Page 118 of Isaia

“Mom,” I suppress a sob, watching her kneel at Michele’s body. With him dead, no one will keep her from getting the treatment she needs. She’s free. And so am I. “I love you, Mom,” I say, and my heart breaks.

“Everly, baby.” A hand wraps around my wrist, and I know it’s him. I can feel it in the way my blood starts singing in my veins from the touch, in the way my heart booms a thunderous response. And I do the only thing my soul demands, the one thing I’ve wanted to do since I was forced to walk away from him.

I throw my arms around him, burying my face in his chest, his familiar scent wrapping around me, and I cry. I cry so fucking hard, it hurts. Tears stream down my face, soaking the fabric ofhis shirt, each sob a release, a purge of so much anguish and pain, it’s crippling.

He pulls me against him with one arm, and his fingers bracket the back of my neck. “It’s okay, troublemaker. I got you.” He presses his lips on the top of my head. “I got you, baby girl.”

“I’m so sorry,” I sob, unable to stop the way my body trembles.

“Shhh.” He inches back, takes my chin, and makes me look up at him. “Listen to me.” He wipes my tears with his thumb, and his eyes on me make me feel the warmest I’ve felt since the last time I saw him. “I meant what I said. I’ll pave my way to hell with the bones of everyone who tries to take you from me.”

Warning roars between my ears as he lifts his gun and aims.

Blood rushes, adrenaline and terror slamming against my ribs as a scream tears from my lungs. “No!”

The sound of the gunshot rips through the church, louder than anything I’ve ever heard, and my scream dies in my throat as I watch Anthony stumble back, his hand clutching his chest, red spilling past his fingers.

Time slows to a crawl, every second stretched to a lifetime with no sound penetrating the silence left by the gun’s echo. My mind shatters at the sight of his body hitting the floor, the bullet that carries my lie tearing through his flesh, my deception pouring out of his chest in a crimson pool.

The steely silence in the pews is shattered by a scream I don’t recognize. Mine.

My knees buckle as he hits the ground.

Lies. Lies. Lies.

My lies keep on gushing out of him, the wound a gaping hole of how I deceived him. How I betrayed the trust he so blindly put in me.

I can feel Isaia’s arm snake around my waist. “We need to go, Everly. Now!”

“No!” With strength I didn’t know I had, I pull myself free and run. I sink to my knees next to Anthony, my hands trembling over his chest. “No. No. No. No. No.” I keep shaking my head, my mind trying to convince me this isn’t happening. It’s not. It can’t be fucking happening.

“Come on, baby!” Isaia grabs me, lifting me up and off my feet, his grip solid and steady as he pulls me out of the church. The distant wails of sirens sound in the background, coming closer. But all I hear is the lie I told my friend.

“You were right. I was in too deep, and being your wife is the only way I can get out of it.”

“I’m asking you one last time to…keep me safe.”

Sobs wrack my body, shaking me to the core.

“Breathe, Everly.”

“What have you done, Isaia?”What have I done?

I stare at my hands covered in blood. His blood.

Oh, god.I did this.

I killed my friend.

Not with a gun. Not with a blade.

With a lie.

A single, lethal lie.

And now I can’t. Take it. Back.

Surviving Isaia Del Rossa is one thing. Surviving what comes next? That’s another story. And it continues in His Angel.

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