Chapter Twenty-Eight: Never Goes The Way You Plan


In the mostly dark utility room of Joe Pierno's mansion, Sonia's arm moved with the stiff, cold automatism of a robot, the noise-muffled pistol in her hand centering on the woman with the flashlight, whose lips were parted to scream. There were no thoughts in Sonia's mind as she squeezed the trigger, only a desperate instinct to control the situation by any means necessary, before it all exploded into pandemonium.

She might as well have not even bothered.

The flashlight-wielding woman issued forth a siren-like shriek as the bullet smacked home right above the bridge of her nose, between her eyes—a good shot, a shot that should have killed her instantly. The woman stumbled back from the threshold as if from a shove, flashlight slipping from her slackening hand. She backed into the wall behind her, knees wobbling, and slid down it, her face frozen in a confused expression, as if she spent her final moments trying to work out some particularly hard riddle. Blood leaked out from the ragged hole in her forehead and dribbled from her nostrils, black as oil in the moonlight, staining her lips and chin and the front of her gray-and-white maid's uniform.

Sonia cringed, for that shriek heralded both the undoing of her plan and the coming of chaos. Trevor had tried to warn her of this several times with his 'it never goes the way you plan' homily, but she hadn't listened. She hadn't worried about it. God, she hated it when he was right. He was going to be smug about it for days.

For a handful of tense seconds, the world was almost as silent as a graveyard, the only sound the low, buzzing hum of nocturnal insect life from outside. Sonia could just imagine the guards in the house—and the ones outside too—pausing in their patrols, or whatever they happened to be doing in the moment, to realize yes, that was indeed a scream they had just heard. Red alert! All hands on deck!

And as if on cue, the silence was shattered by a raucous of raised voices. One voice, deep and robust and tinged with an Alderney accent that was on its way out, shouted clearly: "Secure the boss!" And then there was the muted thunder of running feet.

"Shit," Sonia hissed unhappily.

Trevor, on the other hand, found the whole situation quite amusing. "Congratulations, sunshine," he laughed. "Your plan went from start to shit in two seconds. That's gotta be a world record."

Laugh it up, asshole, Sonia thought, annoyed. "They can only come through these doors one at a time," she said, and hoped. There was nothing to use for cover in the small room, if more than one did come through. "If you cover the back door and I cover this one, I think we can take them." If not, they were as good as fucked.

"I've got a better idea!" Trevor declared spastically. But, Trevor being Trevor, he did not elucidate on what that idea was—not in words, anyway. He gripped his carbine rifle in both hands and booked ass through the back door without further ado…

…and ran right into one of Pierno's men, who'd just barreled around the right side of the mansion. The pair stumbled back from each other, Trevor snarling out a loud curse. Sonia raised her pistol, again without thinking, and fired a bullet into the small space between Trevor's right elbow and the door jamb, her only clear shot to the goon. Very risky, but she was rewarded with the sight of blood coming from the goon's arm and the sound of a pained oath. Trevor skirted around the wounded man and disappeared to the area of the driveway, leaving her to finish him off.

With better line of sight now, Sonia fired a second bullet into the goon's head as he was trying to raise his assault rifle on her, dropping him dead. She glanced over her shoulder, where the muted rumble of many swift footsteps grew louder and closer. The guards inside the mansion were almost to the utility room now.

With no choice in the matter, Sonia hurried to the back door, well aware that the rest of the guards outside must have already made it to this side of the mansion by now—she would likely run out into their gunfire, and likely die as a result.

Better to die fighting than trapped inside a dark room, she thought. She had spent so much of her life trapped, helpless and cowering, in dark places of both the physical and the psychological variety; the closet on Prickle Pine Road, a jail cell, an interrogation room, the years of heroin use, her mental and emotional 'walls'. She was tired of being trapped and falling into traps set by others and the ones she unknowingly set for herself. No more.

Sonia took a deep breath and broke from the utility room, and—surprise, surprise—just as the remaining five guards outside opened fire from behind their cover positions. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as hot lead cut through the dry heat of the night, smacking into Pierno's expensive cars, ricocheting off the driveway pavement, burrowing into the ground around Sonia's feet. Some bullets even came close enough to graze her flesh. Sonia hardly felt it, hardly heard the booming action of the guns and the thumping impact of their bullets. Her pulse throbbed crazily in her throat and temples, and thundered like a storm in her ears. She felt like she was on fire, every nerve, muscle, and vein burning with wild adrenalin.

