And yet, as I bolted into the cavernous room, I couldn’t bring myself to regret one ounce of the love I bore for Charlotte. Shuddering at the desolation that stretched mercilessly all around me, I pushed forward until the faintest glimmer of light penetrated the darkness.
Then I saw her. Floating like an angel, the light creating a halo around her head.
I pulled out my gun, aimed for my target, and took one precise shot. Charlotte collapsed right into my arms, her hair stuck to her face, her lashes powdered with frost, caressing the soft peaks of her cheeks, her lips blue and parted as if she wanted to confess a secret.
I was battling against time, and I was losing again.
Chapter 1
Marcus
“Charlotte,” I called for the hundredth time, but her eyes remained closed, and blood oozed from lips void of color.
Under the dirt and the bruises, she was shockingly pale and frighteningly still. Her head was rolling listlessly from one side to the other as the nurses and the paramedics whisked her stretcher down an endless corridor to an elevator that seemed miles away.
Grime and blood clogged her nostrils. Tears that had already dried left winding trails on cheeks that looked hollow and chalky-white. A mouth I had feasted on a mere couple of hours ago was tipped into a grimace that spoke of a load of pain that she did not deserve.
I jogged numbly by her moving bed, holding onto her hand more determinedly than if I were holding on for dear life. Doctors emerged from unseen hallways and shot directives every which way.
“Don’t leave me,” I muttered while my vision clouded, and my racing heart slowly joined Charlotte in her stillness.
She had crept into my heart, and like a thief, she had possessed it. She had become my world, and now, she was lying there, bruised and in pieces. She was the fire in my veins, and she was dwindling.
Her cold fingers slipped from my grasp, and I felt the earth shifting under my feet.
“Sir, you must step aside,” a nurse dressed in teal scrubs told me while blocking my way. She was grave and unyielding. “We’re taking her to the OR. A doctor will update you on the progress of—”
“You’re not taking her away from me!”
The commotion and the shrill voices came to a grinding halt. Shocked and disapproving eyes settled on me, but it was the nurse’s wholly horrified expression and the way she cowered a full step back that snapped me out of my trance.
The convoy stopped, and the elevator doors finally slid open. A rather short doctor, with thick fingers and a serious lack of neck length, stepped in front of the startled nurse.
“Sir, the patient has lost a lot of blood, and there is no exit wound, so the bullet is still lodged in her body. We need to operate immediately. Please, step aside.”
The doctor placed a gentle hand on my fist, which had closed tightly around the side rail of Charlotte’s stretcher. Rationally, I realized he was right and that time was of the essence. But how could I convince my heart to let go, to allow my sweet, sweet Charlotte to dive into the unknown by herself?
“Marcus, you need to let the doctors do their job,” Lauren Burton called from the middle of an adjacent hallway. She sprinted to her daughter with yet another doctor flanking her side.
She appeared devastated, but somehow, she managed to stay together despite the desperation and the terror of what might happen. When warmth enveloped my frozen fist, I looked down to see Lauren’s hands deftly peeling finger after finger from the cold bar of the stretcher.
The lump in my throat expanded. It filled my lungs and pressed over my chest. It was impossible to breathe and difficult to see through eyes that misted once again, but by dint of great effort and with a voice that broke after every word, I managed, “I’m sorry.”
Lauren nodded mechanically and cradled my hand in hers like she needed the contact to stop from grabbing at her daughter in my stead. Drawing in a sharp breath, she lifted her chin, clicked her heels together, then focused her undivided attention on the shrewd-eyed doctor who had left her side to check on Charlotte.
He looked no more than a few years younger than Lauren, but they must have been colleagues at some point. He had a somber, authoritative countenance that portrayed him as competent. The precise way he checked Charlotte’s vitals and ordered his team around only confirmed that assumption.
“She is my daughter, Roman,” Lauren said, stopping the doctor in his tracks for half a second. “You must save her.”
“I will. I promise.”
