A/N: Again, thank you all for the reviews. A lot happens in this chapter: hope you enjoy!

Also to the readers of Faling Into You: we're now up to chapter 52; the link is in my profile, as always!

Gabriella's voice was dissonantly controlled; despite the shaking of her hands and the inexpressible fear in her eyes. "I don't care how you do it, or how long it takes. Not a single one of you leaves this room until you can tell me where the hell he has been; and where he's going. Just get me an hour alone with him."

Turning on her heel, she only managed to take three steps before a throat-ripping sob wracked her body. She slammed her fist desperately against the closed doors of the elevator; needing to get out of there as soon as possible. She had to get to the hospital. She couldn't let him think that he was alone. Her balled hand was stilled before it was able to collide with more force against the door. Gabriella only needed to take on look at the dark hand resting on her wrist before she began to openly weep; falling into the side of her friend.

"What have I done, Taylor?" she cried, her body convulsing.

Her friend was silent; there was no response that could ever hope to comfort her. "Come on, I'll drive."

"I don't want Gabi to get caught up in this…" Her silken voice caressed the walls of the house; it was the first time that they had been alone in it for a while.

"She won't."

Ana rested her head on her husband's shoulder. It was an affectionate act that had grown almost entirely absent from their relationship: the nature of their business cultured hardened attitudes. "I want our lives back, Seb," she sighed. "For the first time in…I don't remember how long, I had a real conversation with our daughter; I helped her get ready to go out. She's so clever and wonderful – even though we aren't here enough. Are we really going to be able to protect her from this indefinitely?"

"Of course."

It was what he had to believe.

"I don't want her to get involved in the company. She's too good for it."

"We can protect her in other ways," Sebastian assured his wife; even if his own doubts to the contrary had been increasingly playing on his mind. Their 'conflict' with Alex Johnson was becoming more dangerous and unavoidable than he was willing to let his wife know; his own lack of control had exacerbated the once business feud and he feared the consequences. "I promise that we will finish this, soon."

Ana simply nodded: she didn't believe him. It was something that he had been saying since they had first married 20 years ago; there was no chance of it happening now.

As the pair went to sleep that evening – both wrapped in worries about the future; a future that was more potentially fatal for one than the other- they were oblivious to the figure lurking in the shadows. They were oblivious to petrol pouring through the letter box. They were oblivious to the flames.

At precisely 2 am the next morning, Gabriella's movie marathon with her friends was interrupted by the frantic hammering of her Godfather on the front door.

Her life was never the same again.

A smirk contorted his lips as he reclined in the armchair of his office, watching the tape of the crash over and over again. It was hard for him to identify a favourite memory. He had quite enjoyed watching the Montez household go up in flames; the sight of two of his greatest nemeses clawing at the windows before sinking to the floor was nothing short of fulfilling. At the time it had been marred by the fact that their fifteen year-old daughter had been out of the house, though: his revenge hadn't been as sadistic as he had initially planned. The event had also put him at a fair amount of risk, too. He had never expected that their extermination would cause such a furore within the company. He'd had to change his identity and lie low for far too long.

Johnson grimaced. No, perhaps, the Montez double murder hadn't been his favourite.

"So what's this one called?" Dan teased his brother mercilessly, smirking at the red hue tinting his cheeks.

"Would you stop making out like I'm some sort of man-whore?" Troy requested – half irritated, half amused. "This is our fifth date."

"Wow. I'm proud of you man." He rolled his eyes. "And I'm not trying to call you a whore. I'm reminding you how much of a girl you've been since you broke up with Lucy. You can't get over her – it makes me feel ill."

"I'm going to ignore you and carry on driving."

"Good, I'll carry on talking then. Dude, she wasn't even that hot. Sure, she was nice. But she was one girl. You have them falling all over you. Be a man and get laid…a lot."

"Dan!" Troy spared a glance at him. "I am so going to push you off the top of the ferris wheel when we get to the fair…"

"As if!" Dan scoffed. "My brother, Troy Bolton, incapable of squashing a fly, might I add, is threatening to cause another harm…don't make me laugh."

Troy gulped. He hadn't shared his career choice with his brother. "Whatever."

