“She’s not dead.”
The air simmers for a few moments. She won’t say it again if she knows what’s good for her. Then her gaze drops. She nods to the floor.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to upset you.”
“I thought I told you to stay away from my wife.”
“Thane, she came to me. I didn’t seek her out.”
“But you sure as hell did your best to piss her off.”
She looks dangerously close to tears again. “I just wanted to see how she was doing. Thane, I would’ve never hurt her like this.”
Violet looks so earnest, almost tearful in her conviction. It would move me if I didn’t already know that she was crazy. I don’t trust a word that comes out of her mouth. I never wanted her dead. Before George’s death, she was as harmless as peach cobbler. Now I don’t know what the fuck she is.
“Fine.”
“We’re—we’re good?”
“We’re far from good.”
Her bottom lip quivers, and disgust fills my stomach.
“I can’t deal with any of this right now. If you need to cry, you do it outside. Suck it up, because I don’t want to see it.”
“Fine.”
I watch as she swallows her tears and sits down next to me, blinking furiously. “I’m here to support you. She’ll get through this, Thane, and when she does maybe we can repair what’s broken between us.”
My back stiffens as she wraps her arm around me, and the chill tingling my spine sears into my brain. I stand from the chair with Daniel in my arms, away from her reach. She gazes up at me curiously.
“How’s our baby doing?”
Our baby.
“Get the fuck out.”
“W-what?”
“Get the fuck out!”
“Don’t talk to me that way!”
“If you don’t walk out that door in ten seconds, I’ll shatter your nose in million more pieces.”
My hand touches the gun holstered at my waist, and she stares at it in horror. A sane person would run out the door.
“I’m just trying to help!”
“You’re a disaster, and I want you gone from my life.”
“You can’t keep me from my son forever.”
With one hand, I grab the collar of her shirt and she lets out a shrill cry as I yank her to her feet. Then I hurl her across the room so that her back hits the glass wall. She shrinks against the wall as I approach her, Daniel wailing in my arms. I shift him to the side, and I grab her throat. There was a time I would’ve never considered hurting a woman. My fingers dig into her soft flesh, slowly cutting her of air.
“I’m completely out of patience. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear you. I don’t want to you anywhere near this room. If I find out you’ve stepped a foot inside, I’ll find and kill you. Do you understand? I don’t want you. I never wanted you, even when I was away from my wife for two years. My dick would be safer in a garbage disposal than inside you.”
She sputters, and I slam her head against the wall.
“You’re a m-monster!”
“Get. Out.”
Violet rubs her throat, giving one last, mournful look at Daniel before she turns and walks out, already sobbing.
Jesus Christ.
I sit back down on the chair, trying to bounce Daniel on my lap. My hands won’t stop shaking. I hear footsteps and feel another presence at the door, and my stomach hardens. Not again.
“Um. I’m sorry to interrupt.”
But it’s only Silas’s wife leaning in the doorway. She sucks in a sharp breath as she takes a look at Christine. I’m getting really fucking tired of people doing that, and I notice the piece of paper in her hands. Hope soars in my chest.
“What is it? Did you find something?”
She shakes her head. “We’re still running tests, but I-I thought y-you’d want to know. She’s pregnant.”
I stare at her, speechless.
She’s pregnant. Pregnant. Joy and misery crash into each other.
“Is the baby going to be okay?”
“We need to do an ultrasound to make sure. We don’t know how many weeks she is.”
I look at Christine’s lifeless face, willing myself not to crack. I press her fingers to my lips. “You’ve got to pull through. I can’t do this without you.”
If only she could hear me.
“I’m so sorry.”
She offers the piece of paper confirming the positive pregnancy test, and I take it numbly.
“We’re doing everything we can,” she says, voice cracking.
Everything? “My wife was poisoned under your watch.”
She stiffens. “We can’t yet confirm—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Of course you can.”
“Thane.”
Silas slides up behind Fawn, grasping her shoulders as she dissolves into tears. She folds into his arms, sobbing.
“I swear, I’ve no idea what happened! She was fine one moment, and then—”
“It’s not your fault, hon.”
Behind them I see a woman with long, dark hair running toward the room. My sister.
Fucking finally.
Wide-eyed, Lara pushes through the door and gasps at Christine’s body. “Oh my God. I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it. They couldn’t get me, so they went after my wife.”
“They?” Silas says in a sharp voice. “What are you talking about?”
“The people responsible for George and Paul. It’s them—they want to take out everyone associated with the Council.”
Silas frowns, his lips thinning. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Standing up, I hand Daniel to Lara, who replaces my vigil at Christine’s side.
“Not a day goes by where I don’t have to look over my shoulder. I have to break someone’s kneecaps every fucking week just to prove myself, and on top of that, my brothers were slaughtered, and you’re not doing a fucking thing about it.”
Silas maintains his presence of irritating calm. “I’m doing everything I can to find out—”
“Then why the fuck don’t you have any suspects? They came after me. I’m not an easy target, so they went after my wife. Don’t you fucking get it yet? They want us all dead.”
