“Kristie? Kristie!” He tried the handle this time and started pounding on the door when he discovered that he couldn’t get inside.
Kristie rattled off her address rapidly and said, “Please send help!”
She hung up just as Armand kicked a hole in the door. Kristie screamed as his hand reached through the hole and shoved the chair away, letting himself inside. His face was a mask of evil, and Kristie backed up, clutching her phone
“I said to keep the fucking door opened!” he screamed at her.
Kristie began to cry, overwhelmed.
He saw the phone in her hand. “Did you call the police?”
“Yes,” she sobbed through her tears. “Any minute. They’ll be here any minute.”
“Fuck!”
He looked at her and suddenly his gun was out, pointing directly at her. Kristie felt as if the entire world had stopped. She had been so sure that he wasn’t going to kill her if she called the police. She closed her eyes tightly, ready for the blast, feeling a sensation again as if she had truly wet herself…
Kristie opened her eyes and looked down at herself in surprise. “Oh my god…”
The whole thing was taking too long, and Armand lowered his gun, looking ready to bolt.
“I’m bleeding,” she whispered as Armand ran off.
Chapter Seven
Gray clutched Kristie’s hand as the medical team wheeled her gurney through the hospital hallway. Her skin was pale, and her eyes wide. He could only imagine what she had gone through. On top of that, the pregnancy was now threatened at almost a month and a half before full term.
When Gray had pulled up into their apartment complex and saw the ambulance and cop cars, he knew it had to be Kristie. He was able to get through the barricade of people that had been forming and got into the ambulance to ride with her. The whole time she had been tearfully telling him what happened.
By the time they arrived at the hospital and Gray knew what Armand had done, he was glad he told Ben to get rid of him as part of the treaty. He’s only going to keep hurting my family if I don’t get rid of him.
Now Kristie was being wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery in order to save the baby. Gray was scared of the baby being born prematurely. He was worried something terrible would happen to Kristie and the child they had tried for so long to have together.
A nurse stopped Gray from entering the operating room and pulled him aside. “Are you the father?” When he nodded, she went on, “Sir, this is a going to be a risky procedure. We have to clear out the room.”
“Wha-what? I can’t go. She needs me.”
The nurse looked concerned and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I understand, sir. This will involve major surgery and we have to make sure it all goes okay. This isn’t a regular birth and the patient may need to be sedated. Please, sir.”
His throat felt tight as he looked back over at Kristie, whose skin was still pale. Her bottom lip was quivering. How was he supposed to leave her here? But as he glanced back at the nurse, he knew that he had no choice.
“It’ll be best for the baby,” she whispered at him.
“Fuck,” he mumbled as he looked toward Kristie and waved goodbye.
When Gray stepped into the waiting room, he saw his uncle and Pamela off to one side. Pamela was crying, clearly upset at what had occurred on top of not being allowed inside for the birth. Gray didn’t blame her for her tears. He wanted to cry himself. His uncle was holding Megan, who was somehow, thankfully, fast asleep.
Two cops waited as well. Gray groaned when he saw one of them was John. The last thing he felt like dealing with was a cop who still had a thing for his wife. The other cop was a woman, who was mumbling something to John. Gray headed over toward them to get whatever they wanted over with.
“How can I help you, officers?”
“How is Kristie?” John asked, his eyes darting to the room down the hall.
“They’re operating on her right now. All we can do is wait.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman officer said, and the look in her eyes let Gray know that she meant it. “Obviously we can’t question Kristie about what happened at the apartment. We just wanted to talk to you about where you were during this.”
“You’ll have to talk to Gray’s lawyer,” a voice said, and Gray realized it was his uncle.
John stiffened. Gray knew whatever lawyer his uncle had used last time was highly effective, albeit expensive. He was suddenly glad his uncle was here to ward off the cops. Gray knew otherwise he would have started answering their questions without thinking everything through.
The woman police officer nodded. “Fine. We’ll have to schedule a time when you can come down to the station, Gray.”
Something was still bothering Gray. Something he didn’t mind saying to the cops even without a lawyer next to him. This time he looked at John, hoping to use his feelings for Kristie for something positive.
“It was Armand. The same guy who shot her.”
Gray turned around then, biting his tongue before he lost it over the fact that the cops hadn’t arrested Armand yet. How in the world could they not have enough evidence to get Armand at least taken down for questioning? He shot Kristie and now he had broken into their apartment. Gray knew that Armand had gone underground after the shooting. No one in the Infernos wanted to give him up then.
As the cops left, Gray grabbed for his phone in his pocket.
His uncle was looking at him, still holding Megan. “Pamela wants to talk to you.”
“Only about good things, I’m sure.”
