Chapter 124 I Chose You

Chapter 124 I Chose You
(This is a dual POV chapter, so I will swap between both Eli and Lucia’s points of view.)
~Eli~
Adrian’s arm is locked tightly around Lucia’s throat, pulling her back against his chest so hard her toes are barely touching the floor.
Neither David nor Elias can get a clean shot with Lucia held between them and Adrian, the gun pressed hard against her temple, his stance too controlled and too practiced to leave an opening.
Adrian’s eyes land on Elias, and for a moment everything else in the hallway seems to stop entirely.
“You came,” Adrian says softly.
“You did too,” Eli replies.
The silence that follows stretches across the hallway like an overdrawn wire.
Adrian’s jaw tightens as he looks from Eli to David, then back to Eli. The setup at the docks, the fake intel about the house being empty during Zeke’s service, the lockdown that triggered the moment his team crossed the threshold – none of it was an accident. It was a net, and his own son had woven the outer edge.
Adrian’s eyes darken, the nostalgic affection he carried at the warehouse evaporating into something lethal. “You’ve been playing me.”
“I made a choice.”
“Yes. And you chose them,” Adrian says. “After everything I built. After everything I sacrificed to keep your mother alive. You chose the man who tried to put me in the ground.”
Eli’s throat feels tight, but he swallows it down and wills everything in him for his voice to sound steady as he responds. “I chose the people who stayed.”
Adrian’s grip on Lucia tightens, pulling her head back until her neck strains. She lets out a shallow, pained breath through her teeth, her hands grasping uselessly at the thick forearm locked across her throat. Eli can see her trying not to breathe, trying not to move, as her eyes fix on him with a quiet but intense trust.
“The ledger,” Adrian demands, looking past Eli to face the man who built the empire beside him. “Give it to me right now, or I paint this wall with your daughter’s brain.”
“Adrian, listen to me,” David begins lowly, attempting to hold the room together through sheer authority. “You don’t want to do this. There is no scenario where you walk out of here alive if you pull that trigger.”
Adrian presses the barrel harder into Lucia’s temple, forcing her head to tilt sideways. “Do I look like a man who gives a damn about scenarios, David? I have survived ten years in the dark because of you. I survived the docks, I survived the fire, and I survived every piece of trash you sent to clean up the mess. Hand over the ledger.”
David hesitates for a single beat, his eyes flicking to Lucia, catching the slight shake of her head. She doesn’t want him to do it. She knows what that book carries. But David’s face cracks, the cold untouchable Don vanishing completely beneath the terrified father beneath it. He reaches into the inner pocket of his coat, pulls out the worn notebook, and holds it up where the hallway light can catch the faded grain.
“Here,” David says. “It’s right here. Take it and let her go.”
“Kick it across,” Adrian orders.
David lowers himself slowly, placing the ledger on the floor, and kicks it down the smooth floor until it stops three feet from Adrian’s boots. Adrian keeps his gun pinned to Lucia’s head, steps down with one foot to drag the book backward until he can scoop it up with his off-hand, and tucks it securely against his ribs beneath his bleeding arm.
For a second, the room hangs in suspended motion. He has it. The complete physical record of David Reid’s network, the names, the accounts, the original signatures of Malcolm’s old circle – the exact tool capable of tearing David’s legacy out by the roots and handing Adrian the power to build something three times larger.
He has won. His objective is accomplished. He has every reason to use Lucia as a bartering chip to reach a car outside and disappear forever.
Silently, shamefully, Eli prays he does just that.
Instead, Adrian stays still. He doesn’t move toward the patio doors. He doesn’t retreat toward the stairwell. He stands in the middle of the hallway, holding David’s daughter by the throat, his eyes fixed on his former partner with a dark, consuming hunger that has nothing to do with money or leverage.
“You really thought this was just about the ledger?” Adrian asks softly, a bitter, breathless laugh rising in his chest. “You really believed after ten years in the wilderness, I came back for a book and that’s it?”
“You have what you came for,” David says. “Step out the back. My men won’t touch you until you pass the gates. That was the deal.”
“We were brothers, David,” Adrian says, his voice dropping into a low, theatrical murmur. “For fifteen fucking years. We built the foundation of this city together out of absolute nothing. I built a company with you. We shared meals at the same table. I covered your back when Malcolm’s lieutenants tried to carve you up in a freaking parking lot.”
“I never forgot that,” David counters, his jaw working as he tries to keep his voice steady. “I never forgot what you were to me.”
“Then why did you order Marcus to put a bullet in my back?” Adrian snarls, the calm façade cracking completely to reveal the raw, unhealed rage beneath. “Why did you give the order to erase me the second I became inconvenient to your neat little expansion plans?”
“You were losing your mind, Adrian!” David shouts back. “You were cutting side deals with people who would have put all of us in federal prison! I tried to pull you back, but you were out of control!”
“So you decided to put me down like a dog,” Adrian snarls.
“I tried to save you!” David argues, taking a half-step forward before Adrian’s gun twitches, forcing him back into place. “I sent a team to extract you from that warehouse! I wanted you out, but I didn’t want you dead! You were already hit when my men reached the floor, and the fire broke out before they could pull you out!”
Adrian scoffs, a cruel, mocking sound that echoes off the high ceiling. “I guess it’s your word against mine, isn’t it? The great David Reid, always the martyr, always the noble patriarch who only pulls the trigger when he’s forced to.”
He shifts his grip slightly, his eyes flashing with a wild, feverish light as he looks between David and Eli. “You know how easy it was to turn Carver? A little cash, a few promises about taking over the docks when you fell, and he went straight to my wife and told her exactly what I needed her to hear.”
Eli’s chest heaves silently, his fingers tightening on his weapon until the metal cuts into his skin, but his sights remain locked on the side of his father’s skull.
