Page 91 of A Fine Line

Tony

Ittakesagoodten minutes for me to calm Carolina down enough that she’ll release me. I would’ve carried her out, but I sure as shit would’ve gotten us lost, or our necks broke falling down the stone steps, so I let her take her time coming around.

Even now, as we’re working through this shithole, I keep catching her looking at me, an odd mix of pain and relief on her face. And a few times, she sought me out just to put her hand on my face and then walk away, as if she’s proving to herself that I’m truly there.

She’s been relaying as much information about Vincent, Dmitri, and their business as she remembers to Matt, and we’re setting up a final extermination of Dmitri Petrov’s bloodline and loyal associates.

As Nettie likes to say, we’re going full Wyatt Earp on their asses.

It sounds far more sinister and complicated than it is, but we have to make sure that anyone who may have eyes on any enterprise run by Dimitri, Vincent, or Victor never sees the light of day again.

Dare relays as much information as he can on what happened, but he doesn’t know a lot so that still leaves big holes in the story. So, this time, when Carolina sneaks over to touch me, I snag her hand and yank her to me, caging her with my arms. “Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?” I ask softly, my words worried yet resigned.

“There wasn’t time,” she replies. “Lilith came to me with an idea on how to flush out the enemy once and for all, and I felt I had no choice but to go along with it. And she was right that I couldn’t bring a whole posse with me because rats don’t stand up to an army. And then, the whole church thing threw me off, and you actually wanting to be married to me, and there was like a whole five-minute span there where I truly felt everything was going to be fine. But then, not even a hundred feet from the church, gunfire brought me back down to reality. And you were gone, so any plan I had to flush out an enemy had to be accelerated because we didn’t know what would happen to you.”

“So, you weren’t just acting?” I ask, mostly rhetorically but still wanting her to answer. “With me, I mean.”

She shakes her head and laughs softly. “Never. Not even for a second.”

I smooth her hair back from her face with one hand, my fingers spearing into the hair at the base of her skull. I tighten my grip and pull her head back so she’s looking me in the face, and her mouth opens slightly as her eyes soften. My lips curve up, and I lean forward, press my cheek against hers, and whisper, “For a moment in time, I thought you had truly betrayed me, and I wanted nothing more than to squeeze your throat until you stopped breathing. But that was when I realized that I love you too much to kill you. I would rather live in a world, knowing that you’re my enemy, than in a world where you didn’t exist.”

I pull back and meet her eyes again, and she sighs. “But did you ever really believe it?”

I think over her question for a few moments, allowing myself to relive an event that happened only a short time ago but already feels like a lifetime ago. “I don’t know. My initial reaction was knee-jerk to the shock of the situation, and when I came to on the long trek to my doom, I thought fuck it, let them kill me. I deserve to die anyway. But no sooner had they dropped me on the floor, thinking I was out cold, then I was on my feet, ready to fuck around. I think if there had been any more of them, I’d have been in trouble, but I made it out by the skin of my teeth. All I could think about was finding you and making you pay but also fearing that something would happen to you before I could get to you. But I came flying down the stairs, and there you were.”

“Don’t remind me. I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my fucking life,” she replies.

“Dare said we didn’t lose anyone at the church. I’m thankful but also shocked.”

“Antonio was grazed by a bullet, but he’s okay. That means either we were blessed, or they have really bad fucking aim. Maybe both.”

I’m quiet for a moment, part of me not wanting to talk about it anymore, even though I know I need to know what happened. So, I ask, “How did you find me?”

“Purely luck, like usual,” she answers. “Anton showed up in the middle of everything going down. Antonio reached out to some of his contacts to help clean up with the local authorities, and in the meantime, Matt checked the location of that shithead you released out into the wild. Turns out he didn’t waste any time scurrying back to the snake’s nest. Since we knew where we had to go, we just needed to find a way in, and I figured, if nothing else, a few of Vincent’s old men would recognize me and at least get me access to the building. I had no idea Victor was the man in charge. That fucking prick was always nice to me when he was playing bodyguard, but I had no clue who he actually was until I came face to face with him again.”

“Who was he?”

She raises her brows at me, her features twisting as she says, “Vincent’s younger brother. Seems the estranged brother shit is going around. At least Declan is entertaining.”

I snort, wanting to argue but unable to because she’s not wrong. Declan is a lot of things, and entertaining is one of them. Hence his multi-million-dollar entertainment enterprise. Then she continues, “Anyway, Victor couldn’t inherit the whole bullshit empire because it wasn’t left to him. No living will exists, so everything automatically goes to me. What’s super fucked up is he could’ve kept on running shit with no one the wiser, and it wouldn’t have mattered. But he had to make a play for legitimacy and ended up dead.”

“Good job on that.”

She beams at me, no remorse or shame evident as she replies, “Thank you. I learned a lot from Antoinette in a very short amount of time.”

I smile down at her, allowing relief to settle into me as I look around the room. “Did Lilith know what Antonio planned with the whole marriage license thing?”

“No fucking idea, and they all fucked off before I could get any answers out of them.”

“Where are they?”

“Matt said they’re getting a head start on razing Europe of its criminal problem.”

I snort, shaking my head as I ask, “Does that mean we’re on that list?”

“Nah,” she answers seriously. “Basically, if you stay out of human trade, you’re almost safe.”

“I’m surprised Dare let Antoinette go without him.”

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