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He manages to grab the back of her ankle as I take him to the ground, and she falls forward with a shrill scream I never want to hear come out of her mouth again. I’m terrified she might have landed on her belly, and I use that terror to further fuel the unimaginable amount of pain I plan to rain down on this bastard.
“You motherfucker! I’m going to kill you!” I roar as I flip him onto his back. He’s not a small man by any means, but I’m able to keep him trapped under me by straddling his torso, using all 280 pounds of my weight to my advantage to pin his arms to his sides between my knees.
He tries to buck me off, panic quickly replacing the deranged look on his sallow face when he realizes he’s outmatched in both size and strength. I cock my arm back and punch him square in the face just as he starts to beg me to let him go. A satisfying crunch and bellow of pain follows the blow, and I smile like a madman.
“Please, please—” He chokes on the blood pouring from his broken nose.
“Fuck you!” I scream. “You think I’m going to let you go after you attacked my woman?”
“Dolores, please,” he sobs—or at least he tries to, since I cut him off by slamming my fist into his mouth, knowing I must have knocked a tooth or two out, and his eyes roll back in his head.
“You don’t get to say her name! Do you hear me, motherfucker? Never. Again!”
I meant it when I said I was going to kill him as I land blow after blow, gratified by the sound of each crack of his bones as they crumble to pieces beneath my fists. There’s no fight left in him as his head flops side to side with each punch.
I’m barely cognizant of the other sounds piercing the night air—the blaring house alarm, police sirens, and squealing tires—as the yard is flooded with flashing red and blue lights from the cruisers coming down the driveway. I’ve got my hands wrapped around his throat now, choking the last bit of life out of him, when I hear the sound of several guns being cocked.
“Goddamnit, Wyatt! I said get off of him, and let me handle it!”
I recognize the voice well as Sheriff Gibson, and it snaps me out of the red haze I’ve been in since I got the alarm notification. It takes two other officers to drag me off the bloody asshole, whose face is barely recognizable as human. I wrench out of their hold and stumble to my feet, realizing I’ve lost my slippers at some point, and search for Dolly.
She’s fighting and clawing at a female officer, who is trying to hold her back, and she shrieks at the officer to let her go. She manages to wriggle free, and her face twists with sharp relief when she sees me coming for her, for my woman.
Dolly runs and jumps into my outstretched arms, crying out my name. It’s not easy for her to wrap her legs around me with her belly as big as it is, but she manages to hold on until I can support her with an arm under her ass and the other around her back. Shivers wrack her body, and she clings to my neck so tightly that it’s hard to breathe, but I don’t care.
“Oh god, babygirl, tell me you’re ok. Did that fucker hurt you? Did you fall on your belly? I’m going to fucking kill him if he’s not dead already.” I’m frantic with worry the man may have gotten his hands on her before I made it home, and the animalistic red haze threatens to take over again.
I tighten my arms around her as she answers me with chattering teeth, “I-I’m o-ok. He—” That’s all she can get out before her shivering doubles, whether it be from shock or because she’s out in the unusually cool night air in just her flannel and panties.
I curse again, desperate to get her inside the house, when the female officer approaches. She puts her hands out in front of her after I growl at her to back up. I don’t want anyone touching my woman right now, friend or foe, not when she’s so scared and vulnerable, though logically, I know I need to.
I trek toward the house, nodding at the officer to follow us inside but halt in my tracks when, from our right, the Sheriff yells, “Put the gun down. Now!”
Dolly’s attacker—who by all counts belongs in a body bag after I unleashed unholy hell on him—swings his arm, holding a gun I didn’t know he had, aiming it right at us.
I don’t think, I just move, spinning us so my back is to him. I drop low to the ground, tucking Dolly into my chest to shield her and the baby and brace to take a bullet, willing to die for my woman and unborn child if that’s what it takes to keep them safe.
There’s an explosion of noise as multiple shots ring out, and I pray to god none of them hit her as I crawl away from the scene. I don’t stop crawling, even when the noise of the gunfire ceases, just in case her attacker managed to best the officers.
When EMTs rush us with their equipment, forcing me to stop, I peek over my shoulder and see that the fucker is sprawled on the grass, his gun held loosely in his limp hand. There’s blood oozing from wounds on his body, pooling on the ground around him. With the yard lit up as it is, it’s clear as day his chest isn’t rising and falling as it should be if he were still alive.
I feel a sense of vengeance at seeing he will never again be able to hurt my girl, closely followed by feeling conflicted that I’m so exultant at being witness to the man shot dead less than ten yards away.
All that matters, though, is that my family is unharmed. Counting my blessings that I didn’t feel the sharp sting of a bullet, I twist to sit on the ground, cradling Dolly in my arms. I palm her large belly, and the utter relief that sweeps through me when our baby kicks against my hand is so immense that I cry, my chest heaving and shoulders shaking.
My inner conflict ends swiftly when Dolly whimpers and whispers in a hoarse voice, “My dad.”
A subconscious part of me knew who her attacker was, especially when I saw the cruiser on the side of the road, plus the fact that he called her Dolores, but all I could focus on at the time was neutralizing the threat and protecting my family at all costs.
Frankly, it’s a miracle I didn’t end up in a ditch or collide with another vehicle as I hit almost a hundred miles an hour, shooting down the pitch-black backcountry roads. I don’t allow myself to imagine what might have happened if I hadn’t made it to her in time.
“H-He said he’s been watching and waiting for you to l-leave, and he—” She’s crying so hard that she can’t finish her sentence.
It kills me that no matter how many cameras we have, he still managed to keep some kind of surveillance on the house, on Dolly, without us knowing. Though he might be dead and gone now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to relax when it comes to her safety again, and I’ll be looking into more advanced security measures. Regret that I haven’t done so before now slams into me hard, but I push it aside to deal with it later.
“It’s over now. You’ll never have to see him or worry about him hurting you ever again. It’s over, and you’re safe. We’re safe.” I rock her in my arms, and even though I keep repeating that she’s ok, I don’t actually know what he may have done to her—both physically and mentally—before I made it home.
With that thought, I finally allow the hovering EMTs to approach so they can check for themselves that she’s uninjured. When the first EMT touches Dolly’s back to get her attention, she screams and clings to me.
