Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three
Gloria coughed and hacked up white sludge from her lungs. She pushed up on her elbows, her arms shaking. Something wet and sticky trailed down her face. She touched her temple and pulled back her fingers to show that it was, in fact, blood. A large crash sounded, and everything came rushing back with a snap. She scrambled up to her feet, having to use the wall for support as she glanced around at the carnage. Dust clung to every surface: the cabinets, the tub, the sink, Sergei.

Sergei was gathering his bearings, too, and came to the same realization as her at the exact same time. Both looked to where he’d thrown his gun. They looked back at each other. Gloria was the first to move. She sprinted for the gun, but as she crouched to grab it, Sergei grabbed hold of her hair and threw her back.

Gloria cried out at the pain in her scalp and then her shoulders as they were the first to hit the ground. Freaking long hair, and no way to put it up, she’d chop it off the second this was over. Sergei bent down and retrieved the gun. Gloria yelled. She got to her feet and continued to yell as she ran at him. Gunfire erupted downstairs as though a war had begun. Sergei lifted his gun, fired, missed her, and Gloria tackled him around the waist. She straddled his hips and punched him over and over in the face until he seemed dazed. Then she went for the gun. Sergei wasn’t dazed enough. He rolled, and then Gloria was underneath him.

“Want to take a quick break? I’ve heard hate-fucking is quite fun,” Sergei prompted, thrusting his hips into hers.

Gloria growled and drove her palm into his nose. Sergei’s head whipped back. His free hand went to cup his nose as blood poured from it. She knocked his other hand while he was distracted, and the gun flew from his grip and skidded across the floor. Gloria brought her knee up and plowed it into his groin. Sergei grunted and dry-heaved. She shoved him to the side and scrambled for the gun. When it was within arm’s reach, though, he snagged her ankle. Gloria cried out as she was yanked backward. Sergei flipped her over, brought his fist back, and delivered a single blow to the center of her face.

Gloria’s head cracked against the floor. Her vision went black. She could still hear, smell, and touch, but her eyesight was gone. She blinked, over and over in a daze, as she could feel Sergei stand away from her. He kicked her in the side, forcing her to double over. She could hear his steps as he walked in the direction of the gun. She tried to get up, but her equilibrium was off, and she crumbled back to the ground. She lay again on her back, her hands clutching her stomach, hoping for her sight to return. She blinked as the blackness turned to a blurry haze. Sergei’s footsteps returned. The haze turned into two images.

“Well, Gloria,” Sergei said somewhere above her. As the two images slowly came back to one, she realized the double figure standing above her was Sergei himself, the gun trained down, fixed between her eyes. “Things could have been so different. All you had to do was say, ‘I do,’ and I could have made your life so easy for you. Given you riches. Children. Given you purpose.” Blood still dripped from his nose. He smiled, his teeth showing red, making him look as though he’d stepped right off a horror movie poster. “Instead, I suppose a single bullet will save me a lifetime of money and headache. Ten cents instead of tens of millions of dollars. I have to thank you,” he said, pulling back the hammer of the gun. “Goodbye, Gloria, say hello to your mom and dad for me.”

Sergei pulled the trigger. Gloria flinched, but nothing came. Misfire. Sergei snarled and pulled the hammer back again. Gloria didn’t just lie there like she had done before. She spun her legs, knocking him to the ground. Her head swam, but she ignored it as she grappled for the gun. Sergei fired, and this time the bullet left the barrel of the gun, breezed past Gloria’s ear, and hit the ceiling. Sergei managed to fling her off of him. Gloria rolled and landed hard against the toilet. She coughed and pushed herself up.

Sergei stood and lifted the gun again. He pulled the hammer back, and as she saw his finger move for the trigger, she jerked right. The bullet hit the toilet bowl, where her head had just been. She knew she wouldn’t get to him in time for the next bullet. She grabbed the lid of the toilet tank and turned just as he fired again. The bullet shattered a section of the porcelain, and a fragment caught her in the arm. She cried out but readied herself for the next one, taking measured steps toward her enemy. He fired, and again the bullet’s power was absorbed slightly by the porcelain, changing its trajectory just enough, and coupled with her pivoting her body, it missed her by merely an inch. He raised the gun for the final shot. Again, a misfire.

Gloria was in front of him now. “I think you need a more reliable gun,” she quipped. “My turn.”

Gloria screamed as she brandished the toilet tank lid above her head and brought it down with all of her strength on his. Sergei moved just in time to avoid the brunt of the force, but the crack in the porcelain caught his shoulder and dug deep. She whipped it back again just as Sergei brandished his gun by the barrel to use it as a club of his own. She whipped the lid through the air, catching the pistol as though the weapon was a baseball and propelling it across the room. Sergei took a few steps back. Gloria rushed forward, determined not to miss another opportunity.

Sergei turned and ran for the desk in the bedroom, most likely hoping to find something sharp. He placed one hand on top of the desk and used the other to open a drawer. Gloria wasted no time bringing the lid down on his flattened hand. Sergei screamed as bones cracked. He pulled a letter opener from the desk and jabbed. Gloria grunted as the letter opener sliced into her abdomen. She staggered back a step but held on to her weapon.