"Okay, okay, joking aside, big bro…This Lucy thing has got to stop. Stop comparing every single girl to her; you won't find another Lucy. You need someone else."

Smiling tightly, Troy nodded his head. "I know, I know. I just need a break from…" he paused, frowning, when he noticed the car behind them approaching a little bit too quickly for his liking – CIA training may have had some benefits but it compounded paranoia. "What the fuck is that dude doing?" Troy questioned as he instinctively sped up.

His eyes widened as another car came hurtling around the corner; slamming into the passenger side of his Ford. For a moment time stopped. Troy remembered seeing the startled, pained expression of his brother. Almost instantaneously, the car began to roll. As their vehicle lay crushed at the bottom of the foothill, all that Troy could think about was the silence of his brother.

His life would never be the same again.

Johnson's face was once again twisted by his sadistic grin. The Bolton attempt had definitely been gratifying. It had been a new type of revenge that had proved to provide so much more pleasure. At first he had been livid that Troy had survived. Seeing his emotional destruction, though; seeing him fall off the righteous government path and go rogue had generated a longer-lasting satisfaction: Troy would have to live with the mistake that he had made getting involved with Johnson forever.

Still, he ran his finger around the rim of his wineglass as he contemplated; Bolton's unfortunate survival had forced him under the radar again. Hiding two different identities had been tiresome and Johnson had grown bored: he was getting old and less easily able to seek base pleasures than he had been. It was just luck that his quest for a quiet retirement would also be his last game. And what a game it would be.

The discovery that Montez and Bolton, the two obstacles standing in the way of his retirement, were involved – completely unaware of the other's profession- definitely had been a good day.

Johson rewound the tape of Bolton's (second) crash one last time. He had a feeling that disposing of Bolton and Montez would easily become his favourite memory.

Six broken ribs, five agonizing hours of surgery, one punctured lung, another broken arm: all leaving one distraught wife in their wake.

It didn't matter that Gabriella hadn't slept for almost twenty-four hours; she refused to let her eyelids droop. She was convinced that if she closed them for even the smallest of seconds she would awake and he wouldn't be there.

There were thirty-seven scratches blighting his normally flawless features; or at least that was her best guess: it was sometimes impossible to tell where one ended and another began. In the four hours since he had been wheeled out of surgery, Gabriella had counted the blemishes upon his skin over and over again, and each tally seemed to inflict a similar wound upon her own heart; clawing at the surface of the muscle and etching an indelible scar upon it in guilt's scorching ink. She was responsible for each and every broken bone and shredded piece of skin. It was Gabriella's fault and Gabriella's fault alone; there was no more inescapable and horrifying truth. It wasn't merely that any meaning in her life would have been obliterated had he died, but that she alone would have deprived him of the life that he deserved to lead; she alone would have cost the world a man like him.

Gabriella tried once again to repress the need to blink: she didn't want to miss even the slightest sign that his condition was improving – or deteriorating. At the reoccurrence of that thought, it was as if her prayers had been answered and Troy's eyelids began to flutter. His breathing became raspier, this newly toxic air grating at his throat as it fought to escape. An incomprehensible range of emotion whirled over the surface of his eyes in those first few seconds after the couple's eyes locked; the sentiments swirled around his iris in a confused, endless cycle.

Fear

Relief

Guilt

Love

This was it, Gabriella thought. This would be the last time that she would ever see such a feeling reflected in his eyes.

"Gabi," he whispered hoarsely; his eyes reaching out to her as his arms couldn't. Only recently dried tears stabbed at the corners of Gabriella's eyes upon seeing the pain in his face and hearing his broken voice.

"I…need…" he continued, struggling against the damage that was constraining his every action.

"Shhh," Gabriella soothed, unconsciously repressing the truth that was bubbling in her throat: his health had to be her first priority. She ran her fingers over his clammy forehead and the broken skin of his cheeks. "Don't try to speak," she scolded as she reached over to the bedside table to fetch a glass of water. Gabriella eased the straw between Troy's lips; wincing at the effort and discomfort with which the cool liquid was travelling down his throat. Informing her with his eyes that his thirst had been quenched, Troy regarded his wife with his heart pounding in his chest. She looked so exhausted and utterly wretched; it pained him to know that he was once again the cause. Even so, there was a trace of something else casting its shadow over her features – something dark and angry. Troy didn't get chance to analyse the fleeting observation, however: he had more pressing matters at hand.

