Chapter 286: Three shots

"Come," Kalisto called. His voice had changed. It was light and almost playful.

"Let us settle this like men, Konstantin. You and I. No guns." A soft laugh. "Like in the old days, when we were young. Man to man. Face to face." The Don considered it.

"That," he said, "should be fun."

"On three?"

"On three." They counted together, in old, rough voices. One. Two. Three. Both men rose at once.

Kalisto came out slowly from behind the head table, with his hands held out from his sides. He was stooped. His purple suit was torn at the shoulder. His silver hair had come loose and fallen across his forehead. He looked like a tired old man walking out to meet an old friend.

The Don stood up from behind the stairs. His white jacket was stained all down the front, and his face was cold and clear. He held his hands out in front of him too, empty, palms open.

They looked at each other across the broken floor. Neither of them had put down a gun. They had both lied.

Kalisto’s hand was behind his back. Konstantin was behind his hip. They had known each other for years, and neither had ever expected the other to keep his word.

Carina’s finger tightened on the trigger. Everything happened in a single breath.

Both men’s hands swung up. Both guns flashed. Two shots cracked together and sounded like one, a great, flat, ugly bang that bounced off the walls and rattled the glass.

A third shot came a fraction later. It was Carina.

She had stepped out from behind the pillar with her arms straight, and she fired twice, fast and cold, the way she had been taught in a back room a long time ago. The first bullet went into Kalisto’s right arm. The second went into his left.

He cried out. His pistol flew from his fingers and skidded across the marble. He dropped to his knees, then onto his back, with both arms flung wide and his cane rolling away from him.

Across the hall, the Don spun.

He did not fall. He staggered a step, caught the edge of a table, and stood there swaying, with his hand clamped against his upper arm. Bright red was leaking out between his fingers.

"Konstantin!" Helena was running.

She did not stop to think. She crossed the hall in a flurry of pale silk, with her skirt dragging through broken glass, and reached him just as he started to slide. She caught his weight against her shoulder. Her hand went to the wound.

Carina walked the other way. She walked slowly, with the gun still raised in both hands. The sound of her heels on the marble was small and neat. She passed an overturned chair. She stepped over a fallen glass. She stopped beside the man on the floor and looked down.

Kalisto lay on his back, breathing in wet little gasps. His arms were twisted. His eyes were open, and they moved up to her face, bright and furious.

"You," he said.

"Me."

"You are nothing. A little girl in a white dress." He coughed. "You were a mistake he bought." Carina did not blink.

She had heard worse. She had heard worse from kinder men. She looked at the old man in the purple suit, with his silver hair on the cold floor, and the cruel little speech slid off her like rain off a roof. She pointed her gun at his forehead.

"Go and meet your dead son in hell." Kalisto’s face went still. "What?"

"Shemmel." She said the name carefully. "He is dead."

"No." It was a small sound, a whisper. His eyes widened.

"No, no. My son cannot be dead." His voice cracked and rose. "He is with the girl. He has her. He would never..." His hand started to move.

It crept across the floor toward the pistol, slow and shaking, with only a few inches left to go. Carina watched it. She did not shout. She did not hurry.

She pulled the trigger. The sound filled the hall and was gone.

Carina stood a moment longer, with her arms still straight in front of her. Then she lowered the gun. She did not look at what she had done. She bent down instead and picked up something small and flat that had slid from Kalisto’s coat and came to rest by his hand.

A black tablet. She turned it over once. The screen was still lit, with a map of the house covered in tiny red lines. She slid it into the fold of her dress.

"Are you okay?" Helena had pressed her palm hard over the hole in his sleeve. The blood came through her fingers, hot and slick. Her face was white. Her voice shook.

"Konstantin. Look at me."

"Don’t worry, darling." He smiled. It was a wide, easy smile, and it showed all his teeth. His face was gray. Sweat stood out along his hairline. But his eyes were bright, and he looked at her as if she had just done something wonderful.

"It is nothing," he said. "It is only a scratch." It was not a scratch.

He did not know it. He had been shot before, in other years, and had always walked away. He thought he knew what his own body could take. But the bullet had gone through the meat and found something deeper, and the blood was coming fast and dark. If it was not treated soon, if it was not tied off and cleaned and sewn, he would slowly bleed out onto the white floor.

Helena knew.

She had seen enough in her life to know exactly what she was holding. She felt the pulse under her hand, quick and thin. She felt his weight sagging against her. He is bleeding. A small, cold thought moved at the back of her mind, quiet as a mouse. Let him bleed.

She did not say it. She did not even let it reach her face. But she held the thought there for a moment, like a coal in her palm, and then she put it carefully away. Not yet. The papers first.

He must sign. Tomorrow, in front of the lawyers, with his own pen. Then he can die.

"Come on," she said gently. "I will take you to get your wound treated." She pulled his good arm over her shoulders and tried to lift him. He grunted and leaned heavily on her. She was thin, but she held him.

"No need to trouble yourself," the Don said. "Carina can take the bullet out."

"No." Her answer was quick.

"You need a doctor. A real one." She turned her face to him, and her eyes were wide and wet. "What if she does it wrong? She is not a surgeon. If something goes wrong, I cannot..." She stopped. Her voice cracked. "I cannot lose you again."

For a moment, Konstantin only looked at her.

Then he smiled again, but it was different this time. It was soft and amazed, like a boy who has been given a present he did not ask for. He had waited twenty years to hear his wife say something like that. He had begun to think she never would.

She was worried about him. It filled him up like warm water. "Okay," he said gently. "Anything you say, my love." He let his head rest against her shoulder. Helena held him up, and over his head, across the wrecked hall, her eyes found Carina’s. Carina was standing by the pillar.

She had come back across the floor while they talked. Her gun hung at her side, and there was blood on the hem of her silver dress. She looked at the two of them, at the man in white leaning on the woman in pale silk, and her brow creased.

Helena kept her voice light. "Go to Katalia, Carina. Make sure she is safe." Carina frowned.

She did not understand. Sienna was not here. She had left with Viktor a few minutes ago, down the old passage, with a tablet in her hand and a plan to escape. Carina had watched them go. She had even said goodbye. Why would Helena ask me to...

Then she saw her face.

Over the Don’s shoulder, where he could not see it, Helena’s look was clear and fierce and pleading. Her lips did not move. She did not need to speak. Her eyes said it plainly. Please. Get them out, whatever it takes. Carina’s breath caught.

She looked at the Don, who was smiling dreamily with his eyes closed. She looked at the dead man on the floor and the red lights glowing along the walls. She took a breath. "Okay," she said.

It was very quiet, but it was enough. She turned and ran. Her heels rang down the long marble hall. She did not look back. She leaped over a fallen chair, a body, and a puddle of spilled wine. She went through the side door and into the dark corridor beyond, with the black tablet pressed against her ribs and her heart pounding.

Behind her, in the broken hall, Helena helped the Don toward the door, one slow step at a time.