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Chapter Forty-Five


"Nick!" I shrieked, and I wrapped my arms around him, pressed my face into his chest, smelled him, felt him. "Oh my God, I was so scared for you. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm a'ight," he said, but his voice sounded strange.

I looked up at him, "Nick... what's going on?" I asked.

His eyes were full of sorrow. He opened his mouth to answer but Cora cut him off. "It's not any of your business, you nosy little beast," she said. "Nick, I told you she'd be nothing but trouble right from the start, didn't I? But you insisted on keeping her around..."

He closed his eyes.

My heart thundered. "Nick?" I pleaded. "What's going on?"

He opened this eyes again and he had tears in them that he was fighting back.

"What's going on is that you're a liability. You know too much," Cora said.

"I don't know anything," I replied, and I turned around to face her to find she had pulled a gun from God knows where and had it leveled at me. "Oh Jesus!" I cried at the sight of the barrell. I jumped back into Nick, "Oh my God."

"Cora..." Nick's voice was tired, "C'mon, stop."

"Nick, I told you it would come to this, and you didn't listen. She knows too much, we won't even get down the block before she calls the police unless we take care of her." Cora stared at him, her eyes narrowed, "Don't you want to be with me?" she demanded.

I looked up at Nick wildly.

"I --"

"Nick!" Cora shouted, "Don't you dare wimp out on me now. Not like you did with Z, not like you did last night with Hugh. She's nobody, nobody will miss her."

I felt my throat constrict. "It was you?" I asked.

Nick looked down at me.

"You... you killed Z and Hugh?"

Nick went to answer but again Cora cut him off, "No. It wasn't him. It was his idea - his idea and here I am doing all the dirty work. I was going to just divorce Hugh and jump the label, but then Hugh named me beneficiary and Nick got greedy for the millions I stood to inherit if Hugh was dead." She paused and I could see the guilt in Nick's face. "Lawrence was supposed to be implicated in Hugh's death - that's why we had to kill poor Z, he was just a stepping stone to framing a suspect. This is Lawrence's gun after all. As far as anyone would ever know Lawrence killed Hugh in revenge for Hugh killing Z... the perfect double jeopardy alibi. Instead, Nick hires a fucking gardener as a hitman..."

"He was a real hit man," Nick argued.

"Well he certainly did a piss poor job, didn't he? Taking the money and running. Didn't see him out there killing Hugh when he was supposed to, was he?"

"How was I supposed to know he was gonna run? I had Sam pay him, I never even met the guy!" I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"See? You should've paid him yourself!" Cora yelled.

"I didn't have time to!"

"Because you were too busy fucking your alibi!" Cora hollored.

"Like you weren't fucking every guy that crossed your path!" Nick yelled back. "I know you were sleeping with the Sweed, I ain't stupid!"

"How the fuck else do you think we were gonna get such a great record deal?"

Nick rubbed his forehead, frustrated.

"Then you get all involved," Cora said, suddenly turning back to me and continuing her story, "And now nobody's going to be looking at Lawrence, they're all going to be looking at you and you know too damn much. You know about Nick and I and about Hugh naming me beneficiary. You've suspected me for Z's death the whole time... You're too smart for your own damn good, which is why we need to kill, you, too. And by we, I mean I because just like right now, Nick wussed out when we killed Z and Hugh. So no, Samantha, Nick didn't kill them. I killed them. He was supposed to, but he found he was a little trigger shy at the last moment." She shook her head, "He's too damn soft."

"I ain't soft," Nick said through clenched teeth.

"You are," Cora snapped. "You're all talk. Every time a moment comes where you can actually do what you say, you wuss-out."

"Well it's not easy," Nick muttered, his face turning red.

"Sure it is," Cora said, "You just aim and --" her finger tightened on the trigger. I felt my eyes widen as she pulled. Nick grabbed me and yanked me out of the trajectory only just in time. The bullet whizzed by and hit a cupboard down the hallway, sending glass flying every which way, one of the many gold-plated awards fell to the floor and pieces rolled across the stone tiles.

Nick was clutching me to his chest, where I'd landed when he'd yanked me out of the way. He steadied me and looked at Cora. "Stop," he said.

"What? Do you have feelings for her?" Cora snarled.

Nick clearly didn't know how to respond.

