Chapter 47 The Falling Kingdom

Chapter 47 The Falling Kingdom
The gunshots were deafening inside the closed room. The flashes of fire from the gun barrels lit up the walls for a split second and showed shapes moving in the shadows. I heard the sound of a body hitting the floor.

I dropped to my knees immediately. My hands on the cold floor. I crawled backward until my back hit the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible. My heart was pounding like a trapped bird.  

"Serena!" I heard  Edward’s voice echoing closely. He sounded terrified. "Serena, where are you?"  
"I’m here! By the wall!" I whispered back.  

I heard footsteps coming from across the floor. Another gunshot went off, and the spark lit up the stairs for a second. In that flash, I thought I saw a shadow falling against the railing, but the light disappeared almost immediately.  

"Get the generator!" a guard yelled from the garden entrance. "Find the switch!"  
"Stay down!" Mark’s voice from from near the front door.  

Suddenly, a loud sound vibrated through the floorboards. The backup generator finally started. One by one, the ceiling lights flickered, buzzed, and came back on. The sudden brightness hurt my eyes. I blinked rapidly and rubbed my face, terrified of what I would see.  

The living room was destroyed.  
Two of Lily’s guards were on the floor near the door. One was holding his shoulder, blood leaking through his fingers. The other was not moving. Mark stood near the hallway, his face covered in sweat. Edward was on one knee near the center of the room. His clothes were messy but he was not hurt.  

My eyes rushed to the staircase.  
Lily was no longer standing like a queen at the top of the stairs. She was sitting on the middle steps, slumped against the wooden railing. Her white linen pantsuit was no longer clean. A bright red circle was spreading quickly across the front of her jacket, right over her chest.  

"Mother!" Edward gasped.  

He did not run to her. He stood up slowly, his legs shaking, staring at the blood.  

Lily’s eyes were wide with shock. Her hands, usually steady, were pressed against her chest, trying to stop the bleeding. Red blood poured over her fingers and dripped onto the white marble steps.  

"Who..." Lily whispered, choking. "Who shot..."  

She could not finish the sentence. She looked around the room, her eyes moving from Mark, to Edward, to the guards on the floor. Nobody answered. Mark looked surprised. The remaining guard looked confused and scared. In the darkness, everyone had been shooting. The bullet could have come from anyone. It could have been Mark defending us, a guard shooting wildly, or accidental crossfire from her own men.  

Lily lost her balance and slid down two more steps, gasping for air. The sight of so much blood washed away my anger and replaced it with fear. She was a monster, but watching life leave a human body was horrible.  

I scrambled to my feet and ran toward the kitchen counter where I had seen a house phone. "We need to call an ambulance," I said, my voice shaking. "She’s bleeding out. She’s going to die right here."  

I grabbed the phone and started dialing the emergency number for the island.  
"Serena, stop."  

Edward’s voice was cold. It was a tone I had never heard from him before. I stopped with my finger over the button and turned to look at him.  

Edward walked slowly to the front of the stairs. He looked up at his mother. His expression was cold.

"Edward, what are you doing?" I asked, holding the phone tightly. "She needs a doctor now."
"No, she doesn’t," Edward said quietly. He did not look at me. He kept his eyes on Lily. "Let it happen, Serena. Put the phone down."  
"Edward..."  
"She is better off dead," he said, his voice so cold. "Look at her. If she lives, she will never stop. She just told us she is going to take Arthur. She will spend every dollar she has to hunt us down, ruin our lives, and turn our son into her puppet. As long as she breathes, our family is in danger."

"Help me," Lily choked out from the stairs.  

The proud, terrifying woman was gone. She looked small now. She reached one bloody hand out toward her only son. "Edward, please. I am your mother."  

Edward took a step closer to the stairs. He looked at her bleeding chest, then looked into her eyes.  
"You burned our home, Mother," Edward said softly. "You put Serena in a warehouse to die. You locked her in a cellar. You treated me like a tool for your business, not a son. You stopped being my mother a long time ago."  

"Please," Lily begged. Tears of pain and fear spilled over her eyes and mixed with the dirt on her face. "The money is yours. All of it. Just save me."  
"Keep your money," Edward said. He folded his arms across his chest and did not move to help her. "For once in your life, you are going to face the consequences of what you did. Nobody is coming to save you."  

"Edward, this is murder by omission," I whispered, walking back toward him and leaving the phone on the counter. "The police are already on their way. If they find her dead because we did nothing..."  
"The police are taking hours because she paid them off, remember?" Edward said bitterly. "She bought her own destiny."  

Lily tried to pull herself up using the railing, but she was too weak. She let out a soft cough. More blood came out of her mouth. Her eyes began to roll back into her head. Her reaching hand dropped against the wood, leaving a smear of red.  

"Edward," she whispered one last time, barely audible.  

Then her eyes closed. Her body went limp against the stairs. She was still breathing, but her breaths were shallow and weak. She was unconscious.  

Just as the silence in the room became unbearable, sirens sounded from the front gate. Red and blue lights flashed through the windows of the villa.  

"They’re here," Mark said, looking out the window. "Commander Miller got the local authorities to move."  

Within seconds, the unlocked front doors were kicked open. A group of armed police officers rushed inside, followed closely by a team of paramedics carrying emergency bags.

"Nobody move!" a police officer shouted, but he stopped when he saw the blood-soaked staircase.  

The paramedics did not wait. They ran past Edward and me and rushed up the stairs to Lily’s body. One paramedic checked her pulse while another started bandaging the bleeding.  

"She’s alive, but barely," the first paramedic shouted to the policemen. "Her pulse is very weak. She has lost too much blood. We need to move her to the ambulance now!"  

They lifted Lily onto a stretcher. Her face was white and drained of color. As they carried her out past us, Edward did not look away. He watched her go, his face blank, holding my hand so tightly it hurt.  

We were safe for now, but the nightmare was far from over.