“Mil,” Chase said from behind me. “We have to go.”
“Ma, open your eyes.” My voice sounded so weak, so small. I felt like a little kid again, weak and confused. She opened them.
“I love you.”
She nodded and then gasped as her eyes rolled back. Blood began pouring from her chest. She’d been shot. The glass from the window shattered on impact as my mom fell forward.
“Everyone out!” Nixon yelled pushing us toward the exit.
Chase yanked me against him and opened the door all within a second. We started running down the hall toward the stairs. I counted to three, and then Chase covered me with his body as the hall exploded, sending us to the floor.
Alarms rang in the distance, but I couldn’t tell if it was my ears ringing or actual fire alarms. Chase asked if I was okay, or at least it felt like that, but I couldn’t hear him very well. Ringing pounded through my muffled ears. I nodded while he helped me to my feet and pushed me out the door to the stairwell. We didn’t even wait to see if everyone was okay; we just ran down the stairs, down twenty-two flights of stairs. Legs like lead, I was so numb I didn’t even feel the pain or the burn in my muscles. I had to keep going — I had to keep running. When we reached the bottom, Chase turned.
The rest of the group looked better off than I felt. Most of them were covered in dust with some scrapes and bruises.
“They’ll evacuate the hotel,” Luca said in a detached voice as people began flooding the stairwell, “I know a place. Grab your things.”
“Where’s the guy from before? William? And the maid?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer to the question.
Luca ignored me.
Which meant one thing. The maid had been caught in the explosion’s line of fire, and they’d left the man they’d tortured earlier behind — to either get implicated or die.
Chase put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Text directions to everyone, Luca. Make it fast. We need to split up. Now.”
With a swift nod, he pushed past us and walked into the first floor lobby. Police were already everywhere. People were screaming. It was mass chaos, making it easy for us to slip by unnoticed. Chase gripped my hand and jerked me through the crowd. But it wasn’t lost on me, as I looked at the terrified faces, it had been my fault. The death? On my head.
On my family’s head.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nixon
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked for the millionth time while I drew the bath for Trace.
“Nixon.” Her trembling hands reached out to grab mine. “I’ll be fine. I just need to sit or do something so I don’t completely lose my mind.”
“Here.” I helped her out of her ripped t-shirt and moved my hands to her jeans, pushing them to the floor so she could step out of them.
She was shivering. I pulled her into my arms, not saying anything, just willing the nightmare of our lives to go away. “Hey, it’s going to be fine, Trace…”
“I know.” Her body relaxed against mine. “I just wish this wasn’t normal.”
“It’s not,” I argued. “Nothing about strapping a bomb to a person and taking innocent lives is normal. Trace…” How did I explain that the mafia, while it got a bad rap for a lot of things, they weren’t that stupid? Strapping bombs to people? Blowing up a Vegas hotel? Seriously? That was like waving a red flag in the middle of an FBI board meeting and then announcing to the world that you were a terrorist. “This isn’t us,” I argued. “The mafia? The Sicilians? This isn’t how we handle things… Quiet, we like things quiet.”
“Which means…” she whispered.
“Someone talked.” I slammed the countertop with my hand, pain radiated from my thumb across my palm. “Either that, or whoever’s responsible for what’s going on is trying to silence every last person involved.”
“Mil?” she asked.
“Shit.” I groaned and kissed her head. “I don’t know. I seriously have nothing to go off of. All I know is the minute we put her into power — things have gone to hell.”
“She needs to talk.” Trace pulled away from me. “You need to make her talk.”
“Right.” I snorted, stepping away from her long enough to turn the water off. “And say what exactly? Tell me all your repressed secrets or die?”
“That should work.” Trace crossed her arms. “Or maybe something like, I’ll cut you if you don’t start talking.”
“I’ll cut you?” I repeated, trying as hard as hell not to laugh out loud. “Who says that?”
Trace rolled her eyes. “You know, like in prison! They always say things like, I’ll cut you.”
My eyebrows rose. “Oh? And how do you know that, little miss innocent? Been visiting some of the family in the state pen?”
She stuck out her tongue and smacked me in the chest. “What you say doesn’t matter, Nixon. You just have to get her to say it.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What do you mean?” She put her hair in a ponytail and watched me through the mirror.
“Chase.” I cleared my throat and coughed. “He’ll do it.”
“Get her to talk?” Trace looked doubtful. “Good luck with that. He’s having issues kissing the girl, let alone using his seduction techniques to get her to talk. That would be like asking Nemo to fight Bruce. Chase officially lost all his bad-assness the minute he got married, leaving him the title of clown fish, and Mil—”
“Bruce?” I squinted at her. “Who the hell is Bruce?”
“The shark.” Trace gave me a duh expression. “In Finding Nemo?”
“You’re comparing their marriage to a Disney movie.”
“Whatever.” Trace waved me off and grabbed a towel. “The point is. Your chances of getting her to talk are completely diminished if you rely solely on Chase.”
“Is that what you want?” I asked in a low voice. “For Chase to fail?”
Trace’s hand paused on the fluffy towels. Without turning around, she answered, “I want him to succeed more than anyone, because I know how badly it sucks to lose the one you love, and I don’t mean losing Chase. I mean thinking I’d lost you. Mil has lost everything. Chase deserves to be that constant person in her life. God knows he’s done his time, don’t you think?”