“Please, I have a wife and child,” he pleaded.

“I won’t kill you if you do as I say,” I told him, meaning it, too. I didn’t want to kill Dom but I was realizing I was prepared to if absolutely necessary.

“You won’t but Javier will,” he said.

“That’s your problem.”

Another explosion rocked the house, this time from the opposite wing. We stumbled a bit and Dom went for his gun but I had my gun back on him in no time.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I nodded at the door I had broken into last night, the one leading to the backyard. “Let’s go.”

I kicked open the door and hoped that Camden and my mother were somewhere safe. “Who is setting off the explosions?”

“Derek,” he said. “Improvised Explosive Devices.”

“If he accidently kills Camden or my mother, everyone here dies, including you. Tell him to rein it in.”

“I can’t–”

“I know you’re communicating to each other, do it now!”

Dom sighed and pressed the Bluetooth device in his ear while I did a quick scan of the area. I could see the pool glistening in the distance, a single body floating in it. Several statues on the grounds were cracked or knocked over.

“Derek,” Dom said. “Stop the explosions and hold. Take out only Travis’s men. If you see McQueen or any of the Watts, do not shoot, do not engage. We need them alive. Copy?”

Dom nodded at whatever Derek said in his ear. “Okay,” he said to me. “He’s been called off.”

“Lucky you,” I said. “Where’s Javier?”

His eyes darted to the pool house, a small cottage with a single darkened window that was open a crack. Just enough space for a gun to fit through. Of course.

“He’s not going to kill me, right?” I asked Dom as I readied myself to run across the lawn.

“Javier? No. We were ordered not to kill you or Camden.”

“How nice. The bombs don’t really help.”

“We didn’t know where you were.”

“Well, here I am.” I looked around me then nodded at the cottage. “I’ll try and cover us.”

We started running for it, both Dom and I running as fast as we could, knowing there was a lot of ground between the main house and the pool house. We were only a few yards away when bullets started whizzing past us.

I turned and looked up at the roof of the house to see a sniper up there, taking shots at us as we ran. I aimed both guns at the roof and fired.

My aim was terrible.

I didn’t hit the sniper.

Instead, the sniper hit me.

My leg exploded in pain and I stumbled to the ground as the bullet seared through my calf. The cherry blossoms offered no defense.

I cried out, my gun falling away from my hands, and tried to crawl toward it. I barely managed to get it and quickly rolled on to my back aiming the gun at the roof when the sniper was hit before I could even pull the trigger. He stumbled backward and then slid off the room to his death on the hot patio below.

I turned around to look at Dom who had been brought down to the ground with me.

He wasn’t moving.

A shadow appeared overhead. I looked up.

Javier was standing over me, blocking out the sun, a rifle in his hand.

“Is Camden still alive?” he asked me in a strangely hopeful voice, as if Camden mattered to him more at the moment than me.

I pointed my gun straight up at him, my hand shaking from the bursts of pain that rocked my body in pure agony.

“Yes. But you won’t be.”

“You going to pull the trigger, angel?” he asked. “After I just saved your life?”

I grinded my teeth together in nauseating anger. “You lied to me. You lied to me.” I tried in vain to keep my hand steady. “You lied about Gus.”

He smiled, eyes glowing with madness. “I did lie. You wouldn’t have come here otherwise. You would have never fulfilled your destiny. To kill the man who ruined so many of our lives.”

I was done. So fucking done.

“Tell me where Gus is or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

“You don’t have it in you, angel. You’re too good for that now.”

This was no longer a matter of good or bad.

This was all grey.

Hazy, fuzzy grey.

I squeezed the trigger.

The chamber clicked.

Loudly.

Empty.

And though Javier’s face was shadowed from the sun, I saw something in his eyes that I had never seen before. Absolute disbelief. Absolute shock. Absolute … fear.

And I felt relief that he was still standing there, alive. I did have it in me to kill him, that dark part of me that wanted him dead. But now I had nothing to regret.

I whimpered and rolled over, grasping my leg as another wave of pain rolled through while he stood there above me, in the middle of a firefight, absolutely dumbfounded by what had just happened.

Suddenly the ground around us erupted in another spray of bullets. I screamed and quickly rolled over, trying to get out of the way.

And Javier turned and ran back toward the pool house, toward safety, leaving me there on the grass, bleeding, while the bullets came closer.

Leaving me alone.

Leaving me to die.

I guess I had pulled the trigger first. The honeymoon really was over.

I rolled over onto my stomach, avoiding getting too close to Dom who lay dead beside me, and watched as he ran, wondering if there was a point in me crawling after him. I wondered how long I had before I died. I wondered if I’d ever see Camden again. I wondered if my life made a difference to anyone out there.

I just wanted another chance at it.

Another chance to be me.

Scars and all.

And while I was lying on the grass, my leg bleeding out, soaking my jeans, I heard a few more pops of bullets go out.

Javier was running into the pool house when he was struck in the back.

I screamed bloody murder.

He fell down flat, legs sticking out of the door, motionless.

Javier.

Shot.

Dead.

No.

No.

Not yet.

His legs twitched and he managed to pull himself into the pool house until I couldn’t see him anymore.