Sergei cradled his mangled hand against his chest while wielding the letter opener with the other. He was breathing heavily; his breath rattled in his lungs. Gloria was not much better. Her head pounded, her vision was still blurry, and every muscle ached. But… but she was holding on to the anger. She inhaled slowly, asking her body, no, commanding it to remain strong. Just a few more minutes. Seconds.

“Dolzhen priznat' –I have to admit–,” Sergei said. “YA ne ozhidal, chto ty okazhesh' takoye sil'noye soprotivleniye. –I didn’t expect you to put up this much of a fight.–”

“Vot pochemu u nas by nichego ne vyshlo, Sergei. –That’s why we wouldn’t have worked out, Sergei,–” Gloria replied, flipping her hair away from her face. “Ty by nikogda nichego ot menya ne ozhidal. –You would never expect anything from me.–”

Sergei lunged forward first. Gloria waited. Everything seemed to slow down for a moment. The white noise of gunfire from downstairs faded. The sound of Sergei’s scream vanished. His feet seemed to move at a glacial pace while his mouth distorted in a snarl fit for a junkyard dog. All she heard was the sound of her own breathing, her heartbeat, the ringing of her own ears. She lifted the lid, her breath hitched slightly with the effort. Sergei plunged the letter opener into her… She let him. At the same time, while she ignored the stabbing pain just to the right of her heart, she brought the lid down with every last fiber of strength she could muster.

She saw the whites of his eyes first. She watched him fall to the ground. His head thudded against the pristine white carpet. Her ears continued to ring, blocking out all other sounds. Gloria pulled the letter opener from her chest, grateful she’d readjusted right before impact, otherwise she’d be lying in a pool of blood next to him. He wasn’t dead. She knew that much. But he wouldn’t get another chance to stand. She dropped to her knees, lifted the lid up, and brought the corner of it down onto his neck and collarbone. Over. And over. And over. She brought it down.

Blood spattered across her face, her shoulders, her chest. She didn’t stop. She continued to bring it down until her arms ached and the blood on the lid caused her grip to slip. It fell to the floor beside him. She caught herself on her palms. Gloria straddled his chest, looking down on him. In any other circumstance, one might think this an intimate position. If his chest and neck weren’t concaved in this way. She took a few moments to gather her breathing and stare into the eyes of yet another man she had killed. Because he was dead now, that was for sure.

Gloria sat back on her heels and glanced over at the letter opener. One final act of absolute heinousness. One more chip away at her soul. She didn’t care. It was fractured into pieces anyway. She needed the gunfire below where she currently kneeled to stop, and to do that she would have to prove only one leader was left standing. She picked up the letter opener, looked down at the work she’d already done on his neck, and proceeded to finish the job.

With shaky knees, Gloria got to her feet. She gripped her prize in her hand and swayed uneasily from foot to foot as she walked out of the bedroom. She used the wall as support with her free hand, leaning heavily against it as she staggered in the direction of the war below. No one was looking up at the stairs when she arrived. She could understand why: the stairs no longer existed. What threat could there be from above? She observed the fighting with cold indifference. Men killing men. Over her. Over money. Over power. It was sickening. She could see dozens of Sergei men firing into what used to be her father’s dining room. Dozens more were dead on the floor like some kind of macabre tile patterning. She recognized that man… What was his name? Palladino and his second-in-command, Raphael, fighting behind what was left of the dining room table alongside Accardi’s bodyguard and, what she could assume, were Accardi’s reinforcements.

She needed to make it all stop. She would make it all stop.

“Dostatochno! –Enough!–” Gloria screamed.

The sounds of the foyer came bursting into her mind, nearly knocking her to the ground with the impact. A few of Sergei’s men looked up in her direction and fired. Gloria ducked beneath the rails of the stairwell to avoid being hit. When the gunfire ended, and they returned to their original target, Gloria took another second and stood again. She gripped Sergei’s hair tightly between her fingers, stretched her arm backward, and tossed. Sergei’s decapitated head soared through the air and landed directly where she’d aimed: in front of Sergei’s firing squad.

“YA skazal, ‘Khvatit!’–I said, ‘That’s enough!’–” Gloria yelled.

The firing ceased on one side. A few of Sergei’s men were hit by Accardi’s entourage before Leo caught the other man by the arm to stop him. He pointed upward, and all at once, dozens of eyes fell on her.

She gripped the railing as she swayed backward. She swallowed hard and tasted copper.

“Sergei Vasiliev is dead,” Gloria announced, though it was a bit redundant with his vacant eyes staring up at his men.

“Gloria?”

Gloria looked down and spotted Frankie poking his head out from the sitting room behind Sergei’s men. She let out a choked sob. Seeing him standing was a relief she hadn’t known she’d needed until it was presented to her.

“Long live the Rubanov family,” Gloria said, her voice quieter now.

She swayed again, but this time she didn’t have the strength to hold on to the railing. Blackness swallowed her as she fell backward, and her body succumbed.