Chapter Forty Two

Chapter Forty Two
Bexley

Susan's lips pulled into a tight smirk, making her look smug as fuck. Only she had the audacity to act like she was the cat, and I was the cornered mouse, and not the other way around.

“I think I’m past the point of caring,” I returned in a flat tone. “Hostility is all you deserve.”

The two of us locked eyes with each other in a silent stare-off, one daring the other to make the first move. I saw the sag in her elbows and knew I had to act fast.

“Caroline, in exchange for the files,” I reminded her.

A window smashed from inside another room, barely making Susan flinch.

“That will be Carlos,” she muttered calmly. “He always makes such an awful mess in the kitchen.”

The sound of gunfire rattled my nerves. I hoped Emilio was okay. Then Susan walked to the side of me, forcing me to walk in a cautious circle. Caz made a startled noise which alerted Susan’s attention. I knew it could only be Emilio, having watched me go through the secret door in the hallway.

“Who’s here with you?” Susan demanded to know. “I told you to come alone.”

“Paranoid, are we?” I chuckled, loving the slip in her demeanour.

I kept my gun poised and ready as I dug inside my jacket pocket to retrieve the fake flash drive that Dominic had given to me. I held it between my forefinger and thumb to tempt her.

“This is what you want, isn’t it?” I held it out as a bargaining chip. “Take it and go.”

Bullets pitted the living room windows like opaque stars as Carlos and Tania shot at them, trying to get them to shatter. The lapse in my attention cost me dearly as Susan siezed the opportunity to reach for her weapon.

“Do I look stupid?” Susan hissed, pointing her gun at me. “Safi Barker would have chosen something more symbolic to hide the files. Not a cheap piece of plastic.”

“How would you know what my mum would or wouldn't do?” I defended my dead mother’s name. “Maybe you don't know her as well as you think you did. She hid this right under your nose the whole time. She even sent us all on a wild goose chase to go looking for it. That was Mum,” I added proudly. “She always did have a great sense of humour.”

Susan’s face twisted with anger. A barrage of gunshots reverberated around the grounds as the Wolfe Brothers, and the rest of our crew, gunned Carlos and Tania down in a surprise attack. Susan’s horror-filled eyes trembled as she witnessed the grotesque scene; the way their arms flayed with every impact, their blood splattering against the glass.

“Hand over the files,” Susan demanded, her voice rushed with desperation.

I tossed the fake flash drive at her and she caught it singlehandedly. Then Susan fired a shot against my chest, sending me reeling backwards. I landed onto the coffee table, firing a shot that hit a weak point on the window, exploding it and sending tiny shards of glass skittering this way and that. Susan scampered away, leaving me panting for air, winded from the impact. My gun had fallen out of my grasp and was somewhere among the splintered wood. I took the earrings from my ears and flung one at Susan. It missed and stuck into the doorframe like a knife cutting through butter. The other landed somewhere in the hall, clinking against the marble floor tiles, and I swore with frustration at having missed.

I rolled onto my side and sucked in a lungful of air. My bulletproof vest had saved me from taking a critical hit, but the fall had knocked the wind out of me. Susan could appear at any moment. The house was surrounded. There was nowhere left to hide. I clambered to my feet, staggering into the dining room.

“What happened?” I shrieked, finding Emilio giving mouth to mouth to an unconscious Caz.

He flashed his eyes up at me and they were wide with panic. “I took off the oxygen mask and she started gasping for air,” he explained. “I think she had a panic attack, and then she passed out. I tried sitting her up to open her airways, and that's when I noticed she had stopped breathing.”

“She’s an asthmatic," I told him. "Keep doing what you’re doing. There’s an inhaler in the cabinet.”

I rummaged through the entertainment unit, looking for the spare blue inhaler that I fucking knew was in there somewhere. After swiping everything onto the floor, I found it and tossed it to Emilio.

My eyes flicked to the huge glass windows and saw the carnage outside. Agents stormed the grounds, armed with large guns. Red laser lights scored through the darkness and crisscrossed over one another, seeking out their target. Emilio pushed the mouthpiece between Caz's lips and pressed the inaler to administer the Salbutamol.

“Caroline, breathe . . . please breathe,” Emilio encouraged, holding her upright against his chest. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, so don’t you die on me, okay?”

Caz sucked in a laboured gasp, her eyes bulging wide. Emilio sagged with relief as she wheezed and spluttered, the deep lines of concern creasing his forehead.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice shaky and unsure.

Caz focused on him, then pulled him down for a kiss. Emilio blanched, then began peeling her arms away like he was fighting off an octopus.

“You saved my life,” Caz uttered breathlessly. “You’re my hero.”

“I might also be your brother, so please don’t kiss me like that until we know for sure,” he muttered awkwardly.