"Cocksucking wop turds!" Trevor bellowed in a high, wild voice, his face a barbarian mask of ferocious delight, eyes glinting bright with bloodlust. The war cry was accompanied by the rapid tat-tat-tat of his carbine rifle. "You're all fucking dead! Dead, dead, deeeaaaaad!"

The torrent of gunfire made the mafiosi briefly fall back into cover, giving Sonia just enough time to dodge between Pierno's expensive cars, where Trevor was firing from. She squatted down behind the rear left side tire of Pierno's silver Enus Super Diamond, panting and sweating and gripping her gun tight. Trevor dropped down as the opposing gunfire returned, bullets slamming into the Enus's passenger side and exploding the car's windows. Sonia found herself laughing for the fact that Pierno's men were destroying his beloved car, and ducked her head as a shower of broken, pebbled glass rained down around her.

Her laughter caught in her throat when she looked up a moment later and saw a man in a black leather jacket appear at the front end of the car, his assault rifle poised on Trevor, who had his back to him. He must have come from the utility room. Sonia's heart dropped while her muffled pistol raised, her eyes staring down the iron sights, finger already on the trigger. No thought, only instinct, this one more powerful than the last. It felt as if her will, her whole being, extended to the gun in her hand, to the bullet in the barrel.

The goon's face erupted in a shower of gore, and his body flumped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Trevor jerked his head back to stare at the dead body, and then he looked at the woman, meeting her eyes. Sonia grinned savagely, and Trevor mirrored the expression.

"Mm, someone just earned herself some more Trevor lovin'," he promised over the sound of more bullets meeting metal.

Sonia huffed out a small laugh. "As if I have to earn it."

"Hey, whoa. I'm not that easy." Trevor blinked. "Okay, I am, but…" He trailed off, looking at her hands now. "Jesus, you're shakin' like a leaf in a stiff wind. All we've been through, you better not be freakin' out on me now, sunshine."

Sonia glanced down at her hands, still holding her pistol in a death grip. They were indeed trembling. And now that she noticed it, she felt her whole body shaking. She also had to pee. Badly. She was scared—more scared than she had ever been before—because it wasn't just about her anymore; it wasn't about her at all. It was about the man across from her and the one a state away, tied to a chair and at the mercy of Paul Pierno; it was about that man's innocent son, who would never grow up to experience the good things she had experienced or feel the good things she had felt. She owed them because in some way or another they were all in their positions because of her. And maybe she could never make up for the grief and pain and loss she had caused them, but she had to try. She could not fail them.

"I'm good," Sonia said. "Scared shitless, but good."

Three more men burst from the utility room. That made four that had come from the mansion, which left two others on the inside. They were probably the ones 'securing the boss'.

Trevor rose briefly from cover to fire on them, hooting with glee as he filled one goon full of lead and got another in the calf. The uninjured man ran for the safety of the utility room, but didn't get far. Sonia popped up from behind the Enus and shot the man in the back three times. The goon with the wounded calf, who was on the ground, unable to stand, aimed his rifle. Not at either one of them, Sonia noticed with gripping alarm, but at the car's rear passenger side. Where the gas tank was.

Fuck.

Her hands were still shaking as she aimed and fired and missed—No! Fuck! The bullet whizzed off to the man's right, embedding itself in a flower bed lining the wall of the mansion. He flinched, giving Trevor just enough time to blow his brains out.

As the pair sought cover behind the car once again, Sonia slammed her fist into the side of it, once, twice, thrice, infuriated with herself. Trevor grabbed her by the wrist, his gaze passing over her bloodied knuckles before he gave her a weird look.

"The fuck are you doing that for?"

Sonia snatched her hand back, not meeting his eyes. "I almost got us blown to kingdom come. I…you can take care of the rest of them without me. I'm going after Pierno." He was the key to everything here; the key to Trevor's and Brian's vengeance. He could not get away. She would chase him to the end of the world, if she had to.

Before Trevor could even say a word, she was rushing off for the utility room, head ducked down. Trevor gave her some covering fire until she was safely inside the room, wondering what in all hell that was about.