“Don’t start, Gray, not now,” his uncle replied, a warning tone in his voice.
“Sorry. Tired. I’m upset I can’t be there for the birth. I’m worried about how it will go.”
Lionel shifted Megan to his other arm, who made a soft noise as she slept. “Was it really Armand?”
Gray nodded, pulling out his phone this time. “I have to make a call.”
“Gray.” Pamela looked like a wreck. Her eyes were tear stained, and her skin was waxy. She looked frail and suddenly ancient, as if she had been awake for decades.
“I need you to stay away from Kristie,” she said, her skin flushing. “You need to stay away from my daughter.”
Gray took two large steps to get over to her before she made a scene in the waiting room. He reached out for her but she recoiled, as if he was a demon.
“No,” she said, holding up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it, Gray. This is the second time my daughter has been hurt because of you. Now the baby’s life is at stake. You need to leave. You need to get out.”
Lionel went over to her, trying to calm her down. Pamela was sobbing now. Gray couldn’t make out what she was saying anymore. Different emotions swirled inside of him. Part of him was angry at what she was saying. However, a big part of him knew she was right. How could he try to explain to her that he was working to end this mess?
“I’m going for a cigarette,” he mumbled, turning to leave.
There was no smoking on hospital grounds, Gray discovered a minute later when he stepped out of the hospital and went off to one side. The sign declaring no smoking was too obvious to pretend he hadn’t seen it. The last thing he needed was some sort of trouble while Kristie was being operated on.
Instead, he finally pulled out his phone and dialed Ben’s phone number. For a second, he was worried that he was given a fake number at their meeting earlier. It was well past midnight at this point but for some reason he figured Ben wasn’t an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person.
“What the fuck, Gray?” Ben said by way of greeting.
“Hey. Sorry to call so late.” He gave a brief rundown of what happened with Armand.
“Fuck,” Ben replied.
“Police want him for questioning. My guess is he’ll go underground again. Cops won’t find him with you guys protecting him. They’ll start looking at the Infernos instead.”
There was a long silence
. Gray held his breath. If Ben agreed not to hide Armand, finally something positive would begin to come out of this mess.
“I hear what you’re saying. Good luck.”
The line went dead.
Chapter Eight
Kristie woke up groggily. For a second, she forgot where she was. The room didn’t look familiar to her, and a soft beeping noise came from somewhere. Her belly was killing her, she realized with a jolt as she moved her hands down toward that region. Her baby – her son – where was her son?
She tried to sit up, and the room swirled. A voice came to her and suddenly someone was holding her hand. Kristie saw Gray’s face and relaxed a little, clutching his hands.
“Where is my son?”
“Kristie, it’s okay.” His voice was low and soothing in her ear. “He’s in the neonatal unit. They had to take him there.”
Her breath caught as she recalled the operation... the C-section they had to do to make sure her son was born safely. How impossibly shrunken and small he looked once he was removed from her. Kristie tried to reach out for him, panicked suddenly that she would lose her son or Armand would come for her baby. Finally the nurse gave her some medicine that made her fall asleep as they tried to calm her down.
Gray ran his thumb over her hand and tilted her face up to his. “He’s okay. You’re okay, too.”
“I’m okay. He’s okay,” she repeated, getting a bearing on her surroundings.
Gray mumbled soothing words to her and slowly her fear abated. It was terrifying going for surgery so suddenly. The fear that Armand had caused put her pregnancy at risk and resulted in Gray not being able to witness the birth of his son. And when she had seen her baby being taken away from her, she panicked.
But now she felt silly. She was so quick to panic, even with all her struggles to improve her mental state since the shooting. But seeing Armand had been so horrifying. She rubbed her eyes, feeling sore and tired. “How is Megan?”
“My uncle is watching her. He took her home with your mom. Your mom was…stressed. She wanted to see the baby but no one was allowed until he was fully stabilized.”
“God, everything is a mess,” Kristie mumbled, suddenly craving the world’s largest coffee.
“They’ll tell us right away when we can see Rick.”
Kristie smiled and looked up at Gray. They had known from the minute she had found out she was pregnant with a boy that they would name him Rick. It only seemed fitting. Gray smiled back, although he looked troubled.
Kristie remembered what she had been thinking the past week... about how she would have to protect her children with or without Gray. Now Armand had broken into her apartment, and she had given birth early. What was going to stop something worse from happening next time?
She took a deep breath. “Gray. We need to talk.”
He nodded, pulling a chair over to the side of the bed. The hospital room was thankfully empty for the moment. The early morning light was shining in around the edges of her closed window. I want to see my son. Kristie’s heart ached. She wanted to see him more than anything else. The fact she had to wait to see him and most likely wouldn’t even get to hold him felt like a knife to the heart.
