you don’t care about them anymore?” His gaze flickered down my body with distaste.
The words hurt—as if vanity meant anything when I was one bullet away from death. I made myself smile. “Billy says they’re dashing.”
At the name, Billy, Emmanuel’s face hardened. He raised the gun and pointed it at my chest. “Ah, yes. Billy Martin. Somehow I doubt you’ll be so willing to forgive me and move off to Paris when you find out he’s dead.”
I saw red. My hands gripped the arms of the chair. Billy wasn’t dead. He was in California with his father. Right? Right?
“Why would you need to hurt Billy?” I managed to ask, my voice sounding very far away. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s no longer even in the picture. You saw to that.”
Emmanuel ran a hand through his hair. “Stop lying, Seb! I know the two of you have been trying to piece it all together. Right now he’s in California talking to the police about the accident, talking to Amanda fucking Wilkes. Even if he can’t find proof, he’s going to blunder around and stir things up, maybe cause a new investigation. That’s something I won’t tolerate! And neither will Shar McGill.”
Things happened very quickly then. In one move, I stood up from the chair, picked it up, and hurled it at Emmanuel. It wasn’t bravery. It was rage. A pure, red rage that came roaring up from inside me.
Emmanuel was responsible for my father’s death—struck, hurt and dying, on that Long Island road. He tried to kill me, drugging me and tampering with my car. And now he was sending the Shar McGill goons after Billy? Billy? Who had never done a goddamn thing except try to help me.
A shot rang out just before the chair struck him. I had no idea if it hit me or not. I flew across the room. The walking and the swimming had strengthened my body, and adrenaline did the rest. Emmanuel had been knocked to the floor, the chair half on top of him. It wasn’t a large chair, just a Louis XIV side chair. But it must have hurt when I threw myself on top of it, crushing it against him.
He let out a grunt, his eyes going wide as he stared up at me. His face was florid with anger or pain. I raised up and crashed into the chair again, grinding it into him. The wooden side of it was against his body—chest to thigh. He let out a tiny scream, and I felt as much as saw him trying to raise his right hand. The hand with the gun.
I grabbed for it, but it was on the side with my weak hand. I clutched his wrist, but the angle was awkward. I couldn’t prevent him from bringing his arm up, turning his wrist to aim the gun at me.
I don’t know if time slowed down in those few seconds when I drove off the cliff, if I had the life review Billy spoke about as I sailed out over that canyon. But now, as Emmanuel’s arm steadily turned toward my body with that gun, and I was unable to stop it, I experienced something like that.
I saw Billy, his smile, those clear, clear eyes of his, so honest and loving and full of life as he laughed at something out by the pool. I saw his thoughtful expression as we made love, utterly immersed. The way his expression told me he loved me. Me, not Sebastian Montgomery IV. Me, scars and all.
Of all the things I’d owned in my life, all the people that had come and gone, Billy was the one true thing. I had to protect him.
I rolled onto Emmanuel’s arm, still clutching the chair. The gun went off and a searing pain rose from my calf, but I kept going. Lying hard on his arm, I pulled the chair up and hit him with it in the head. Again. Again. He tried to get up, tried to shove me off, but I kept hitting him.
I hit him until he wasn’t moving anymore. I got up and kicked the gun away. He lay there, unconscious, his head and face bloodied. He was still breathing. I took off his belt, secured his hands with it, and called the police.
Chapter 27
Billy
I left LA after my visit with Amanda Wilkes, heading back to my dad’s house in Temecula. The traffic was horrific. Stick-a-fork-in-my-eye bad. It took two hours of stop-and-go driving