by Alex Grayson
My phone vibrates again, and I force my fingers to loosen their hold enough for me to see the screen.
Emo: Knife, no gun. Charlotte and Leddy are on the floor by the chair.
Motherfuckin’ hell.
It’s no less than what I expected. Benjamin wouldn’t have taken Eden on his own. He had to have had an incentive. Holding someone’s child hostage is a damn big incentive to get a person to do your bidding.
The question is, how long has Diego had them? A week ago at The Hill, after Jenny’s funeral, Benjamin said Leddy and Charlotte were visiting her parents. I have no doubt that was a cover up. Which also means he probably had them the day Jenny died. Diego fucking used him to get inside Judge’s house. Benjamin was distraught about what happened. Guilt plastered all over his face both right after we found him in the kitchen and at the funeral. Guilt that we mistook for self-blame for being knocked out and not saving Jenny. While a lot of men would feel responsible for that, he wore his guilt because he let the bastard in the house.
No fucking wonder we couldn’t find Diego. He was hiding in plain sight.
I walk across the porch to Judge and keep my voice low. “He has Charlotte and Leddy inside. Eden is strung up from the ceiling. No sign of a gun, but he has a knife.”
His jaw clenches as he listens, his thoughts no doubt running along the same lines as mine.
I turn back to the door. I’ve been in Benjamin’s house a few times, so I know just beyond the door is a small foyer. From there is the living room. If Diego has them in that room, there’s no damn way I can pick the lock and open the door without him knowing. I either take the chance and kick the door in and hope for the element of surprise, or wait until Emo, who walked around to the back door, gives me a signal. Neither choice sits well in my stomach. The only thing keeping me sane right now is knowing that in order for Emo to know where Eden is, he has to be in the house.
The decision is made for me when a child’s scream comes from inside. Without thinking, my shoulder slams against the door and the wood splinters. It only takes me a second to absorb the scene before me, but every second feels like agonizing hours.
Right in the middle of the living room, tied to the ceiling by her wrists, her body sagging, her head hanging, her beautiful fucking hair lying limp down her back, and blood dripping to the floor at her feet, is Eden.
In front of her is Diego, his hand at her side, holding the hilt of the knife he has buried in her. His head turns my way and a demented smile curves up his lips.
The smile doesn’t last long though. My blasting through the door distracted him enough for Emo to move into place. One second, he’s pressed up against Eden, and the next he has a knife shoved against his throat.
“Pull the knife out, nice and slow,” Emo says in a lethally calm voice. “My knife isn’t sharp for a reason. Makes it more interesting to have to saw back and forth through flesh, tendon, and bone. You so much as even think about twitching that hand a centimeter in the wrong direction, I’ll make sure to take my time hacking through your neck.”
I tense, ready to charge the bastard if he decides to go against Emo’s orders. My eyes stay locked on the knife sticking out of Eden. More torturously slow seconds pass before he slowly withdraws the knife. I don’t know if it’s the sight of all the blood or the fact that Eden doesn’t so much as spasm as the knife is being extracted from her that fills me with fear.
As soon as the knife leaves her body, Emo pulls Diego backward and I’m rushing forward. I almost slip in the blood surrounding her on the floor. Her legs are fucking covered in it.
“Eden,” I say her name through a raw throat. “Jesus, Christ. Eden, can you hear me?” She doesn’t answer.
I pick her up below her butt and take some of the weight off her arms. Judge appears by my side, holding the same knife Diego used on her. He easily slices through the rope, attesting to how easy it was for Diego to stab her with it.
With her loose, I gently lay her down on the floor. I briefly register another body on the floor only a few feet away, but I don’t take the time to see who it is. All I can see is Eden; deathly pale face and the bottom half her body covered in blood. Her head lists to the side away from me, and I grip her chin to bring it back. Placing my fingers under her chin, I feel for a pulse.
It’s there, but sluggish. Feeling the slow beat only relieves a little of my fear and anxiety. She could still easily bleed out.
Judge drops down beside me holding a towel. I take it from him and press down on her wound. She doesn’t flinch at the pressure.
“Fuck, fuck! Judge, call Trouble and tell him to meet me at his office. Tell him what happened and that Eden might need a blood transfusion. And let him know we may need the ‘copter.”
I look up when I hear a sickenly sweet crunch sound and find Emo with Diego still in front of him. His blade is still at his neck, except it’s no longer a threat, but a promise, as half of Diego’s neck is split open with blood rushing down his chest. A look of dark satisfaction glosses over Emo’s face as he watches the life drain from Diego.
I can’t even be pissed at Emo for taking Diego’s life when I craved to do it myself. I’m just glad the fucker is dead. Right now, I need to focus on Eden and saving her life, because there’s one thing I know of for sure. If she dies, she’ll be taking a vital part of me with her.
My heart.
EDEN
I TRY TO OPEN MY EYES, but I can’t. Either they’re too heavy or I’m too weak. Or maybe someone superglued my eyelids shut. Crazy thought. Why would someone superglue a person’s eyes shut?
It’s not just my eyes that won’t work, but my mouth as well. My lips won’t even so much as twitch, let alone open so I can ask what’s going on. And the rest of my body, it just lies there. My mind is fuzzy too.
