Page 72 of If You Go
Gavin is choking. He thrashes as the fumes bite; his men cough and scramble for their own masks or stagger away. I run.
I’m under him in two steps. My left hand closes on his shirt; my knee hammers up into his groin knowing exactly where to go. He doubles, a sound somewhere between a sob and a shriek. He coughs—eyes streaming, face flushing scarlet and then strange pale.
I draw the pistol from my hip with my right hand and press the barrel to his temple. Even through the fumes and the protective mask, up this close he smells like sweat, cheap cologne, and rot. Maybe I’m just remembering what he smelled like earlier. Regardless, I cannot get away from him fast enough.
With great pleasure, I tell him, “You will pay for what you’ve done.” My voice sounds small to me, but steady.
I raise the gun and flip it. The butt smashes against the side of his head; Gavin goes limp like a marionette whose strings were cut.
My legs are shaking. The gas fog crawls at the edges of my vision, but I can still see Brenden slumped on the concrete, several large men looping arms under his and hauling him toward the door. My father moves in fast, large and terrible inhis own quiet way, standing over Gavin with a gun leveled at the fallen man.
“Don’t kill him, Papa. I have plans. But I need to go with Brenden.”
He gives me a look–soft, buried under steel–and nods. “We’ll take him to Tacoma. Quiet place. No one’ll hear.”
I step out of the doors, and pull off my mask, allowing fresh air to fill my lungs. As thankful as I am that I had the mask, I am far more grateful to remove it now.
Corver appears at my shoulder with Natasha bundled in a thermal blanket, cheeks raw but blinking, alive. He looks like he’s just finished a terrible job and is trying to be casual about it. One of the men rises from near Brenden and steps forward, bowing his head when I glance at him. He takes my hand in both of his, firm and warm and not afraid.
“Who are you guys?” I question. I am positive I have never seen these men before.
“Ms. Surry. We are the Bratva. We serve Natasha.” His voice is flat, respectful. The syllables roll in the heavy, unfamiliar way that suddenly feels like rescue.
“You called them?” I say, glancing at Corver, more question than accusation.
Corver shrugs like it’s nothing. “Yup. I said I found Natasha, and they came. They wanted to settle the score.” He looks down at Natasha with something like devotion that makes my chest ache for reasons I don’t have words for.
Brenden groans and flails–awake, angry, and messy. I drop to my knees next to him and shake him by the shoulders gently until his slitted eyes focus on me.
“Brenden, look at me. It’s Surry. You’re okay.” My voice cracks. He reaches for me with hands that are warm and bloody, and I let him clutch me like I am a lifeline.
He breathes out–deep, ragged–and the panic inside me melts into a tired, furious relief. If he is alive, we can do so much more than survive–we can get our revenge.
I lay with him on the ground for a few minutes before looking up at his face.
“If you go, I want to go with you,” I whisper to him, my voice barely audible over the chatter. His eyelashes flutter against pale cheeks, but his eyes remain closed. Blood has dried in a thin crust along his hairline. I lean closer, close enough to feel the faint warmth of his shallow breath against my ear. His cracked lips part with effort, and though no sound emerges, I can read the shape they form: "always." My heart lurches painfully in my chest. Even now, broken and bleeding, he is with me.
Behind me, Alec and the other men move with quiet efficiency, dragging bodies, binding hands, applying oxygen. Outside, the warehouse hums with activity–boots, Russian voices, and the wet slap of someone tending a wound.
Sam finds me and scoops me up into his arms like I’m a child, and for a beat, I let myself cry into the curve of his shoulder. It’s not the kind of victory anyone wanted, but it’s the kind that matters: people breathing, people still here.
I pull away from Sam and wipe my face on my sleeve, swallow, and let my fingers tighten around Brenden’s hand beneath mine.
The gas stings my eyes, my lungs, but the ache in my chest is a different thing. Solid, sharp, the promise of the fight to come.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE HEADLIGHTS CUToff, and the night swallows us whole. The sign above the building reads“MATTRESS MAGIC”, half the bulbs burnt out, so it flickers like a dying heartbeat. The place smells like dust and rain-soaked concrete. Every window is barred, every corner shadowed.
We walk into the old mattress store off 38th and Steele. At night, it feels less like a business and more like a crime scene long forgotten. The kind of place where you could scream and no one would notice. Not because they couldn’t hear, but because they wouldn’t care. This part of Tacoma doesn’t ask questions. Even with the police station down the street, nobody comes when they should.
“Where do you want him, boss?” Josh’s voice grunts from ahead of me. He’s carrying Gavin like a bag of trash, one arm slung over his shoulder.
We’d made the forty-minute drive in thirty, the convoy slicing through the dark like a string of silent bullets. It was the kind of movement that should’ve made the news–too many headlights, too much purpose–but I don’t care anymore about getting caught. The law stopped meaning anything the day Gavin took everything from me.
“I actually don’t know,” I admit. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. “Papa, where do we take him?”
My dad gestures toward the back, his face unreadable in the flickering light. “That door there. ’Tis an elevaytor up tae the second level. It’s sound-proof an’ secure — everythin’ ye’d be wantin’.”