As the gunfire continued to blaze between Trevor and the remaining goons, Sonia knelt in the threshold of the utility room, where a dead man was sprawled out over the stoop, feeling a sharp stitch of pain run up her side. She ignored it as she took the man's AK-47 and patted down his pockets for any extra magazines, finding one. She checked the one already loaded into the gun and, satisfied that there were enough bullets for now, slipped the spare mag into the back pocket of her jeans.

That done Sonia proceeded inside the mansion, stepping over the maid's lifeless body, and came to a short, darkened hallway. As she raced along it, she heard no signs of life aside from her own footsteps and the gunfire still raging outside. Sonia came to a door and rushed heedlessly through it, not liking this quiet one bit. Had Pierno already been spirited away to safety?

Sonia found herself in a spacious, brightly-lit kitchen with flat, stone flooring, mahogany cabinetry, state-of-the-art stainless steel appliances and expensive-looking cookware suspended from racks bolted in the ceiling. There was even a brick oven huddled in a corner. It was the kind of kitchen that would make a world-renowned chef envious.

Sonia moved on to the next room, where there was a great mahogany dining table with matching chairs and china cabinets full of antique Italian flatware that was oddly similar to the set her mother had owned, a centuries-old heirloom that had been passed down among the women in their family. Except me, Sonia thought, but maybe that was just as well. For all the things Sonia had done, her mother was likely rolling over in her grave. Her father, too. They certainly would've had a thing or two to say about Trevor, as well. Her parents had always wanted her to end up with an Italian man her age, who would treat her good. They would have been positively horrified that she had instead chosen for herself a Canadian, who was some ten odd years older than her and had tried to kill her multiple times.

Sonia laughed at the thought as she burst out of the dining room and into the living room, another spacious area with luxurious furniture and knick knacks, and lit up by a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Sonia breezed past a polished black grand piano, trod over a huge and colorful Turkish rug, and came to the foyer, where there was a red-carpeted grand staircase leading up to the second floor and another crystal chandelier suspended from the ceiling. The front doors, which were huge, twin panes of stained glass framed by white wood and set with bronzed door latches, locks, and hinges, were wide open and Sonia could hear voices coming from the front yard.

She rushed out onto the porch, her side paining her again, and saw two suited goons hustling Pierno, who was garbed in a navy-blue, silk house robe that stretched over his generous belly, down the walkway.

Sonia took advantage of her unnoticed presence, raised the assault rifle, and put a round in the back of one of the goons' heads. Joe Pierno recoiled as blood and brain matter splattered the left side of his face and house robe. The goon at his right side grabbed him by the shoulders, shoved him unceremoniously into some bushes, and whirled on Sonia with gun drawn, but it was already too late for him. Sonia fired a volley of bullets into him, his body jerking as if he were having a seizure, spurts of blood flying from his wounds. His body collapsed on the walkway, twitched, and then grew still.

Sonia came down from the porch, sweat trickling in rivulets down her face from her forehead and temples. She felt a little lightheaded, probably from her fading adrenalin high; all the action was starting to catch up with her now.

Joe Pierno scrambled on hands and knees from the bushes bordering his pristine front yard, leaves stuck in his thinning, salt-and-pepper hair, and reached for one of his dead bodyguards' guns. Sonia fired a bullet into the corpse, making the living man flinch back before he could get a hand on the pistol.

"Don't," Sonia said, aiming the AK at Joe's head now. "It's over. You've lost."

"What?" a voice spoke in her ear. Trevor. "Who lost? Wait—you got that bastard already? How the fuck did you manage that?"

"Caught him trying to escape out the front with his bodyguards," Sonia replied, swiping her forearm across her perspiring forehead. Jesus God, why was it so unbearably hot all of sudden? "And I had the element of surprise. So, wrap it up, Trev, and get over here. I want to book it before the cops show up, which could be any time now."

"You're all business and no fun, ain't you? Fine, I'll be there in sec, so keep your panties on…you know, so I can take them off you myself. With my teeth. And then I'll slip my tongue in your—"

"Trevor," Sonia interrupted, his risqué suggestions only increasing the heat she already felt, but for an entirely different reason. "Jesus, not now."