She laughed. "Oh this is unbelievable. After months of planning, and you whining and begging me for more, now you find another woman? At this point of the game, Nick?" She shook her head, "It's too late to change your mind now," she said, "You chose me, you chose the money, you chose the sex. It's too late to chose her."

"It's never too late," I said. I turned to Nick. "Nick, it's never too late. You choose your future, remember, I told you that. You choose, not her - not me - not anyone. You choose. You choose." My hands were shaking as I laid them on his chest. "You choose to be good or you choose to be bad. You're good in here Nick," I patted him over his heart.

Cora laughed. "Good people don't chose to murder their friends in the name of sex and money."

"You're right," I said, "Good people don't chose that... but you just said yourself that Nick didn't do it. You did."

Cora glowered.

I looked up at Nick. "Don't chose this, Nick," I pleaded. "I believe in you."

He licked his lips. "But it's too late. Z's dead. Hugh's dead. If I don't go, if I don't run... then what? This ain't gonna just blow over..." He stared into my eyes, "Sam, if I'd only met you sooner, then maybe you'd be right. Maybe I'd have a choice, but... I think Cora's right. I think it's too late."

I felt tears spill over onto my cheeks. "That's a lie," I whispered. "Don't be a coward, hiding behind her lies."

I heard Cora's gun click behind me. "Nick, we need to go."

"Sam," Nick whispered.

"You're just going to stand there and let her kill me because I came a little too late?" I choked. "Nick... I love you." I stared into his eyes. I refused to look away. I could feel him breaking, could feel the resolution building in him, could feel the right choice formulating and being made deep inside him...

"Oh fuck this," Cora snapped.

And what happened next happened so fast and all at once that I couldn't even comprehend it as it happened. It was only in the aftermath, as everything settled, as the glass landed on the ground and the ringing silence followed and I lay on the floor beneath him that I could wrap my mind around it... and even then it was like a blur...

Cora lifted the gun, pulled the trigger. The blast of the shot echoed through the room. The first bullet missed, and sent a rainfall of glass showering over the foyer. Nick's hands gripped my shoulders, and he spun, pulling me into him and around so that he was back-to Cora, my face pressed into his chest as he hunkered down over me, clutching me tightly, his body wrapping around mine. A second - then a third - and even a fourth gunshot rang through the room. More glass flew around us, like slow motion, and I felt Nick's body jolt with the force of two of the shots. Then the weight of him came down against me and I fell backward. Nick's eyes meeting mine, a sort of dumbfounded expression on his face. We stared into eachother's eyes as we fell onto the floor among the glass shards and broken awards.

His mouth moved, but no sound came out, but I could clearly see the word he was forming -- Sam.

Empty clicks echoed through the foyer as my back hit the floor and Nick's weight landed on top of me. Cora's gun was out of ammo. "God fucking damn it!" she screamed.

The front door burst open.

Three cops poured into the foyer, guns up.

Cora dropped the gun in her hand. It hit the floor with a thump, and her hands went into the air.

Nick shuddered on top of me and I quickly rolled him over, my breath catching in my throat as I saw the blood on my hands. "Oh no, oh no, no," I wailed and I grappled at his shirt, ripping the buttons of his suit clean off him, pulling it open, revealing his chest. His perfec chest. Still perfect, unbroken by the bullets that had gone into his back. "Nick," I begged. He was heaving for breath. "Oh Jesus, somebody help him," I pleaded.

The cops rushed over and knelt down beside us. One of the officers turned Nick onto his side. He grabbed the radio clipped to his shoulder, "We have a GSW in here!" he yelled into it.

"Sss- sss- S-Sam," Nick choked, his voice shaking, his eyes unfocused, struggling still to keep me in his vision. "Sam..."

"I'm here," I answered, and I bent forward to stare into his face, put my hands on his cheeks. "Nick, I'm right here. They're gonna help you."

"I-it-it's t-too late," he choked.

"It's never too late," I whispered.

He stared into my face. He was convulsing, just a little, his eyes searching mine.

A couple EMTs rushed into the room pushing a stretcher, carrying equipment. They plunged themselves to the floor around him, one of them grabbed hold of me and pushed me back. "S-Sam..." Nick protested, and he reached a shaking hand through the throng of EMTs and I grabbed hold of it as they continued ripping away his jacket and shirt to get to his back. My fingers twined with his until he lost his grip and his fingers slipped away.