He spared only the other half of that same second to squeeze Lauren’s shoulders, then they both nodded to each other, and the cavalcade of doctors and nurses disappeared inside the elevator with Charlotte lying quietly in her bed, so achingly, despairingly quiet.
The lights flickered as a sharp breath wracked my chest. I shut my eyes to curb the ache, but behind my closed eyelids, Charlotte’s sweet, tormented face was imprinted like a tattoo—too still, too ashy, too bereft of life.
MY EYES FLEW OPEN, and I almost jumped from the chair that had been my home lately. I heard the cadenced beeping of the machines and the whirring noise of the ventilator before I regained control of my sight and focused on Charlotte’s motionless form.
My heart lurched in my chest and squeezed uncomfortably. The constant ache that had tormented me since Friday night regained new strength and threatened to shatter me from the inside out.
I stroked a trembling finger down Charlotte’s cheek and wished it were me in that bed, inanimate and speechless, instead of her.
Her once flushed skin was turning paler by the second. A horrible tube was coming out of her mouth, pumping air into lungs that were too weak to breathe on their own. She also had a concussion. Although the neurologist had seemed hopeful, she couldn’t tell the extent of the injury until Charlotte woke up. Seeing her unchanged, swollen, and bruised face didn’t help me feel as optimistic.
Her right hand, tightly contained in a cast, with her small and ring finger immobilized as well, was carefully placed beside her body. The exposed purplish skin of her other fingers contrasted harshly with the pure white bedspread.
Her midsection was covered and protected, and a drain tube was implanted in her incision. The bullet had done more damage than just the cut on her formerly perfect abdomen, but I couldn’t think about that now.
Her lower body hadn’t escaped unscathed either. The thin hospital sheet was pulled to the side to reveal her left leg, slightly elevated and severely marred by cuts that had been cleaned and stitched.
I couldn’t bear to watch her so defenseless, so fragile, but the thought of leaving her side, even for a single moment, was torturous enough to make me lose my mind.
“My beautiful, stubborn angel, wake up,” I pleaded, bowing over her good hand and kissing her knuckles, her fingers, even her palm.
I cradled her limp hand in mine and nestled my cheek against her inert fingers, a sob escaping my throat. Charlotte’s touch was alarmingly cold, but I could feel the feeble pulse at her wrist, and that brought me a shadow of comfort.
It had been days since the surgery, and she had yet to wake up. I assumed my mind was still too muddled to understand the medical ramblings about Charlotte’s diagnosis, but Lauren had seemed sufficiently appeased when Dr. Bryce informed us that keeping her under deep sedation was the best option. She had suffered severe injuries, on top of losing too much blood, and her body needed time to recover, to rest.
“Her condition is stable now. We have taken her off the sedatives, and she should be waking up any moment now,” Doctor Roman Bryce had told us that morning as the nurses rolled Charlotte’s bed from the ICU to a private room. “Have patience, have faith,” he had said.
I’d had both, for over four thousand excruciating minutes. I couldn’t be patient anymore. The only thing that I truly understood was that Charlotte hadn’t come back to me.
The soft squeak of the door filtered through my thoughts. I gave an involuntary jerk, but otherwise, I didn’t
acknowledge the intruder. I couldn’t remove my eyes from Charlotte to check who had come to prod at her now.
“You look worse than she does, you know?”
Warm fingers clamped my shoulder, then the softest pat on my head, like the flapping of wings, finally convinced me to straighten from my contorted position.
“You have to rest, Marcus,” Lauren whispered.
Her calm had settled me at first, then it infuriated me. How could she remain so calm when her daughter hardly had any life left in her? But now, her collected demeanor was the only anchor I had in my never-ending turmoil.
“What will Charlotte say when she wakes up to find you in worse a shape than she is? She will be very disappointed that I didn’t take better care of you.”
Lauren’s baby talk was soothing, or perhaps it was her melodious voice, so much like her daughter’s, that acted as a balm to my frayed nerves. I almost smiled, almost let her sway me.