Am I broken? Why can’t I open my eyes, talk, or move? What’s going on?
Voices start drifting in and out, but I can’t understand what they’re saying. One particular voice sounds really nice. It’s deep and smooth, but I sense worry in the baritone. What is he worried about?
I try my best to focus on that voice.
“Why hasn’t she woken up?” it says.
There’s warmth at my side, and I want to reach out and grab whatever it is.
“She lost a lot of blood. Her body is healing,” another voice answers.
“How long will it take?” says the voice I like.
“It’s up to her.”
My throat tightens as I attempt to scream that I’m awake. Why can’t they see that?
The voices drift off, but I still sense a presence. The one I like. I wrack my brain, trying to remember who he is. It’s small glimpses that come to me at first.
Shaggy blond hair and baby blue eyes. Sometimes his eyes are darker, like a storm cloud. Tall with a strong body. Someone who makes me feel safe.
More images come, clearer ones. And a name.
JW.
Everything comes back at once and my heart begins to pound erratically in my chest. My side hurts, and I remember Diego stabbing me with a big knife. Memories of hanging from the ceiling, of Benjamin’s daughter and ex-wife huddled on the floor, of Remi lying unconscious on the bathroom floor at The Hill with Elijah sitting beside her.
It’s all too much. My head feels like it’s going to implode.
It’s not until a warm hand grips mine that I realized I’m moaning.
“Eden?” the voice comes again. “Gypsy, can you hear me?”
The voice is calming and the pain recedes some. My eyelids begin to work enough for me to slit them open. The light is dim in the room and a shadow falls over my face. It takes me a moment to focus. A smile pulls up my now working lips at the face hovering over mine.
“JW,” I whisper through a dry throat.
“Jesus,” he mutters, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again. “You scared the shit out of me.”
I attempt to lift my hand to touch his face, but my arm’s too heavy.
“I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head and drops down to place a kiss on my forehead. “Don’t apologize. I’m just glad you’re awake. You’ve been out of it for a couple of days.”
I frown. It’s been two days?
“Really?”
“Yeah.” He clears his hoarse voice. “You lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion, but thankfully, the knife didn’t hit anything vital. Trouble says you were lucky.”
“Remi and Elijah?” I croak, worry for my friend and her child making my already low voice even lower.
“They’re both fine. Remi just has a bump on her head.”
I close my eyes in relief but pop them back open. “Diego?”
“Dead,” he answers, his tone hard. Before I can ask who killed him, he says, “Emo did it.”
I never would have thought I would be happy another human being was murdered, but Emo did the world a favor by killing Diego.
“And Benjamin, his daughter, and her mother?”
Something flashes in his eyes. Both remorse and bitterness. “Benjamin is dead. Diego stabbed him and hit his spleen. It was too late by the time we got there. And physically, Leddy and Charlotte are okay. Diego had them ever since Derek found him in his shed. The fucker was hiding in plain sight and forced Benjamin to take you from The Hill. He didn’t touch Leddy, thank goodness, but he raped Charlotte multiple times. In front of Leddy.”
My throat grows tight, and I swallow several times when my eyes water. That poor child. Diego may not have touched her, but he still hurt her in the most vile of ways. She’ll carry the vision of her mom being violated forever. That’s not something you ever get over. And she’s lost her father on top of it. The rest of her childhood will be a struggle. Hell, even adulthood will be hard.
A tear slides down my cheek and JW wipes it away with his thumb. The gesture is sweet and comforting. He reaches over to the table beside my bed, grabs a Styrofoam cup and brings the straw to my lips. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was until the cool liquid hits my throat.
He leans his weight on the bed, careful not to jostle me, and puts his face back to mine. It’s not until then that I notice how tired he looks. His face has more scruff than normal, his eyes are blood shot, and the shirt he’s wearing is wrinkled.
“How are you doing?”
I should ask him the same thing, because it looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.
“My side hurts a little. And I’m tired.”
He grabs my hand and brushes his lips back and forth across the back of it. Closing his eyes, his brow pinched, he pulls in a deep breath before kissing my hand and putting my palm against his cheek. He’s in pain, and I hate it.
“Hey,” I call. When his beautiful blue eyes open, I reassure him. “I’m okay.”
His frown deepens. “But you almost weren’t. I came too close to losing you.”
A stinging pain hits my side when I force him to let go of my hand so I can cup it around the back of his head. I push past the pain and pull him down closer.
“But you didn’t. I’m here. Okay?”
His throat bobs as he swallows and his eyes flicker back and forth between mine, like he’s making sure I really am here. He drops his head until his forehead touches mine. “Yeah.”
We stay that way for several moments, just sucking in the breath of the other, relishing the closeness we almost lost.