“Ellie Watt!” a cold voice bellowed from across the lawn. I could barely tear my eyes away from where Javier had disappeared, fighting back a range of emotions I couldn’t even pin down but I managed to turn my head. The voice had reached into me, holding me tight with an icy fist.

Travis was standing on the lawn where it met the edge of his patio, gun in hand.

In front of him was my mother and Camden on their knees with their hands behind their heads.

No.

Not this.

Not now.

My heart couldn’t take any more of this. Every part of me was shattered from leg to soul.

“What do you want from me?!” I screamed at him. I grabbed my gun out of my boot and staggered to my feet, crying softly from the pain as I touched my right leg to the ground.

“Come closer and we’ll talk,” Travis yelled back. “You might want to keep your gun down, though. You know you can’t save both of them.”

I sobbed in pain and anger and started limping toward him, practically dragging my bloodied leg behind me, gun at my side. Each step I took riddled with more pain, more sorrow, more hate toward this man who had taken everything away from me.

I wouldn’t let him take Camden.

I wondered if he knew that would be my decision. He figured I came all this way for my mother when that wasn’t the case at all. He was betting on me picking her, saving her.

I remembered when Derek had asked me what I would do if I had to save my mother, how I said I’d have to let the situation dictate my choice.

I knew my choice back then and I knew it now.

I stopped a few yards away and looked at Camden, at his beautiful soul in those blue eyes. We stared at each other locked, in our gaze, locked in love. He wouldn’t want me to make this choice either. I could only hope he wouldn’t make it for me.

“You don’t look as lovely as you did when you were Eleanor Willis,” Travis said, smiling like the devil, his gun in the middle of the two of them but leaning more toward my mother.

“You don’t look so hot either,” I retorted. His normally neat dark grey hair was messed up with pieces of plaster in it, his slick Italian suit covered in blood and tears, his terrible eyes red. “Your age is showing.”

He kept smiling and nodded at me. “Sorry about your leg. Hope it doesn’t leave a scar.”

I swallowed hard, overtaken by the anger and the pain and the determination to walk out of there with the love of my life. I chose love over everything.

Love over gold.

I raised my gun straight up in the air and pointed it at him. “I hoped this doesn’t either.”

“You kill me, Ellie,” he said quickly, a rare tremor coming through, “your mother dies.” He trained the gun to the back of her head.

“You wouldn’t kill her,” I said and though I wished it weren’t true, I had to wish it was true. “You love her, don’t you?”

His eyes narrowed. “She loved me enough to make up for it. You can’t love in this business, Ellie. Sooner or later everyone dies.”

Javier had said that to me. Now I didn’t even know if he was alive or not.

“Then why are we standing here like this,” I said, hiding the weakness in my voice. “Do you want me to come join you, is that it? Do you want me to be like my mother? The only reason she was with you is because she wanted to get revenge for what you did to me.” I didn’t even know if that was true but maybe it could knock his ego down a few.

He pressed his thin lips together and smiled. “You’re here because I’m humoring you. I’ve got a sniper trained on your head right now. None of you are walking out of this alive. I just wanted you to see what love gets you in this world, in the real world. Death. You can escape love but you can’t escape death. Not here. Not anywhere. And not right now.”

This wouldn’t be our fate.

“And neither can you,” I said, pulling the trigger.

It all happened so fast and so terrible.

The bullet went straight into Travis’s forehead but not before he had the chance to pull the trigger on his own gun. My mother leaned to the side in anticipation and the bullet ended up striking her neck instead of her head. I immediately dropped to the ground as the sniper’s bullets came out, Camden doing the same. I rolled over, getting as close to him as possible, not even feeling my leg anymore and aimed in the direction of the bullets.

There were two men on the roof now. One with the gun.

The other going behind him and snapping the man’s neck with a quick twist of his hands.

The man fell down dead. The other man waved at us, just once, then started running down the roof until he was able to slip inside an open window on the second floor.

Derek.

“Ellie,” Camden said, crawling to me, taking me into his arms. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head, words not coming, and immediately tried to get to my feet. I fell back down and then crawled over to my mother who was lying on the ground, making gurgling sounds from her throat.

“Mommy,” I whimpered, trying to turn her over. Blood poured freely from the hole in the crook of her neck, soaking my hands. She was still breathing, weak and shallow. Her brown eyes blinked at the sun then slowly looked over at me, softening when she saw my face.

I couldn’t stop the tears. I bawled, chest burning for air, and she reached for my hand and held it as strongly as she could. “I’m sorry,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry.”

“Ellie, sweetheart,” she tried to say but could only cough.

“I am so sorry,” I cried again, shaking uncontrollably. “I love you mommy, and I’m sorry I’m so sorry I did this.”

She shook her head slightly. “You did nothing wrong,” she croaked, her lips turning white. “I’m sorry. For everything I did to you.”

Her lungs wheezed and she coughed again and I could feel Camden crouched beside me, a hand on my arm. He was going to tell me to go, that we had to leave but I couldn’t leave her here, not dying like this.

She swallowed, a stream of blood coming out of the side of her mouth. “I love you Ellie. Remember that.”

In that moment I forgave her for everything. I only hoped she could forgive me. And that I could forgive myself.

And then, as I kissed her forehead, I heard her take in her last breath of air. My tears spilled onto her head and I slowly pulled away. She was lifeless, frozen, hopefully taken away somewhere where she could finally find happiness.