Page 110 of Tainted Love

She stands quickly and takes her gun in her right hand. She clicks off the safety and points it right between my eyes. She squeezes her eyes shut as I sit, paralysed.

‘Liar. You’re a fucking liar!’ She opens her eyes, her hand shaking, her finger braced on the trigger. With the base of her other hand she thumps her temple. ‘You’re a lying fucking bitch!’ She slams the gun across my face so hard I spit blood to the concrete.

Then there’s a bang. A bang so loud, it echoes in the room and vibrates deep in the drum of my ears. It’s a shot and it didn’t come from inside this room.

I fall from the chair to my knees. ‘Gregory!’ I scream his name over and over.

Trina charges from the room, leaving the door wide open, her gun braced in both hands. ‘Fuck! Fuck!’

There are cars, shouting voices, sirens, commotion.

I have to go. I have to go to him.

I stagger to my feet, my legs buckling at first. With my bound hands, I pull myself up to stand and break free from the room.

The corridor is dark and damp. I use the wall to help me move, leaning into it with my shoulder.

Another shot.

Please, God, no.

The grey sky of outside is much brighter than the room I’ve been held in. I can hear voices, frantic voices, swearing, screaming, but I can’t see. I have to squint but my legs keep moving forward until they reach something. I open my eyes to see feet on the ground. Time stands still as the feet slowly move. Gasps of air. Groans. I’m looking at the body of Katrina Martin.

Her hands are pushed tightly into her abdomen. Her face is grey and pained. Blood is pooling around her back, a sea of thick burgundy flowing out of her.

‘Scarlett!’

‘Scarlett!’

Voices shout. More than one. Non-distinct in the background as I watch Katrina Martin take her last breath. Her eyes widen. Her legs stop moving. One crimson-stained hand falls from her abdomen, landing palm up on the ground.

Squinting through one eye, I look up. There are cars, four, five black cars. DI Barnes lowers his gun. Other armed police start to move, making their way towards me. Jackson stands in front of the Mercedes, bent forward, his hands on his knees as if he’s dragging air into his lungs. Two armed police move past him and I follow them to a man on the floor. His legs move but he looks barely alive, his face covered in blood. I grab my chest, reminding my heart to beat. The man is Nick Henshaw.

Then I see him, crawling to his feet by Nick’s beaten body, his white shirt stained with smatters of blood, his face marked.

He’s alive.

My legs give out under me as the world fades to a small, black tunnel.

28

GREGORY

I think I died three times. When she was taken. When Katrina Martin ran from that building with a loaded gun. When Scarlett fell to the ground.

She’s been scanned, they’ve cleaned her up. The first thing they did in the ambulance was connect her to a drip and give her painkillers for the bruising and cuts around her face and head.

Now, she sleeps.

The pills they gave her took her under almost straight away. Her body was weak, her mind exhausted. She’s been asleep for almost ten hours. Peaceful. Beautiful.

The city is dark beyond the windows of her private room in the hospital. The dim lights displaying the image of her in the glass panes. The hospital bed I’ve put her in.

I raise her delicate hand to my lips and more tears fall, as if there’s an endless stream. I tell her again that I’m sorry.

I promised to protect her. I made that promise to myself in the split second it took to fall in love with her. When I opened the door to my boardroom and thirty years of waiting came to an end. In that moment, I knew there would never be another woman for me. I knew it then. I know it now.

I promised myself each time I fell deeper that I would never hurt her. The moment she stole my breath descending the staircase of Claridge’s in the royal-blue gown I bought for her. Her hair was pinned back, her lips red, eyes alive. Her smile blew me away, like it does every time.