“I love you, Eden,” he whispers. His words both shock me and sends a crazy amount of happiness through me. He pulls back to see me better. “I haven’t said it until now, but I’ve felt it for a while. Hell, maybe even that first day. But finding you hanging from that ceiling, that knife sticking out of you and all the blood, knowing you could have easily been taken from me….” He stops, closes his eyes, and twists his neck to the side, as if pained by the very idea. His eyes are stormy when he opens them again and clears his throat. “I’ve never been so scared in my fuckin’ life, Gypsy. I’ve never felt pain like that before. I would probably survive if you lived but chose not to be a part of my life. But you dying being the cause?” He shakes his head, his eyes turning more serious than I’ve ever seen them. “I wouldn’t be able to survive that. I wouldn’t want to survive that. I’m a strong man and can handle damn near anything, but I’m not that strong.”
My lip wobbles as I try my best to stop the new tears. That’s one of the most beautifully tragic things I’ve ever been told. Of course, I would want JW to move on if something ever happened to me, but knowing he loves me, that the pain of losing me is overwhelming for him, makes me feel more special than I ever have before.
I twist my hand around so I can grab his wrist and put his palm over my thumping heart.
“Do you feel how crazy my heart’s beating in my chest right now?” He nods. “It’s beating that way for you. It does that every time I’m with you. It only beats that way when I’m with you. You make me happy, you make me feel cherished, and you make me feel loved. I’m the luckiest woman in the world to have met you, and I hope to stay the luckiest woman in the world because I get to keep you.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I love you too, JW. Probably an insane amount, but I don’t care. I love you,” I repeat. Those words feel incredibly good rolling from my lips after thinking I wouldn’t be able to say them.
I know he just told me he loves me, but I still hold my breath as I wait for his reaction. It comes not a second later. His eyes light up, showing more life than I’ve seen since I woke in this bed, and he smiles. His smile is beautiful.
He drops his head and his lips settle over mine. It’s a soft kiss, a gentle kiss. I want more, so much more, but me lying in bed with a hole in my stomach makes it pretty much impossible for us to do more.
When he pulls back, I notice his hand lightly holding onto the end of my braid. Is it strange of me to think his obsession with my hair is sexy? I don’t care if it does. I’ll gladly be strange as long as I get JW.
“I love you,” he whispers again, and I smile, suddenly feeling giddy. “I’m going to go get Trouble so he can look you over.”
I relax against the pillow and nod. “Okay.”
“I’ll be right back.” His voice is still low. “I love you.”
I giggle because I’m happy. I giggle because I’ll never get tired of hearing him say it. Doesn’t matter if he said it a hundred times over and over again right after the other. Maybe I’ll record him saying it on my phone so I can hear it any time I want.
I grab the bottom of his shirt when he turns to leave. He spins back.
“I love you,” I tell him.
Instead of leaving, he comes back to me. His hands go to the pillow on either side of my head and he lowers himself. His nose rubs alongside mine and then he’s kissing me again.
This time I let him leave, but my eyes track him until he’s out the door. Once I lose sight of him, I close my eyes and smile. My side is starting to hurt more, but there’s nothing that can take away my happiness.
JW loves me. That’s all I need.
JW
I DROP DOWN INTO MY DESK chair at the station and pick up my phone. Scrolling through my contacts, I find the name I need.
“Yes?” a man’s voice comes across the line after the third ring.
“Your son is dead.” I get right to the point.
There’s a pause before Emiliano blows out a breath. “Why?”
It doesn’t surprise me that I don’t note any remorse in his tone. Just disappointment.
“Because he killed my woman’s dog. Because he killed another woman who was a good friend. Because he held a child and her mother hostage, repeatedly raping the mom in front of the child. Because he killed that child’s father. But especially because he kidnapped my woman, stabbed her, and almost made her bleed out.”
“Shit. Stupid fucking idiot.” he mutters.
I clench my jaw. “I’m letting you know as a warning, just in case you have a mind for backlash toward me or anyone in this town, includ
ing Eden, that it would be a very grave mistake.”
He laughs. He actually laughs, and it makes my back molars protest as I grind them together.
“You’re threatening me? After killing my only son?” he asks, incredulously.
“It’s no threat, Emiliano. You come after me or anyone I care about, and your days attempting to rule San Antonio are over. You know I can make that happen.”
I lock eyes with Judge as he appears in the doorway to my office. Noticing me on the phone, he quietly makes his way to the chair across from my desk, takes a seat, and gets comfortable.
“I don’t take well to threats, son,” Emiliano says, no longer amused.
“And I don’t take well to people threatening what’s mine. Your son’s half-severed head can attest to that.”
It doesn’t matter that it was actually Emo who killed Diego. He would have still ended up just as dead.
He sighs, his breath crackling over the phone. “That boy has always been bad news. I knew it when he was a child and would slaughter the neighborhood cats. He knew I forbade any harm coming to women and children, especially after the brutal way his mother died, but he thought, as my son, I would protect him. People like him disgust me, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to look at him with anything other than revulsion.”
I remember a few years back hearing about Maria Tomas being raped and murdered by the Santiago cartel. It was all over the news because she was found beaten to a bloody pulp in one of the local school’s playground. One of the children found her.
“He was my son, and a part of me loved him, but he’s caused enough problems. He was going to be put down eventually anyway. Either by another cartel or myself.” He turns pensive. “It’s over. You have no need to fear retaliation.”
“How do I know you’re not spewing shit to bide your time?”
“If I gave you my word, would you take it?”
