Page 78 of Ruined Beauty

“Cut the bullshit,” I tell him. “We both know you’re supposed to shoot me once they’re out of sight.”

“Astute yet so dumb,” he replies. “How did you not guess it was me giving Piper the location of your safe houses?”

“Because I trusted you.”

“Trust is for suckers. Loyalty is for assholes.” He lifts the gun. “Any final words?”

“Only one.”

“What’s that?”

“Duck.”

I look past his shoulder, dropping to my knees and putting my hands over my head. It works exactly as I intended.

He glances behind him for the briefest of seconds before realizing he’s been duped.

I’m already lunging up at him, my hands on his wrist, snapping it in a split-second. The noise is loud. His scream is louder as the gun falls to the floor.

“Astute yet so dumb,” I say, picking up the gun and pointing it at his head. “You fell for the oldest trick in the fucking book.”

“Let’s make a deal,” he says, frozen with fear, cowering on his knees in front of me. “Please, Marco. You don’t have to shoot me.”

“You were going to shoot me.”

“I’m begging you. Have mercy.”

I pull the trigger and his corpse slumps to the ground. “I don’t do mercy,” I tell his body as I fire a second time.

Spinning on my heels, I jump into the car and hit the gas, racing out of the airfield, following Piper’s tire marks in the dust.

I spot his car in the distance after a minute. He crests a hill and then vanishes from view.

I urge the engine to go faster, racing after him.

But when I get down the other side of the hill, his car, and my future bride, have vanished.

Thirty-Five

Anna

* * *

Ispot Marco’s car an instant before my father does. I smile to myself. I don’t know how I know, but I do. Marco is alive, and he’s coming to save me.

“Shit,” my father says, spotting him a moment after me. “That asshole’s got more lives than a cat. Alessandro swore he’d take the deal. Stubborn bastard.”

That’s what I love about him, I think to myself. He is stubborn. He also never gives up.

He turns along a farm track at the bottom of the hill, rumbling behind a stone wall, jolting through potholes as he refuses to slow down. Ahead of us is a farmhouse painted white, surrounded by fields of tilled soil.

He drives straight up to the house, honking his horn as we come to a halt.

The front door opens, and the farmer steps out, a glass of beer in his hand. “Si?” the farmer says as my father steps out of the car. “Help you, señor?”

There’s an earsplitting bang, and the farmer crumples to the ground. “Get inside,” my father says, waving his gun my way.

A woman appears in the doorway. She looks down at her husband and starts screaming. My father fires again and her scream cuts out as her corpse collapses.

---