"Mm, the dirty talk gettin' you all hot and bothered, eh? Not really seeing a problem with that."

Sonia rolled her eyes half-heartedly. "Just get over here, you lunatic." She focused her attention on Joe, who glared up at her and the AK in her hands with a combination of hatred and fear. Sweat ran down his jowly face, as well, though not nearly as much as it ran down Sonia's. "As for you—roll over on your belly and put your hands behind your back."

Joe didn't move. "You," he snarled. "I should have known! If you think you're going to get away with—"

"I already have!" Sonia shouted at him. "It's over! And you're going to pay for what you did to Brian's son. Now roll the fuck over and put your hands behind your back! I won't say it again!"

Joe stared at her for a moment, his eyes crawling up and down her body, and then he grinned, much too smugly for Sonia's liking. "It doesn't look like you're going to be very talkative soon, anyway. I don't know if you've realized it yet or not, but you've been shot." He pointed a finger at her shirt.

Sonia didn't need to look down to know he was right. As soon as he'd mentioned it, she felt it; the pain she had been ignoring, that she had refused to acknowlege, like a searing knife in her side now. How? How the fuck had she gotten shot? When the fuck had she gotten shot? Doesn't matter. Focus. Sonia gripped the AK tight, blinking away the sweat getting in her eyes. "You've got five seconds to comply, and then I'm gonna put a bullet somewhere very unpleasant."

With no choice in the matter, Joe did as he was told, rolling on his stomach and pulling his arms behind his back, crossing his wrists as if he were expecting to be handcuffed—which was, more or less, the reality he was facing, just not yet. Sonia wasn't stupid; she knew he would take advantage of her injury and try to gain the upper hand. Best to wait for Trevor, let him secure the bastard.

As Sonia waited on the man, she risked a look down at her side, where the pain radiated from, and wished she hadn't. There was a hole in her black tank top, just above the hem and her hip, the cloth around it darker than the rest of the shirt, clearly from wetness. The hip and upper thigh of her jeans was sodden with blood. Shit. That's not good.

In the time it took Trevor to get there, Joe Pierno hadn't moved a muscle, but Sonia began to feel worse and worse, the lightheadedness transitioning to dizziness and then to the much stronger vertigo, until she became afraid she wouldn't be able to stay standing much longer.

When Trevor finally appeared from the front doors of the mansion, grinning ear to ear, he took one look at her and sobered up quick.

Sonia swayed on her feet, from both vertigo and relief. Finally, she could faint now. Except she didn't faint—no, of course not, the universe was cruel. She started to slip to her knees, and then Trevor was there next to her, reaching out. Sonia batted his hands away with what little strength she had left.

"Don't worry about me." She pulled two pairs of zip ties from her back left pocket and pushed them at Trevor. "Secure his legs and wrists before he tries any shit." Then she proceeded to lie down on the warm concrete on her uninjured side, pressing a hand over the throbbing wound. Even with the pain, it still felt good to lie down; it relieved some of the exhaustion and vertigo she felt.

She may have lost consciousness for a minute; Sonia couldn't be sure, but one moment she was there by herself and the next Trevor was kneeling beside her and pushing her over onto her back. The pain was worse now, burning, stabbing, beating with its own pulse.

"Did you tie him up?" Sonia asked, her words slurring a little. "He'll try something if you don't. It finally worked out like it's supposed to. Can't fuck that up."

"You call this 'working out like it's supposed to'?" Trevor replied, scowling down at her. "You got shot, you dumbass. When the fuck were you gonna tell me, huh? Or was I supposed to just discover your dead body? How the fuck did this happen?"

Sonia laughed, although it sounded weak and caused more pain, her face scrunching up with it. "So many bullets flying around, one of them was bound to find me."

Trevor grabbed her face, fingers digging into her jaw. "You think this is fucking funny?" he growled. He was angry. He was angry and scared, and she was making jokes.

"Trevor..." she moaned, reaching up a hand to pull at his wrist. Her grip was as weak as her voice sounded. "Let go."

He didn't. "Why the fuck didn't you say something!?"

"I don't know. I didn't want to fuck this up." Sonia gave up trying to pry his hand from her face, letting her own fall limply to the ground. Her eyes filled with tears and began to droop closed; they felt too heavy to keep open. "I'm sorry."