“How did things go with Ben?” she finally asked, turning back to face Gray.
“He’s interested in the treaty. I told him…I told him I’d give him the whole gang and all the turf we have and the areas where we take care of the cars.”
“All of it? I thought you wanted a better deal than that.”
“He wasn’t budging on a lot of things. He wanted more and more. And I was tired of all of it.”
After Gray fell silent, Kristie prodded, “So what did you tell him?”
“Ben made it clear that the tide is turning against me. Everyone wants Grant in control of the gang. They don’t want the treaty. Dern is the only one who agrees with me about it. So I used the last chip I had to get what I wanted and get out of the gang.”
“What was that?”
“Armand. They have to take care of Armand to get the gang. Ben doesn’t like how out of control he is. He’s threatening his own gang. If they take care of him, I’ll give them whatever they want.”
Kristie’s head swirled. “But how is your gang going to take this? You just said Grant wants blood.”
“I don’t care. With Armand gone and Ben controlling the Devil’s Advocates, no one will come after us. I don’t care what Grant says then. It won’t be my concern anymore.”
“Are you sure? You want to give up the entire group like that? I know how much it means to you…”
Gray shook his head. “No. You and our children are the most important thing to me now.”
Kristie’s throat tightened. “The children need to be safe, Gray. I can’t…I can’t put the children in danger.”
He fell silent, lost in thought for a moment before he sighed. “You’re saying you will leave if this doesn’t get taken care of.”
“Yes,” Kristie said, her voice shaking. “As soon as possible. I don’t feel safe at the apartment anymore. How can I take the children back there? I know you understand.”
Gray nodded, looking sad and tired. “I understand. We’ll figure something out then.”
He reached over and held her hand. Kristie squeezed it tightly. The fact that Gray was willing to give up the gang and take care of Armand gave her hope. But the thought of returning to the apartment where Armand had broken in filled her with fear. She wasn’t sure where she would go while Gray sorted out the gang issues.
But for the sake of her children, she knew she couldn’t stick around and wait.
Chapter Nine
It was a few hours before Kristie was told that she could see Rick. The waiting had been agony. All she could think about was her tiny son in an incubator somewhere. When she was told she wouldn’t be able to even hold him yet, it just made everything worse.
But Kristie told herself that the important thing was her son was alive. Gray was with her also. He was quieter since their conversation about the gang and Kristie refusing to go back to the apartment. She was sure he was trying to find other places where she could stay. She was sure her mother would make room for her at their place, but the idea of going there and hearing her mom harp about Gray when she was trying to recover and take care of two children filled Kristie with a sense of dread.
By the time they made it down to the neonatal unit, Kristie wished she could hold Gray’s hand. But she was confined to a wheelchair, recuperating from her C-section and he was pushing her along. A nurse led the way. Kristie’s heart began to beat quickly. She knew that her baby would be small and connected to tubes. She tried to prepare herself for what she was going to see. The nurse said as much as they stopped in front of a large glass window.
Gray rolled Kristie to the window. Her breath caught. Babies in incubators lay in front of her. Low light illuminated the room and machines ran alongside the wall. It looked like something she would see in a science fiction movie and not where her son was currently staying.
The nurse led the couple into the unit and pointed out an incubator to Kristie’s left. When her eyes fell on it, her head felt light as a feather. Her son, Rick, was fast asleep with tubes connected to him, one prominently protruding from his forehead. Tears sprang from her eyes, fast and vicious.
“He’s so tiny,” Gray mumbled, awestruck.
“Those tubes…they’re not hurting him?”
The nurse explained what the tubes were doing for him, and Kristie listened to every word, trying to calm her racing heart. He was so small. Somehow even smaller than how she remembered directly after the birth. She found herself entranced by him.
“Is he doing okay?” she asked the nurse.
“He is. He’s stabilized and doing well. But we want to keep him over the next week or so to observe him.”
Kristie reached out and caressed the baby’s cheek. The baby stirred at the touch.
“My dearest son… I am your mommy and
it’s nice to finally meet you. I can’t wait to take you home and introduce you to your big sister.”
Kristie could hardly contain herself. She wanted to wrap her son up and take him home with her right away. Now she would be going home tomorrow without him. It broke her heart and for a moment she fought back tears.
Gray stood by, wetness appearing in his eyes as he swallowed what felt like a rock in his throat.
“His skin is so red,” Gray managed to squeak out. “Is that okay?”
“It’s normal for preemies. It’ll fade with time.”
Devil's Advocate: A BBW MC New Adult Romance Series - Book 4 (Devil's Advocate BBW MC New Adult Romance Series) Page 5
