent shaped by both Dublin and Toronto.

Valentina stumbles backwards, but it’s too late. The man in the wheelchair grabs hold of her.

Valentina falls into her father’s lap.

Her living father’s lap.

A trap.

I almost want to laugh at how I’ve fallen into it. I would if it weren’t so pathetic, so grim. If Valentina weren’t caught in it, too.

She lands awkwardly, one knee going between Vincenzo’s thighs, her other foot still planted on the ground. I’m halfway up the steps already. My gun is in my hand.

I promised her if he still lived then I would kill him myself. He stole her from me after he promised me her hand. He orchestrated the death of my grandda.

He used his own death as bait to get her back. He knows that, at her heart, she’s loyal. And that even after everything, she loves her family. And that makes her weak.

Not that I can blame her.

I love her. So now I’m fucking weak, too.

My chance is now. Revenge is at hand. I’ll watch the light go out in his eyes. Make sure it’s real this time.

But I don’t have a clear shot. Because even though Valentina struggles, even though Vinny is weakened by his recent brush with that biker’s bullet, he’s still strong enough to hold her. His thick, hairy forearm is locked around her waist.

If he were holding anyone else…

I’d empty my gun into them both.

But she isn’t anyone else. She’s Valentina.

My golden-eyed pet, my principessa in the dark, and no matter how much I hate her daddy, no matter how much I’ve hated her, there is nothing in either this life or the next that would have me risk her just to take my shot.

A bullet in her body is just as good as one inside my own.

Holy fuck. This is it, isn’t it? This is what my grandda was protecting me from. This is what he was trying to prevent.

I really have become my own father. In that moment, I know that if anything ever happens to Valentina, I will kill whoever is responsible.

And then I will kill myself.

And just like that, I see how poorly my grandda’s methods have failed. Because why would I care about keeping townhouses and pubs and all the many euros in his many bank accounts, when I would blow my fucking brains out over her?

Valentina is the only goal. The only answer. She is everything.

And that makes her the perfect fucking shield for Vinny.

Everything slows. She remains pinned by Vinny’s unyielding right arm while his left arm raises a gun and aims it right at me.

I know what’s coming. I don’t bother looking at the gun, or at the man holding it whom I loathe more than anything in this world. I only look at her.

I want her to be the last thing I see before I die.

But I don’t even get that much. The shot drives me backwards.

My body tries to keep me upright, my legs lurching like the jerking pistons of an automaton.

But I’m on the stairs, so I step back into dead air, and then I fall.

The ground slams up to meet me. It knocks the breath from my lungs and the sense from my skull.

There’s ringing in my ears. Or maybe screaming.

My neck strains but doesn’t move. I can’t lift my head to get one final glimpse of her.

As I bleed out on the drive in front of the Titone mansion, all I see is the unrelenting brightness of the clear sky.

Blue.

So sunny.

Always sunny when she’s here.

My body is cold, but the light on my face is warm.

I slip away, and pretend the warmth is her.