"Are you okay?" he managed to ask; this time with slightly more ease.

Gabriella widened her eyes incredulously. "Am I okay?" she squeaked questioningly. "You almost died in a crash and you want to know if…" Her sentence trailed off into nothingness as she contemplated the extent to which that question had proved precisely how much better he was than her.

"I mean…" Troy started again before coughing painfully. "You're safe?" He was so weary; each word was costing him an incredible amount of energy. His eyes were heavy but he forced them upon the angelic face peering down at him.

"Safe?" She repeated, perplexed. What on Earth could he mean by that? He was probably confused Humoring him, Gabriella shook her head somewhat amused. "Of course I'm fine. It's you that we should be worrying about." She could see his eyes growing steadily heavier and a paralyzing cold swept from her extremities to her heart: she was running out of chances to tell him and make him believe in what they had. "I love you," she sniffed; her voice filled with unfathomable emotion. She was livid with herself when she began to weep in front of him: How dare she make this about herself.

"Hey," Troy pacified; wishing that he had the strength to take her into his arms. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

"Unless she wants you to," his derisive conscience sneered at him.

He was going to tell her, he really was. Troy was just so tired, though. He would tell her when he woke up next time. He had to: she didn't deserve this. "I love you, Gabriella – more than anything. Never doubt that." The unbridled emotion of his words was emphasized further by Troy's almost defeated acceptance of the fact that it would be one of the last – if not the last- chances he got to tell her. His final confession finished Troy off, and his eyes fell decisively closed as the last words left his mouth.

Gabriella nodded her head; trying to memorise everything about the way his eyes had looked and his voice had sounded as he spoke. "Get some rest, sweetheart," she encouraged whilst stroking her fingertips over his eyelids and through his hair. Troy simply made a noise of whimpering agreement in the back of his throat before his breathing evened. Leaning down, Gabriella placed a tentative kiss against his cold and chapped lips. It wasn't a kiss of promise, but a symbol of the end.

The three men walked morosely down the sterile corridor of the hospital; an overbearing sense of déjà-vu weighing upon every step that they took. They were once again lucky that their best friend had managed to escape Death's predatory clutches.

Stopping outside the room that they had been directed to, Chad was about to knock on the ajar door when he took notice of the despairing wife leaning down to brush a kiss against her husband's lips. Judging by the tear tracks casting an eerie glow over her cheeks, they needed a minute alone.

As Gabriella lifted her head again it felt as if this last kiss had snatched the final breath from her body. Her heart was gripped in the petrifyingly cold snare of lost Love. She couldn't help but cry at the thought of what was to come in the next few hours.

"I swear, Troy" she sobbed into the silent room. "I love you more than anything. I will never forgive myself for what he has done to you."

Even Jason turned to his friends with a confused frown on his face at the overheard confession. None of the three men were able to comment before the withered voice continued.

"I will make Johnson pay for what he has done to you. And then I'm done. I will spend the rest of my life trying to convince you that I want to be how I am when I'm with you. You make me, Troy," she gasped. Her words were becoming breathier as her body conceded control to her tears.

The eavesdropping men were oblivious to the rapidly approaching sound of heels slapping against linoleum flooring.

"I might have been just an assassin when I met you. But I can be more, I know I can. I need you." Finally admitting defeat, Gabriella allowed her head to sink to the pillow next to Troy's and her body slipped into a drained sleep.

Outside of the room, Chad, Zeke and Jason were staring at each other with gaping mouths. Chad didn't get the opportunity to shuffle the thoughts ricocheting off the walls of his mind and verbally express them: somebody else got there first.

"Shit," Taylor exclaimed stunned; drawing the men's attentions to her.

Realisation once again dawned in all of their eyes.

"Holy shit."

It was an aptly emphasized and harmonized response to the realization.