Dad’s voice boomed from a megaphone, ordering Susan to come out and give herself up. They couldn’t risk wading in; they were treating it as a hostage situation. We just had to lure her out, so we could get her.

“You need to get Caz out of here,” I urged. “Susan is still around here somewhere. Her gun is loaded; she has nothing left to lose.”

The click of a gun made me freeze on the spot.

“That’s right,” Susan spoke from behind me. She must have snuck in through the secret door after Emilio had forgotten to close it. “If I’m going down, I’m taking you down with me,” she vowed.

Emilio reached for his gun and Susan admonished him tauntingly. “Ah, ah, ah . . . toss your weapons over here, or I’ll blow Bexley’s head off.”

Emilio complied grudgingly, and I slithered my fingers inside my jacket pocket to retrieve a tube of lipstick. I could hear Braxton and Dominic going crazy outside, and Asher and Cruz telling them to stand down. Uncle Zane intervened; his order of, “Hold your fire,” boomed around the grounds.

“And you, Bexley,” Susan commanded. “Throw down your weapon.”

I slowly turned to face her, holding the lipstick in my hand. “I’m unarmed. I dropped my gun when you shot me,” I told her, jerking my head to the heap of wood that was once my Laura Ashley coffee table. “It’s right over there.”

Susan’s eyes darted back and forth as if she didn’t quite trust me. “What’s that in your hand?”

I exhaled a heavy sigh. “Just my lipstick,” I admitted, holding it up as evidence. “If I’m gonna die, I wanna die looking my best.”

Susan chuckled evilly. “Vanity is such an ugly trait,” she replied, eyeing me like a cockroach.

I applied the lipstick, being careful not to smear any of it onto my teeth. Red dots danced all around the room, looking to get a clear shot of the Chameleon. She noticed them too, and I knew as soon as they started shooting, that she would fire a single shot that would end my life. One way or another, this was my day to die, and I wasn't going down without finishing the job.

“Do you wanna know what else is ugly?” I said, fuelled by adrenaline.

I dropped the lipstick, and it rolled across the floor. Emilio stopped it with his foot, noticing what it was. He swallowed thickly. The silent, "What have you done?" blazed in his eyes.

“What?” Susan scoffed.

I took a step towards her, then another. Everything that Asher had taught me about bluffing played at the forefront of my thoughts, and this was the daddy of all bluffs. Dominic would be proud of how I used the security system to my advantage. He never did get to teach me how to surf, and that saddened me. But I couldn't let my feelings hamper my mission. I remained as composed as Cruz during a time of crisis. And now, I was about to give her a taste of what Braxton would do. In a lightening move, I grabbed her gun, angling it up at the ceiling, and kneed her hard in the crotch. The shot went off, raining plaster dust down on us.

“Betraying your own family,” I replied, then pressed my lips to hers in a kiss of death.

“No!” my husbands’ roared from outside, then broke into a run.

My knees sagged and my body swayed. I pulled away just in time to see the veins bulging around Susan’s eyes, turning the whites blood red. She dropped to her knees and clawed at her throat, her nails scoring deep welts on her skin. A white mist formed before my eyes, then my muscles went into a violent spasm. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs had stopped working. The poison was killing me.

“Bexley!” A frantic cry filled my ears, and then someone rolled me onto my back.

I couldn’t see, but I could hear everything. My body convulsed as the poison entered my bloodstream. My veins were on fire. My insides were burning. I couldn’t breathe, talk, or scream. It all hurt so much.

“What should we do?” another familiar voice echoed through my ears.

“I have something that’ll help,” another said, and I recognised him as Dom because of what he said next. “I knew I’d need an antidote to the Kiss of Death.”

A sharp pinprick pierced the side of my neck, lessening the pain. I was weightless, like I was floating on a cloud. Someone lifted me off the ground and carried me outside.

“The air ambulance will take the women to the hospital,” Uncle Zane spoke.

It was easier to determine who was who without focusing on the pain. I wanted to know whether Susan was dead, but I was barely cognizant. I couldn’t muster the strength to speak.

“We’ve recovered three bodies from the scene,” someone who I didn’t recognise informed Zane. “Two females and a male,” he confirmed.

“Ughh,” I murmured, trying my best to talk.

My human stretcher placed me onto a flat surface and climbed into the air ambulance with me. I could hear my husband’s arguing about wanting to travel with me, but the paramedic insisted that only one other person could accompany Caroline and me in the helicopter.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can, baby,” Asher called out to me.

“Is she . . .” I croaked, my words struggling to leave my parched throat.

“Take it easy, Bexley,” I recognised my father’s voice. He must have been the one who carried me. “You got her. She’s gone.”