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My gaze shot up, eyes seeking him, sure I would see his body there, splayed on the floor. Unmoving.
But the space where I’d seen him fall was empty, save for a stain of blood on the floor.
He’d survived?
He was okay?
My gaze flew around, seeing the blood trail on the floor.
Had he been dragged?
Or crawled?
But crawled where?
Even as I thought it, though, the answer came to me.
He’d crawled to Judah.
Even bleeding, possibly dying, his instinct had been to protect my baby.
A cry escaped me as I turned, about to rush out of the kitchen.
When, suddenly, a man was there.
Gun raised.
Features tight.
“No!” I shrieked, rushing toward the knife block again.
“Hey! Hey, Claire. It’s me. Damon,” he said, as I tried to grab the knife with slick fingers. “Where’s Aurelio?” he asked.
“Aurelio,” I repeated as my heart sank.
I rushed away from the knife block.
I ran right past the man I now recognized as the other guard that had been with us since we came to the safe house.
I ran down the hallway, nearly tripping over another body that I hardly even spared a glance.
“No no no no no!” I cried, finding Aurelio propped up against Judah’s bedroom door, his gun at his side, his body horrifically still.
“Fuck,” Damon hissed, reaching down to press his fingers into Aurelio’s neck. “He’s alive,” he said, then, suddenly, he was shoving something at me.
I took it without thinking, without really even knowing what it was until I felt the cool metal in my hand.
A gun.
He’d passed me his gun.
“We need to call an ambulance,” I said, tears flooding my eyes.
“It will take too long,” Damon said, reaching down, then suddenly grabbing Aurelio, and lifting him. “I can get him there faster,” he added. “Stay here. Luca’s on his way,” he said. “Shoot anyone who walks through that door who isn’t him.”
With that and nothing else, he hefted up the alarmingly still Aurelio, and disappeared.
“No no no,” I cried, all alone with a body just a few feet from me.
