Page 36 of High Stakes and Soulmates (Fanged Mistakes #3)

Louis slams me to the ground, then in an instant he has me up, hand tight around my throat.

I’m afraid he’s going to crush it. He holds me up off the ground like I’m weightless then throws me again.

I feel like a fucking rag doll that has no control over the situation.

He pulls the knife out of his back and is on me in an instant.

His companions hover around me, looking like they’re enjoying every moment of this as I realize that there’s nothing I can do to stop him.

He presses the tip of the knife against my arm, digging it in.

“You don’t need a fucking arm, do you? He’ll still get to enjoy your death whether you have one arm or two.”

I’m absolutely defenseless. I know there’s nothing I can do as my dreams of saving Arturo from this man have become nothing more than that.

“He’ll lose all his blood if you do that,” a woman whines.

“True… very true,” he says before he slides the knife into the band of his pants and grabs my leg. He starts dragging me toward the estate as I hear the sound of hoofbeats.

“Who is this? Can we kill him?” the woman asks as she eyes the rider approaching.

Louis has stopped dragging me, and when I see it’s Lorenzo, I twist, but he holds on so tightly that I can’t even pull free. “No. It’ll be more fun this way.”

“Stop!”

The sound of Arturo’s voice rips through me. I twist hard so I can see him.

“Please. Please don’t. I’ll do anything.

I promise, I’ll do anything,” Arturo cries as he runs right for Louis.

“Please just let him go.” He slams into Louis who growls, displeased with the whole situation.

“Please. They’ll leave. They’ll go. They’ll never be seen again.

Please don’t kill him. I’ve been so good. Please. I won’t even see him again.”

“Sit your ass down. I let you play around long enough,” Louis says as he shoves Arturo back.

And that’s the moment an arrow from Lorenzo’s crossbow strikes Louis right in the head.

He’s flung back, and I don’t know if he was so caught up in Arturo’s struggle that he didn’t see it coming, but it throws him back into Arturo and they both crash to the ground.

I need to get to Arturo, I need to get him away, but Louis is already pulling the bolt out of his head while he growls out in rage.

Lorenzo, still on his horse, races right into the fray, and as I struggle to my feet, he grabs my wrist, dragging me.

“Arturo,” I say, and it’s such a pleading noise. I feel like my heart is breaking when I realize how impossible it really is to take him with me.

“RUN. Please. If you love me, you will listen and you will run,” Arturo calls as Louis blocks him from going to me. I’m not sure if he would have gone to me even if Louis hadn’t. He wants to protect me. He always has.

Lorenzo is dragging me, lacking the strength to draw me up onto the back of the horse without my help. “Ezio, please,” he begs.

I grab on to him with my good hand, my broken one of little use as I hoist myself up, barely managing to get up before the horse is moving.

I’m lying halfway across the horse’s back, the saddle digging into my stomach while I cling on to keep from falling.

I know we’re a lot of weight for one horse, especially when I’m not centered, but I see that Valley is following.

I hook my arm around Lorenzo, my broken hand useless as I pull myself more securely behind him.

“What the fuck is that thing?” he asks.

“He’s a monster. But Arturo…” I start, though even as I say it, I realize how absolutely defenseless I am. Arturo was right all along. Everything we dreamed about was never going to be anything but a dream.

“I know you love Arturo, but that monster set you up to die,” Lorenzo says.

“If Stefano hadn’t told me that he’d received notice that you were to meet me at the fork in the road, you would be dead right now.

Ezio, I know we butt heads at times, but I really care for you, and I don’t want to see you end up dead. We have to go. I’m begging you.”

“I love him so much. I love him so much.”

“Enough to die for him?” Lorenzo asks.

“If it meant a chance to have him.”

“Let’s withdraw. We’ll… we’ll think of something with the army. We can see if we can get him that way, okay? Because we’re not going to get him alone.”

“Okay,” I agree, knowing it really isn’t okay, but what other option do I have?

He pushes the horse harder back toward the city and toward his men.

“Thank you for coming… I don’t know what the fuck he was, but no matter how much I hurt him, he would heal instantly. If you hadn’t come, I would have been dead.”

“We’ll be okay. We’ll get back and then we’ll alert the army. We’ll tell them what happened. We’ll get Arturo… and then we’re getting out. I want to see my baby girl. I want to hold her. And we’re going to cut Father out of our lives completely. We’ll finally be free.”

“I’ve never heard anything that sounds better,” I decide.

“Right?” he asks as I see a flash of something. Lorenzo lets out a strange noise, and I’m confused when he starts to tip to the side. I grab for him as he falls into my wounded hand and it hurts, but I hold on.

“Lorenzo?” I ask a moment before the horse screams and goes down.

He hits hard and Lorenzo and I are flung from his back.

The horse tries to get back up before crashing to the ground, pinning my leg down, and not rising again.

Valley slows to a stop behind us as I roll up onto my side and see my brother lying on the ground.

Louis stands over him, looking down at him like he’s looking down at something disgusting. In the light of the moon, I see the blood bubbling out of Lorenzo’s throat that appears to have been slit. He’s reaching for me, and I want to go to him, but the horse has my leg pinned beneath his flank.

“I will not be fucked with,” Louis growls. “I was going to kill you and that was going to be the end of it, but now… now I want to watch you hurt. I can’t even… control the rage burning through me. But I will in order to watch you suffer.”

I push against the horse, just managing to drag my leg free, but it aches. “Why are you doing this?” I ask as I crawl over to Lorenzo, aware I’m putting myself closer to Louis.

“Because you’ve taken something of mine and I just don’t like to share.”

“Nothing has changed. You’ve allowed me to see him for a year… what changed?”

“It amused me to let him play, but it’s gone far enough.”

I grab my brother while he chokes on his own blood.