“I loved her, you know,” Adrian continues, his voice softening into something sickeningly gentle. His gaze flicks to Eli. “I loved your mother with every fiber of my being. I still do. I love her enough to make sure she got those trial drugs three weeks ago. I know you think I abandoned you both but I was always watching. But this… this was never about her, and it was never about the money.”
Adrian leans his head close to Lucia’s ear. She winces, her eyes squeezing shut as she tries to pull away from the feeling of his mouth so close to her skin.
“I want you to lose everything, David,” Adrian whispers, his gaze fixing dead onto David’s eyes. “The way I lost everything. I want you to lose your empire. I want you to lose your reputation. I want you to watch your legacy crumble into dust right in front of your eyes. And most of all, I want you to know what it feels like to lose your child.”
David’s face drains of all color. “Adrian, don’t–”
“Dad!” Eli interjects. “Don’t do th–”
“She’s going to die in the exact same cold, wet drainage ditch where your men left me ten years ago,” Adrian interrupts, completely ignoring Eli as he talks to his former friend. “And you are going to spend the rest of your pathetic life knowing you were standing right here when it happened.”
Eli's heart stops, his brain a mess of everything he has always wanted and everything he now wants.
Dad, please…
He watches as the gun tightens against Lucia’s temple, the hammer pulling back with a mechanical click that rings out through the silent hallway.
As the cold steel presses hard into her bone, Lucia closes her eyes and stops struggling. She stops trying to loosen the grip around her throat. Eli watches as in the absolute dark behind her eyelids, she accepts the cold, sudden end of her life.
Fifteen feet away, Elias stands frozen.
The man holding the gun is his father. The man whose face he searched for in faded photographs for over a decade. The man whose memory shaped every fight he ever took on the streets, every dollar he saved to pay his mother’s medicine, every ounce of rage he carried inside his chest since he was eight years old.
This is the ghost he prayed to bring back.
And then, through the deafening roar of his own heartbeat, he hears the promise he made to Lucia at the rooftop all those months ago.
I will always choose you.
His eyes flick once more to the girl who stepped into his broken life, who looked past the scars and the blood on his knuckles, handed him a key to her world and trusted him when every logical instinct told her not to. He looks at the girl he betrayed once and has spent every day since trying to earn back, the girl who trusted him anyway, even knowing exactly what that trust had already cost her.
He looks at the girl he promised to protect and who he swore to choose in each and every life.
Adrian’s index finger begins its final, steady pressure against the trigger, his attention fully consumed by the look of total destruction on David Reid’s face.
Elias doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t call out. He doesn’t ask for a second chance.
He raises his sights two inches to the right, takes a short, clean breath, and squeezes his trigger.
A single violent gunshot shatters the silence of the corridor.
Adrian drops instantly, the ledger falling from beneath his arm, his body hitting the floor with a finality that swallows the entire hallway into silence.
~
~Lucia~
The ringing in my ears is a deafening high-pitched whine that drowns out the quiet hum of the house.
I stumble forward, my knees giving out the second Adrian’s arm falls away from my neck and catch myself on my hands and knees, gasping violently for air as cool oxygen rushes back into my lungs.
I turn my head slowly, looking down at the body beside me, then look up, tracking my gaze down the long, narrow corridor.
Eli is standing in the exact same spot with his gun still raised in his both hands. His face is entirely drained of color, his skin is pale as paper. As I watch him, a violent tremor starts in his hands, traveling up his forearms until his whole body is visibly shaking.
“Eli?” I whisper.
His weapon sways slightly in his grip before he slowly, mechanically lowers it to his side.
He doesn’t answer immediately, just stares at the dead man on the floor between us. His eyes are hollowed out, fractured into a thousand jagged pieces as he looks at the corpse of the father he spent ten years grieving, only to execute him with his own hands.
“Why?” My voice is hoarse as I pull myself up off the floor on unsteady legs.
Eli finally shifts his gaze away from the body until his eyes meet mine. The devastation in his face is absolute, a profound, unbearable grief that reaches down into his very soul, but beneath the horror, beneath the weight of what he just did, there is a quiet, unyielding clarity that makes my throat lock up.
“I chose you,” he says, his voice barely a raspy whisper across the quiet space.
I cross the space between us quickly and throw my arms tightly around his neck. Eli stiffens for a fraction of a second before he collapses into me completely and buries his face into the crook of my neck.
I pull back just enough to look at his face, cupping his jaw with my palms, and press my lips against his in a deep, hard, uncompromising kiss, not caring that my father is standing a few feet away watching every second of it.
He kisses me back with a quiet desperation, his hands gripping my hips so tightly his knuckles press into my skin, clinging to me like I’m the only solid object left in a world that just collapsed beneath his feet.
I pull back slightly, resting my forehead against Eli’s, feeling the hot, fast rhythm of his breath against my lips. His eyes are wet and squeezed tight, like he can’t bare opening them.
His large hands come up to wrap around my waist, pulling me against his chest with a desperate, crushing force that steals my breath all over again. He isn’t crying out loud, but I can feel the hard, shuddering gasps wracking his shoulders, the sheer emotional weight of the murder he just committed to keep me breathing tearing through him in silence.
“I’m so so sorry, Eli…” I say as I wrap my hands around the back of his head, running my fingers through his damp hair, anchoring him to me with everything I have.
Across the hallway, my father stands motionless.
He looks down at Adrian’s body, then looks up at the two of us holding each other in the middle of the bloodied corridor. He doesn’t speak. As he watches his daughter hold a boy who just killed his own father to save her life, David understands completely what the two of us actually are to each other.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper softly into the dark, keeping my arms locked around Eli’s neck as the sound of approaching boots begins to echo up the grand staircase. “I’ve got you, Eli. I’m right here.”