Page 90 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“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 seethe 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.”