My hands are shaking as I use his knife to cut my shirt and tie the band of cloth tightly around his neck.

All the while, Louis watches. At this point, I’m well aware I’ve lost this fight.

He’s toying with me; it’s only a matter of time before he decides to kill me.

Yet he doesn’t make a move to kill me or finish off my brother.

He simply watches me as I drag Lorenzo toward Valley.

Pain is eating through my body, throbbing as broken bones and blood remind me of what he’s so easily done to me while he stands there looking quite healthy.

It’s as though he’s amused as I struggle to lift Lorenzo onto Valley’s back. The town is so close. If I can get there, will he stop? Will our men be enough to stop him? But even though he stands here alone, he’s not alone. There are others like him. Others that will rip our unit to shreds.

Valley snorts while she sniffs my brother’s dying horse. And still, Louis never stops me. Even as I climb onto Valley’s back, even as I hold my dying brother in my arms, he just watches.

I push Valley into a run and she bolts, moving toward the lights the town offers.

“Lorenzo, it’s okay, it’s going to be okay,” I say, tightly cupping his slit throat as I try not to feel the way the blood leaks between my fingers.

“You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine.

We’re going home. You’re going to hold your baby girl.

You’re going to tell your wife how much you miss her. ”

I feel his hand on my leg. I feel the way he squeezes it while my arm tightens around his body that feels unbelievably heavy in my arms. It’s like the weight of everything is crashing down on me again as I realize that there is absolutely nothing that I can do.

But hopefully… hopefully the one thing I can do is comfort Lorenzo as he dies in my arms. “I bet she has big blue eyes just like her mother. I bet she’s so beautiful.

She’s going to be so excited to see you.

You’ll get to see her crawl… and hear her laugh…

and watch her learn to walk. You’ll be there for her first words.

And you’re going to love her so fucking much. ”

His hand slackens and his body grows heavier as a sob escapes me.

“You’re going to watch her grow. I bet she won’t be as proper as you were.

You were so boring growing up, always doing just as Father said.

I bet she’ll get into everything because you’re not going to be tough enough with her.

You’re going to be such a better father than the one we had. You’re not going to be…”

Valley stops and I realize that we’re at the barn. The sudden movement pushes Lorenzo’s weight onto my crushed hand and I start to lose him. I can’t lose him. I can’t drop him. I can’t let him down.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whisper, trying to slide off while holding him. My wounded leg gives out and I crash to the ground, Lorenzo falling onto me. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. She’s going to meet her father. She’s going to love you.”

But I know that everything I’m saying is nothing more than lies. He’s never going to see her laugh. He’s never going to see her cry. He’s never even going to be able to see her at all… because he’s never going to see anything ever again. And it’s all my fault, isn’t it?

“No, no, please,” I beg.

He’s my only family. He’s all I have. If I don’t have Arturo, and I don’t have Lorenzo, I don’t have anything. I’m just locked into this darkness where I sink deeper and deeper.

“Lorenzo, please,” I beg, but I know better than anyone that once someone is dead, they’re not coming back no matter how much you beg.

A sob escapes me while I dig my fingers into his arm and bury my head against his chest. All I can smell is blood… it’s choking me. I’m drowning in it.

Stefano rushes out. “What the fuck happened? Who did this? Is he dead?”

“That fucking monster,” I whisper. “That fucking monster.”

The other soldiers in our unit flood out as Stefano hovers above me.

“I’m going to kill him,” he snarls.

“No!” I plead. “He’s a monster. He is not human. You can’t kill him.”

The noise they make drowns me out. I struggle to push Lorenzo off my lap and grab for Stefano. “I said no!” I snarl. “He will kill all of you.”

“He is one man.”

“He has many others! They are all monsters! They aren’t human! Lorenzo shot him in the head with a bolt and he healed. I stabbed him again and again and he healed.”

“If he’s that hurt, he should be easy to dispose of,” Stefano says.

“He is a MONSTER,” I yell.

“Monsters are nothing but fairy tales.”

“No! He will kill you! Stop!” I cry. And when he mounts his horse, I lunge for the horse closest to me. I try to pull them to a stop but I’m pushed off. “He will kill you. He will kill all of you. Please! I beg of you. Please don’t go.”

I try to reach for Valley. I need to stop them, but how?

My leg goes out from under me and I hit hard on my knees while they disappear into the darkness, no matter how much I plead.

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK,” I scream. I know I need to get up. I know I need to stop them, but I can’t even get my leg under me. And even if I could… I realize I’m a coward. I don’t want to go back out there. I don’t want to face that monster again, not like this. Not when I can barely stand.

I don’t have long to contemplate any of this.

I’m still sitting in front of the barn with my brother laid out before me when I see someone walking out of the darkness.

It’s like the shadows envelop him as I hear his footsteps, and a part of me knows that the only reason I hear him is because he wants me to, which chills me.

He’s carrying something, and it takes me far too long to realize that they’re bodies. He carries them like they weigh nothing and doesn’t stop until he’s standing right in front of me. Slowly, I look up at him as he drops three bodies onto the ground before me.

“Do you want the rest?” Louis asks, voice so casual as he glances down at the three dead he dropped.

“If you do, I can cover you in the bodies of your people until you realize how weak you are. They’re all just beyond that last house.

Every last one of them, blood soaking into the earth.

I can still hear one of them choking on their final breath. ”

Then he kneels down and presses his lips close to my ear. “I’m going to destroy your life. I’m going to make you wish you were dead.”

A part of me already does.

Louis stands up and pats me on the head before turning around and disappearing into the night.

Dawn is coming, and I know I have to do something with the dead. But more than anything… I know every second counts.

Do I run? Do I try my hardest to save my own life?

Do I try to reach Arturo?

Or do I give up right here and hope my death keeps the man I love safe?