“I can’t leave,” I sighed and pressed my cheek again to Charlotte’s immobile hand.
“Marcus, she’ll still be here when you return,” Lauren tried to rationalize. “She is out of the woods now. She’s healing.”
“Is she?”
Lauren’s brave façade slipped, and I could catch a glimpse of her own fear. She was a doctor. She understood Charlotte’s condition better than I ever could, but although her mind firmly believed in her daughter’s recovery, uncertainty still tormented her heart. Just like it tormented mine.
“She’ll be fine. I promise.”
Her voice was decisive once again, but I suspected she was trying to assure herself of Charlotte’s wellbeing more than she was trying to convince me.
“I can’t—I can’t let her out of my sight. She’s in this damn bed because I allowed it once.”
“You are only a man, Marcus. You couldn’t have done more than you did.”
But I had done nothing—nothing at all to protect her like I should have. And that was precisely the matter.
“That filth is only a man too,” I spat. My jaw clenched, and the vein in my forehead throbbed madly until it spread sheer venom in my bloodstream. “And he was able to do so much more damage than I was able to prevent.”
“She is safe now. We all are. If we let the fear he caused rule us, then we let him win.”
I was afraid—afraid of permanently losing Charlotte—but I wasn’t afraid of Cameron Drake. If it were possible, I would kill him again and again and again...and again.
“Go home, Marcus. If anything changes, anything at all, you’ll be the first to know.”
When she realized that I wasn’t going to leave if I wasn’t forcibly removed from Charlotte’s side, Lauren stepped outside for a moment. She was quiet as she stepped back inside. Watching over Charlotte, each of us suffered and fought our own demons until a muted knock at the door disrupted the perfect quietness.
I lifted my head to see Kai sneaking inside, his eyes swiping over Charlotte then settling on me. Behind him, through the half-opened door, Bryson stood with his hands locked in front of him and his head bowed, not quite sure what to do with himself, or maybe not quite sure how to handle me.
He had seen me devastated, but not quite to this extent. I would have laughed if I’d had any power left—their strategy was so evident that it was amusing.
Lauren must have called Kai, realizing over the past days that he was my voice of reason, the one, in Charlotte’s absence, who had a modicum of influence over me. Then Kai had called Bryson, who was supposed to act as the muscle if Kai’s silver tongue failed to persuade me.
“I am not leaving,” I told all three of them and nobody in particular.
Kai took three uncertain steps inside the room and fixed me with kind eyes. “Look, it’s not about you, Marcus. It’s about Charlotte. She’ll need you when she wakes up more than she needs you now. How will you be able to support her if you break down by then?”
He knew just the right words to say and which buttons to push. He wasn’t a bandmaster because he knew how to orchestrate his life like a masterpiece, but because he was quite talented at manipulating everything and everyone around him.
“Bryson will take you home, and I will stay here. Nobody goes through these doors, and nothing will happen in this room without you knowing.”
I shook my head, but when Kai wrapped his hands around my shoulders and pulled me up, I found I lacked the strength to oppose him. I was drained and more of a mess than I wished to admit, but the thought of leaving slashed at me viciously. It brought me to the fine edge of despair.
“You call,” I managed in a whisper. “Even if the slightest gust of wind blows over her, you call me. You call me immediately, Kai.”
“I swear. You know I will.”
Lauren smiled encouragingly as I wobbled to the door with Kai’s help. When I stopped in the doorway, she glanced at me like she had expected the hesitancy.
“Lauren, I’m sorry I didn’t take proper care of her.”
She gulped down almost noisily, and the corners of her eyes reddened. She still remembered that heinous night just as well as I did. Although she had never uttered an unkind word, I knew part of her blamed me for what had happened.
I wasn’t sure how I managed to walk to Bryson’s car or when the ride from the hospital to my apartment came so rapidly to an end. Bryson parked in front of the building, then he accompanied me upstairs just as quietly as he had been driving.
“I’ll be here if you need anything,” he said, patting Kinga and slumping into a loveseat.