“That’s conjecture.”
Conjecture.
My skin blazes with hatred for this man. I want to take the gun at my side and slam a bullet into his brain. Someone needs to die. It might as well be him.
Fawn tugs Silas’s arm, looking terrified. “Leave him alone.”
“Yeah, get the fuck out of here.”
Silas’s lip curls and he takes a step forward, but Fawn yanks hard. “Let’s go!” she says in a sharp voice.
They leave. I watch them go arm in arm as despair swallows me. I take a seat next to Lara, her face streaming with tears.
“You didn’t tell Mom anything, did you?”
She shakes her head. “No. I figured that would be a disaster. Thane, what’s happening to us?”
“I don’t know.”
We both look at Christine for a while.
“I need you to look after my son while I take care of things.”
“Of course, but what do you mean, ‘take care of things’?”
I grab her arm, forcing her to look at me. “I mean it, Lara. No babysitters. No day care. Just you.”
Lara whitens as I stand. My body freezes as I listen to the machines pump air into my wife’s lungs. I promised her she’d be safe.
“Thane.”
“What?”
“Don’t—don’t do anything stupid.”
She flinches when I look at her.
“I have to find who did this, and when I do, it won’t be slow. I’ll take my fucking time.”
“But you don’t know who hurt her! Thane, you can’t just go rampaging through the syndicate. Think of what Derrick would say.”
“Who the fuck knows what he would say?”
&nb
sp; He’s dead. They’re all dead. I don’t even know if my wife will ever wake up again.
“He wouldn’t want you to throw your life away. You have a son who needs you. I need you. You’re the only brother I have left.”
“I’m not planning on dying.”
“Please, Thane.”
My son curls against her chest, seeking her warmth. I brush his soft hair with the back of my hand. “Take care of him.”
“When are you coming back?” she calls after me.
Outside, I pause for a moment to glare at the two guards posted in front of my wife’s hospital room.
“You let anyone in here except for family, and I’ll cut your balls off and boil them in motor oil. Is that understood?”
They stare back at me. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“Hey!” Lara shouts. “When are you coming back?”
When they’re all dead.
* * *
They’re all going to die. Every last one of them.
The last brick of sanity crumbled when my wife slipped into a coma. I wasn’t there for my brothers. I wasn’t there for my father, and I wasn’t there for my wife either.
It’s time to make them all pay. Silas won’t find the ones responsible, so I will. I’ll work through this place from floor to floor. While my wife suffers, so do they. While her life hangs in the balance, everyone pays.
Starting with these three.
The three douchebags who attacked me in the chapel weeks ago. I found them skulking on my floor. They spotted me, and I acted like prey. I ran into my apartment, leaving the door wide open. Dumb fucks ran right into my gun. Three neat shots, and they were down. Damn, I’m good. Each took a hit in the leg. Ben might’ve taken a hit in a major artery. He fell to his side a few minutes ago and hasn’t opened his eyes.
Oh well.
The two others kneel on the floor of my kitchen in a pool of growing blood. Marco grimaces, clutching his leg to stem the bleeding, and I raise my gun at his face.
“Let go of the leg.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you? We didn’t do anything!”
“Let go of the leg, or I’ll give you something to really cry about.”
“Fuck you.”
I kneel down, slapping his hand away to dig my thumb into the hole burned through his slacks. He screams as I pinch the gunshot wound. Blood wells around my thumb as I press down hard, digging my gun against his head.
“What the fuck did you do to my wife?”
“I never touched her—Ah! Please, stop!”
“We had nothing to do with that.”
I don’t care how cruel it is. I don’t care if these pieces of shit bleed out on my kitchen floor. They will fucking talk.
“You three are the only miserable pieces of shit in this place who would try to kill my wife because you couldn’t touch me.”
“Will you listen to yourself? We’re syndicate. Why the hell would we want to hurt your wife?”
I let go of Marco’s leg, and he falls back, tears streaming down his face. I grab a fist of Vincent’s hair and bury my gun under his jaw. The whites of his eyes show all around his pupils.
“You and the other members in this place do nothing but disrespect me. Why the fuck should I believe anything you say?”
“We were just pissed off and wanted to blow off some steam.”
“So cornering me in the chapel wasn’t an attempt to beat the ever-loving shit out of me and leave me for dead?”
“We don’t know what happened to your wife!”
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Their lives are shit. They don’t deserve to live. None of us do.
Red sears across my vision as I click back the hammer, and he screams for me to wait, but I’ve already committed myself.
Bam!
The bullet zips through his head, snapping it back. He crashes against the floor as dark blood sprays over the white tiles, his mouth slack and his eyes vacant.
“Oh God! You killed—you fucking killed him!”
I feel nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Marco hurls himself backward, screaming when he catches himself on his injured leg. He swears loudly, dragging himself on my carpet.
“Stop it. You’re getting blood all over the place.”
“Don’t kill me, damn it! I never touched that bitch!”
“You’ve given me nothing.”
“No!”
