22
SANTIAGO
Mercedes kicks and screams, thrusting her elbows into my gut as I hand her off to Marco. “Take them home! Lock her in her room if you have to!”
Ivy is already in the car and he’s hauling Mercedes into it. He pushes in beside her and the driver takes off before he’s even closed the door. I see her nearly crawl over his lap to get out. To get to her husband. And the misery on her face breaks my heart.
She just got this. They just got here. After everything, they finally arrived at the start of their happily ever after. But I don’t know if a De La Rosa or a Montgomery is destined to have a happy ending. I hope I’m wrong for my sister’s sake. For my daughter’s sake. But I don’t trust fate. And as I drop to my knees beside my friend, I send a curse up to the heavens for what they’ve allowed to happen on this night of all nights.
“Call a motherfucking ambulance!”
“It’s on its way,” a man says as I rip away Judge’s tie, his shirt. He’s going to fucking choke. There’s so much blood I can’t fucking tell where it’s coming from. “Mr. De La Rosa, stop,” the same man says as I give Judge a shake. “You’ll do more harm than good. Move back.”
I realize it’s Dr. Barnes, and he’s pressing a bloodred cloth to the wound on Judge’s head.
Blood red. It’s the handkerchief from Judge’s pocket. It was to match my sister’s wedding dress. But the red was never meant to be fucking blood.
“Judge, you wake the hell up, you hear me!”
“Someone get him away from here!” Barnes orders angrily, and two sets of arms haul me up as the sirens that were too distant just minutes ago are close enough to drown out the screams of the women.
For a moment, I’m transported back in time to the night of the masquerade ball. The night similar sounds broke into that of elegant music and crystal flutes overflowing with champagne clinking together in celebration. The night I almost died.
“He’s not breathing,” a paramedic calls out as I’m hauled away from my friend, but I realize he’s not the only one hurt. The other man, the one who shot Vincent Douglas dead, he’s the one who’s not breathing.
“Jesus Christ. Get the fuck off me!” I rip away from the men holding me and take in the gruesome sight at the bottom of the stairs. Vincent Douglas lies dead, half his face blown off. And beside him, the masked, cloaked man who shot him. Who probably saved my sister’s life. Judge’s too. If he survives.
I bend to push off his mask as the paramedics work, yelling for me to back away. I recognize him although it’s been years. At least five. More?
“Theron?”
“Sir, move away.”
I look behind me to find a stretcher being rolled over and watch as they lift Theron’s limp body onto it on the count of three. They push past me, two stretchers going toward the waiting ambulance, both brothers quiet, unmoving.
I go after them, grab a paramedic by the arm and make him face me. “Are they going to make it?”
The other man slams the door.
“Sir, we need to go. Now!”
“I’m riding with you.”
“There’s no room!” The other door is slammed shut, and the driver takes off.
“Fuck!” I push my hands into my hair and look around at the chaos of my sister’s wedding. A night that’s turned the courtyard of IVI bloodier than it’s ever been. Bloodier than perhaps that scaffold that stands concealed but ready in the small, grassy area behind The Tribunal building.
I need a car. I need a fucking car.
“Sir! Santiago!” I spin to find Raul, Judge’s driver, rushing toward me. “I’ll take you to the hospital. This way.”
I follow him to his Rolls—the one Judge and Mercedes rode in—and we drive at breakneck speed toward the hospital, the sirens that were fading growing louder when we pull into the lot just as they’re unloading the Montgomery brothers.
Fuck. Both of them like this. Both unconscious. Surely, the gods cannot be this cruel, but they are. I know that well.
“Thank you,” I tell Raul.
“Sir, his wife?” he asks. “He’ll want her here.”
I stop, think, then nod. “Yes. Okay. I’ll make a call. She’s at De La Rosa Manor.”
“I’ll bring her.”
I text Marco as I rush into the hospital to let him know Raul is coming for Mercedes. I can just imagine how crazed she must be right now. How panicked. She was prepared to raise her children on her own. It took so long for Judge to get to this point. To marry her. And it feels like fate has betrayed her doubly. To hang that future in front of her eyes only to snatch it away so violently.
No. I cannot think like this.
He will survive. He will make it. He has to. His brother, though, he looked really bad, the skin of his face an unnatural gray.
“Where are the Montgomery brothers? They were in the ambulance that just came in,” I say to the woman at the reception desk. She should know them. This is a Society hospital.
She takes a look at me, and I glance down, seeing the smear of Judge’s blood on me. Given that and the half-skull tattoo on my face, I understand the panic on hers. But I don’t care. I slam my hands on the counter.
“Where the fuck are they?”