Trevor slapped her hard. "No night-night for you, sunshine. C'mon, up you get." He slipped one arm around her back and the other under her knees, hauling her up with him. He had no idea what to do. She needed medical attention, but he couldn't take her to hospital. They always reported GSWs to the cops, and it wasn't like he could take an entire hospital hostage to keep them from doing it. Or could he? Nah, probably not; it was a nice idea, but he didn't have the man-power for it.

"I'm sorry," the woman muttered against his shoulder as he carried her off down the rest of the walkway. Trevor wasn't worried about the trussed up mafia boss at the moment; he sure as fuck wasn't going anywhere. "I'm sorry I screwed everything up for you. I didn't mean to."

Trevor had no idea what she was talking about. She wasn't making any sense. "You didn't screw up nothin', angel. Now, shut the fuck up, yeah? I'm trying to think."

A car; he needed a car, first, before he did anything else. The SUV they had come here in was too far up the street, though. He needed to conserve what time he could, as well, because he had no idea how much blood she'd already lost or how much more she would lose.

You should just fucking leave her here, a voice in his head told him. Let her bleed out and die and save yourself the trouble. Even if she lives, you know how it's gonna end, how it always fucking ends.

Yes, Trevor knew how it was going to end, but he didn't want it to end now, here, like this, without a proper goodbye. He wanted to be with her one last time before he put a permanent end to all of it; just one last time, so he could commit to memory what it was like to be loved unconditionally and what could have been if he wasn't the monster that he was.

Trevor put Sonia down in the grass near the curb, propping her back against a fire hydrant. He pointed a finger at her face. "Don't you pass out on me, or I'll have to slap the shit outta you again."

Sonia nodded.

Trevor pressed a rough kiss to her forehead and then darted off across the street, where a dark blue luxury sedan was parked. It was unlocked. When Trevor was in the driver's seat, he found that the key had been left in the center cup holder, saving him the trouble of having to hot wire it. Well, of course. All these rich idiots seemed to think a few rent-a-cops and an iron fence around the neighborhood made it safe. They would think differently after tonight.

He stuck the key in the ignition, started the car, and pulled it around to the curb, where Sonia was still sitting, surprisingly conscious. Trevor figured she would've done exactly the opposite of what he'd told her to do, as usual.

Once he got her in the passenger seat, Trevor went back up the walkway of Joe Pierno's mansion and found the man where he'd left him, bound wrist and ankle on the ground. He grabbed the fat man under his arms and dragged him off to the car, stuffing him ungraciously into the back seat.

Joe glared at him and curled his lip in a sneer. "You both will come to regret this, mark my words."

"Sure, sure," Trevor replied dismissively, resting an arm across the top of the car door. "Alrighty, so this is how it's gonna go: you're gonna play your part as the obedient hostage and tell me where I can find your 'mob doctor'. And don't even bother telling me you don't have one; I know all you mafia pricks keep a medical professional, or a vet at the least, in your pocket, so you can patch up your goons when they get shot. So?"

Joe laughed at him, which was his first mistake. His second mistake came next. "You don't honestly expect me to tell you, do you? You're a bigger fool than you look, if so." He lifted his chin to further show his defiance. "She's as good as dead, as she should be."

Trevor's face twitched as he restrained, just barely, the urge to rip the man's face off with his bare hands. He reached behind himself and pulled out the pistol he always kept tucked in the waist of his jeans. He aimed it at Pierno's belly and squeezed the trigger.

"Looks like you and her are in the same goddamn sinking boat now, huh?" Trevor said over the man's pained screams, grinning. "She dies, you die; she lives, you live. So, you wanna tell me where that doc is now?"


A/N: Well, hello. Long time no see. I'm going to be honest with y'all. I struggled hard with this chapter. I shit you not, I was writing this and rewriting it and scrapping it and starting the cycle all over again for months. It was so frustrating I had to step back for a while, take a breath. I figured out an ending, wrote some other scenes for other chapters, and then took the Muse on vacation to Skyrim for a while. Skyrim is a lovely place, world-eating dragon aside. All of this seemed to help clear my block, because here's a chapter (short, yes, but a chapter nonetheless!). Finally! Now I just hope it's better than the other crap I wrote and killed out of frustration.