Bryson knew me well. He never hovered, and unlike Kai, he rarely forced me to spill out my feelings. But without fail, he was always there when I needed him, quiet and blending into the background, but there nonetheless.
I nodded absently and ambled to my bedroom. The quiet was maddening. Whereas at the hospital I had been focusing on Charlotte, in the soundless emptiness of my room, where her scent still lingered, I could only focus on the memories.
“CHARLOTTE!”
I knocked the emergency door open with her name wrenched from my throat. My heart felt strangled in my chest as I pushed through the smoke and struggled to spot her. She had been right next to the emergency door, but she hadn’t been alone. And now, she was nowhere to be seen.
“I’ll get everyone out,” Logan shouted over the screams and the wild crackling of fire burning everything in its path. “You look for Charlotte.”
I inspected the corridor that seemed an endless road to nowhere, then I darted back inside the burning restaurant. Without help, I was never going to find Charlotte.
“Marcus, what are you doing?” Lauren yelled.
Thankfully, she didn’t follow. It was already unbearable to worry for Charlotte, to think that I might be already too late. I couldn’t fear for her loved ones too.
“Get them out,” I barked to Logan then strode purposefully to a half-naked bartender collapsed by a high table near the edge of the dance floor.
“Help me,” he croaked as I knelt next to him and clasped his chin, pulling his head back to face me. His eyes widened with pain and terror.
“The emergency door,” I said. “Where does it lead? Where is the nearest room?”
“I don’t—my leg hurts. I think it’s broken—there’s blood...and the fire—please, help me.”
“Help is on the way. Now focus. What is below us? Where is the nearest room?”
“The storage room,” he gasped. “Below Exterus.”
I jumped back to my feet and sprinted away. If there was a storage room under the restaurant, there had to be a door on the left side of the corridor. I ran like a madman, pushing people aside, ignoring pleas for help, cries of agony, and protests as I made for the storage room.
And there it was. A white door, firmly shut, with part of its frame collapsed as if the door had been slammed.
“Charlotte,” I screamed again and struggled to listen.
No answer came. The fire and the terrorized people were loud
enough to drown out anything else.
Then something much louder and deadlier than anything I had hoped to hear boomed like thunder. Not one, but two gunshots in a row.
I could hardly tell how I managed to blast through the door and stumble over a nearly dilapidated cabinet, but I found myself kneeling beside Charlotte’s still form, frenziedly absorbing the sight of her.
She was covered in smut and bruises, and her limbs were misaligned, almost like they didn’t constitute a part of her body anymore. Her small revolver was covered in blood and swung from her fingers. Beneath her wilted body, there was a pool of crimson, and the bloodstain expanded terrifyingly fast.
Despite the horror of the situation, a small smile curved her lips like she was finally at peace, like she couldn’t feel the pain anymore, like she had embraced it.
“Oh, no, no, no,” I screamed and looked for her wound.
Her lilac dress was punctured right in the middle of her stomach, and the blood seeped freely. I applied pressure to the wound, glancing frantically around us. The fire was wild, an incensed fiend that swallowed everything all around. I had to take her out of that room immediately, but I couldn’t do it while still keeping pressure on her wound. I hadn’t been able to protect her, and now, I couldn’t save her.
“Damn it,” I growled.
It was then that I heard the whimper, and it was not coming from Charlotte. My eyes searched crazily through the smoke and the flames. In a corner, next to a shabby table, a woman curled into a ball, rocking slightly, like an infant trying to fall asleep. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and I realized then that she must have been hurt as well.
“He’s gone,” she sniffled and glanced unseeingly upward at the window that was now broken.
But whoever he was and whatever his condition, he was not my concern. What I feared was that I might have just lost her—my own beating heart.
“Charlotte,” I called as I cradled her to my chest and lifted her body off the ground. “Sugar, please wake up. Goddammit, you can’t do this to me. You have to wake up.”
Darkside Love Affair Page 56
