Love and Let Die (Masters and Mercenaries #5)(88)

But he was her family. “Please don’t believe an assassin over me. Please, Ian.”

“You did. You believed Nelson over me and now my family is paying the price.” He looked over and nodded toward the door. Damon and Baz stood there. “We’ve had a setback. We’re going to need to change some of our plans. How fast can we get to India?”

“I’ll have the jet ready as soon as possible. Let me make a few calls.” Damon stepped away, but Baz stayed, his dark eyes watching the scene playing out in front of him.

“Go back to your seat, Charlie. I can’t deal with you right now.” Ian dismissed her utterly.

She couldn’t accept that. “I want to help, but I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”

Ian’s eyes went to the door, hardening slightly, and when he looked back at her there was an icy will in them. “Avery’s dead.”

“What?” She didn’t quite understand the words. They didn’t make sense so she had to have heard him wrong. Her paranoid brain was making connections that weren’t there.

“I said Avery is dead.” Ian drew out each word as if giving her time to process them separately.

The air left her lungs as the meaning hit her. Liam’s wife, the one who had smiled and welcomed Charlie, was gone? The one who was knitting baby clothes? Liam’s pregnant wife was dead? It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. “How?”

“Her brakes were cut. She lost control of her car and the ER doc pronounced her dead an hour ago.”

Charlie felt her knees go weak, but she forced herself to stand. Fourteen roses. She did a quick count and nausea rolled.

“Ian, what are you doing?” Alex asked.

Ian said something, but she didn’t hear anything else. All she could see was pretty, sweet Avery. Avery had been through so much and she hadn’t deserved to die.

Her uncle was coming after all of them, very likely in conjunction with Eli Nelson.

The two men who hated her most in the world were coming after her, and they were obviously playing for keeps. Fourteen yellow roses. One for each of them. They would kill everyone. They would take out Ian and his brother and their friends and wives and likely even their children.

A sob caught in her throat. They might not know about Jesse. He didn’t have ties to Nelson. He’d barely been on the payroll for more than a few months. She would be surprised if they knew about him. If that fourteenth rose wasn’t meant for him, then it had to be for the baby. God, there was a rose for Carys. There was a rose for Grace and Sean’s baby girl. Ian’s niece.

All that death would be her fault because she’d come back into his life. He would lose his family. They would all lose because Chelsea was right. She’d been selfish, thinking only of herself, of getting back to the place where she felt safe. But in doing that, she’d placed all the people she cared about in danger.

She’d never had a chance. From the moment she’d been born, her path had been set, and every time she tried to find a way out, someone died. She wouldn’t get that house filled with children. She wouldn’t get to wake every morning and see their little faces and know that they would carry on after she and Ian were gone.

She had always been meant to die, her painful existence erased in a single bullet.

Guilt gnawed at her gut. There was only one way to try to make things better.

She turned to the door and walked out, a calm settling inside. She’d cost Liam his wife. She couldn’t cost the rest of them. Maybe her uncle would be satisfied with her. Maybe he would give up the rest. Perhaps he’d sent the flowers as a warning for her to give over to the inevitable without taking down everyone around her.

“Charlie?” Ian’s voice rang out, but she couldn’t listen to him now.

It would be such a simple thing. She would go and sit on the bench outside the building. It was pretty there. There were pansies of all different colors and green grass. She could sit on the bench and wait. If she let her mind go, she wouldn’t even feel it when the bullet found her heart or her head or wherever they decided to aim.

It would be fitting to let them take her outside his office. She’d gotten close. So close.

“Charlotte!”

She got to the outer doors of the office, opening them. Except they didn’t open. She pulled at them again, trying to stay calm. She had to stay calm. She had to be calm in order to do what she needed to do. She couldn’t lose it. She had to get to the stairs and out of the building.

The doors stuck, despite using all her strength. She needed to get out and the doors were f*cking locked, and Grace was somewhere out there and they would get to her. If she didn’t do what she needed to do the others would die.

A little hysteria started to churn inside her. She kicked at the doors. She had to get out. Couldn’t they see she had to get the f*ck out of here?

“Charlie, you can’t go out there.” Ian wrapped those big arms of his around her, pulling her away from her goal.

She kicked back, completely losing it. “Let me go!”

It no longer mattered that her dignity was gone. All that mattered was stopping what was about to happen.

“No.” If he even felt her puny attempts to get out of his arms, he didn’t show it. “You’re safer here. I told you I won’t let you run again.”