Two
808 Words
*Vivienne*
The footsteps were already on the stairs.
Lucien moved first. Not toward me. Toward the bedroom door. One second he was barefoot in front of me, the next he’d yanked a second gun from under the mattress — because of course he had two — and flipped the safety off with his thumb.
“Stay behind me,” he said. Not a request.
My gun was still pointed at him. His back was to me now. Wide, scarred, exposed. I could pull the trigger. End it. Blame the men downstairs.
I didn’t.
“Who are they?” I kept my voice low. My hand had stopped shaking. Fear does that — replaces one kind with another.
“Mine or yours,” he said, checking the hall through the crack in the door. “Guess we’ll find out.”
The shouting got closer. Three voices, maybe four. _“Arriba. La recámara principal.”_ Master bedroom.
They knew the layout.
Lucien glanced at me over his shoulder. “You’re going to have to decide, Vivienne. Right now. Shoot me, or shoot them.”
The first man hit the landing.
Lucien didn’t wait. He kicked the door open and fired twice. The hallway exploded with sound. A body hit the floor. Someone screamed _“¡Jefe!”_ — boss.
Not my men, then. His. And they were shooting at him.
A bullet bit into the doorframe next to my head. Wood splinters stung my cheek. I dropped low on instinct, ten years of krav maga and shooting ranges finally kicking in.
Lucien grabbed my wrist, hauled me up, and shoved me toward the wall of windows. “Move.”
“Are you insane? It’s glass—”
“It’s bulletproof,” he said, already returning fire down the hall. “Floor panel. Left corner. Code’s the same.”
8-4-2-1.
I ran. Stayed crouched. My bare feet left bloody prints — I’d stepped on something. Didn’t matter. I slammed my hand on the corner panel. It popped open, revealing a steel ladder bolted into a dark shaft.
Escape route. He built an escape route and gave me the code.
Another shot. Lucien grunted. I looked back. His left arm was bleeding, soaking the white sheet he’d wrapped around his waist when he got up. He met my eyes.
“Go,” he ordered.
I had the gun. I had an exit. I could leave him to die and still finish this later. That was the plan.
Instead I raised my gun, aimed past his shoulder, and shot the man peeking around the stairwell. He dropped.
Lucien stared at me. Not grateful. Calculating.
“Why?” he asked.
No time to answer. Two more were coming. We couldn’t hold the doorway.
I made the choice before I knew I was making it. I grabbed his good arm. “Down. Now.”
He didn’t argue. We went into the shaft. I went first, gun in my teeth like in the movies I used to watch in foster care, waiting for someone to save me. No one ever did.
Lucien pulled the panel shut above us. Darkness. The sound of bullets hitting steel.
The ladder went down two stories and opened into a garage. His. Five cars, all black, all worth more than my life. He hit a key fob. Lights on a bike flared.
“Can you ride?” he asked, blood running down his arm, dripping onto concrete.
“No.”
“Then hold on.”
He threw me a helmet. I caught it. My hands weren’t shaking anymore.
Above us, the ceiling boomed. They’d breached the bedroom.
Lucien swung his leg over the bike, grunting when he had to use his bad arm. He looked at me. Waiting.
I could run. I could take a car. I could leave him.
I climbed on behind him, gun still in my hand, and wrapped my free arm around his waist. Avoided the blood.
He didn’t say thank you. He just started the engine.
The garage door rolled up. Early morning light, gray and cold. Mexico City waking up, unaware.
“Who were they?” I asked against his back, helmet muffling my voice.
“Cartel,” he said. “Not mine. Not anymore.”
The bike roared. He took us out into the street, tires screaming.
I had ten years of plans. None of them included saving his life.
None of them included the fact that when I pressed against him, my body remembered last night and didn’t care that he was bleeding.
We hit the main road. Behind us, a black SUV tore out of the alley.
Lucien swore. “Hold tighter.”
I did.
And for the first time since I was eight, I wasn’t sure who I was running from, or who I was running to.
- Writer