I raise the gun, and he holds his hands up in defense. Another deafening shot fills the room, and Marco slumps to the floor, dead. Smoke rises from the nozzle of my gun. Dimly, I’m aware I’ve committed a major crime. Two, soon to be three, members dead without provocation.
It used to be the place I called home. She was right this whole time, wasn’t she?
I walk calmly through my apartment, back to the kitchen. A fitful sound distracts me. Ben’s face is pressed to the floor, blood pooling around him. He might die drowning in his own blood.
They had it coming. All of them.
Who’s next?
Pierce.
That blond giant who’s done nothing but sneer at me across rooms. I’ll tear this place apart to find him. If anyone had a part in my wife’s…condition, it’s him. My heart races as I walk out of my suite, not even bothering to conceal the gun at my side. With every footstep I feel the pain of my wife’s injuries stabbing me through the heart. I imagine her dying and I can’t take it in. The grief hits my chest.
“All members please report to the lobby immediately. I repeat, all members please report to the lobby. This is an emergency.”
What the fuck now?
I weigh my options and grit my teeth. Damn it. I hurtle down the hallway and fly down the stairs, joining the other members.
“What’s happening?”
“Raid,” someone says.
“What do you mean a raid?”
“Cops, dumbass!”
My footsteps slow as I reach the ground floor, which is already filled with people. They mill around the marble floor, bypassing the security. No one seems to give a shit that members are walking back and forth without being scanned for items. Something serious is going on. Silas stands in the middle of the marble floor, facing us. I can barely hear him over the racket everyone’s making.
“…just received a tip from one of our informants in the precinct that there’s going to be a raid. Somebody from inside the syndicate made a call to the police and said we were abusing children and keeping women captive.”
The entire room explodes into sounds of outrage before Silas’s last words fall from his lips. I jog to the center of the room, shoving aside members. I only get a few feet within Silas before his guards shove me hard in the chest.
“What are you talking about? Who would do that?”
It’s pandemonium. My voice is lost in the noise as men shout at Silas, demanding more answers.
“They’re coming!” he bellows to the irate crowd. “They’ll have search warrants. You will stand down and let them—”
“Fuck the police!” someone shouts.
Silas looks furious. He grabs a white megaphone from one of his guards, who hands it to him. “You will stand the fuck down! I don’t want any gunfire—our kids lives are at risk.”
Suddenly floodlights fill the lobby of the syndicate, blinding the men inside. A thunderous roar trembles the floor, and behind the beams of light, I see cops wearing body armor, lined up behind a cop holding up a long, vertical shield. The roar grows louder until finally I see wheels crunching the sidewalk, and a giant tank suddenly looms into sight. Several people scream as it smashes into the windows. The bulletproof glass buckles and crashes to the floor. The tank rolls into the syndicate, its gigantic wheels cracking the floor. The glass crunches as it moves right over it, and then cops pour into the syndicate, screaming at the top of their lungs.
“Drop your fucking weapons!”
No one obeys.
The cops aim their rifles, taking cover behind the t
ank. Air from outside blows into the lobby, and distant female screams seem to set off something.
“Put your fucking weapons down!”
The garbled voice booms from the tank, louder than any megaphone. Nearly every man has their weapons draw at the police. Slowly, they begin to inch down.
We’d never win this fight—Jesus Christ—it’s madness. My head pulses with everything that’s happening. I can’t believe that we’re dealing with a police raid on top of everything else, and who called them? Who’s the fucking rat?
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
Four gunshots ring out randomly, striking the floor and the tank. The bullets ricochet. My scream of fury is drowned out by a hail of gunfire.
“Stop! Stop!”
I duck behind a wall as plaster blows into chunks around my head. I seize my weapon, but what the fuck am I supposed to do? Fire at the cops dressed in riot gear? Silas’s guards shove him back as they bear the front of the assault, and then the others seize the tables for checking baggage, and they flip them over. Machinery crashes to the floor in a haze of smoke. All around us is gunfire and panic, and the smell of blood.
“Cease fire! CEASE FIRE!”
Silas throws his gun at the floor, holding his hands up and standing up.
“Get on the fucking ground!”
I lean around the corner, watching as more and more people obey. There’s a body lying on the floor, a cop. He stirs as another cop takes his hands and drags him out of the lobby. Silas flattens on the ground, obeying as slowly the rest of the syndicate follows suit.
“Put your fucking gun down!”
I grab someone’s arm, forcing it down as he gives me a nasty look. The cops spill into the lobby, stepping around broken glass as they line everyone up against the wall and secure them with zip ties. Silas sits cross-legged on the floor, his hands tied like everyone else. His normally pale face is flushed as he talks to a cop. He struggles to get up, responding to something the cop said, and I hear his outraged voice across the room.
“You’re not taking our kids!”
Shit.
I turn around before the cops can make their way to me and I sprint toward the stairwell. My legs scream as I run up several flights of stairs.
There are three dead bodies in my apartment.
My wife is in a coma.
His Secret Baby (A Bad Boy Romance) Page 18
