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LIAM
“Where is my wife?” I roared to the hospital nurse behind the desk.
“Liam, son, breathe.” Sedric pulled me back as I tried to keep calm. But that was hopeless at this point. I could barely see straight.
“I am breathing, where the fuck is my wife?” I screamed again, pulling the very first nurse who came out.
She stared at me, wide eyed, buckling under my grip.
“My wife,” I hissed into her face.
“I…I you’re hurting me.” She sobbed, trying to pull away.
“Liam, they just took her to room 228,” Declan called out and I ran. I ran like a man without his head.
I was going mad.
I knew it.
I could feel it.
One moment she was there, on the phone and the next, all I could hear were the windows shattering, the grating sounds of metal, and finally a chorus of screams.
Over and over again I called into the phone.
Over and over again I tried to get a message out to any of them, but nothing. For over two hours, we had nothing but radio silence. The GPS on all of our cars had been stripped. I demanded Jinx to take me to their last signal location, but she wasn’t there.
It wasn’t until my mother called, saying someone had leaked to the press about a car accident, that we were we able to find her. She was in some small rundown hospital on the edge of the city, and I didn’t even know if she was alive, or…I didn’t know anything. She wasn’t answering my calls. Neither was my brother. But I knew this wasn’t just a car accident. The bullet shells and Natasha’s skull had proven that.
They had killed her. Two shots to the back of the head. That was now Natasha Briar. Her body was found only two miles from the “accident” and the moment we found it, I feared what had happened to Mel… my Mel.
The moment I opened—more liked kicked down—the door, I came face to face with Neal, who sat at her side; busted eye, broken ribs and arm. He looked like hell.
But Mel, who lay as pale as the sheet on top of her body, looked far worse.
“They fucked us, brother…” Neal whispered. “Aviela DeRosa and her men. They waited until we got Natasha and ran us off the road. It happened so fast. She shot Mel three times…I tried. I tried to get her, but Aviela’s men. She had the power to kill us. She could have killed us. She wanted us to know she could fuck with us. Us. We Callahans, she could bring us to our knees.”
I grabbed his face, grabbing on to his hand before walking over to my wife. Sitting on the side of her bed, I brushed her hair back, trying my best not to imagine her being shot three times.
“Rest, brother,” I said. “Rest long. Rest well. Because they will pay for this. I will make her suffer. I swear it. She thinks she can bring us to our knees, but she can’t. No one can.” I kissed Mel’s lips before lying next to her and I felt myself calm at the sound of her heart.
Neal looked as though he didn’t believe me. Like he had seen the devil, and suddenly I didn’t seem as scary anymore.
But this wasn’t over.
This was far from over.
He shook his head before leaving, and I saw a flash of blonde hair that had to be his wife’s.
“She was toying with me,” Mel whispered, gripping onto my chest.
Pulling her closer, I kissed the top of her head. “I didn’t know you were up.”
“She played me like a child. She outdid me with ease, and left me on the ground powerless to stop her, Liam. She…”
“Shh, love. Rest. Just rest. This isn’t the end,” I told her.
“It’s not the end because she let me live.”
The thought of her being “allowed” to live angered me like nothing else.
“Mel, rest,” I hissed, holding her tighter.
Aviela would pay. She would pay dearly. Nothing, not even God himself could stop me from getting revenge. But right now I needed to keep my wife calm. I need the family calm. We would come out on top. We were Callahans, no matter what, we came out better and stronger. We couldn’t ignore this anymore. We couldn’t ignore her.
You did not fuck with my business. You did not fuck with my brother, and you sure as hell did not fucking mess with my wife. There would be blood. It would rain blood until justice was met.
We were going to Ireland.
“Liam,” Mel whispered into my ear as I stroked her arm.
“Yes, love.”
“…I’m pregnant again.”
God had a twisted sense of humor.
ELEVEN
“The business of murder took time, patience, skill, and a tolerance for the monotonous.”
—J.D. Robb
LIAM
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us really knew what to say, nor where to even begin. A lot had happened in the last forty-eight hours. Too much in fact, and I was still trying to sort through it all in my mind. I tried focusing on her breathing, the beating of her heart as it beeped on the machines around us. I tried to calm myself down and just clear my mind, but then it hit me. It hit me like the car that hit her. I almost lost her…them. Everything would have been over.
“Ahh…” Mel groaned, forcing me to sit up quickly.
“What’s wrong?” I scanned her body, but other than the obvious, I couldn’t find anything wrong.
“Nothing,” she lied, making herself comfortable once again on the hospital bed.
Ignoring her, I went to look at her chart, Neal had already been moved to another room.
“You’re not a doctor, put my chart down,” she snapped, throwing her pillow at me.
Catching it, I handed it back to her as I read.
“You declined all painkillers?” She was white-knuckling the pain. What the hell was wrong with her? “When did you decline meds? I’ve been with you since I got here.”
“You were in the bathroom. Plus the doctor said it was fine.”
“After you probably threatened him. Have you lost your mind? You have two shots in your shoulder and one in your thigh. Not to mention the countless bruises I can see up and down your legs and arm. Take the damn drugs, Melody.” I tried not to snap at her, but I was only working on two hours of sleep. This was not the fight I wanted to have with her.
She glared and I glared back.
“No drugs,” she hissed.
“You’re in pain. You’re getting drugs if I have to shoot you up myself.” When I reached over to call for the nurse, she grabbed my wrist.
“No drugs, Liam,” she whispered. “They increase the chances of miscarriage and stillbirth. I can’t lose this one. If I do, I’m done, I can’t…”
I stared at her for a moment, not saying anything. I hadn’t even thought about the baby; I hadn’t had time to process it all.
“Okay. Okay, no drugs.”
Once again, we fell into silence. I wasn’t sure what was going through her mind. I still couldn’t believe she was pregnant. I mean, yes, it was more than possible. We jumped each other whenever we were alone. I was addicted her.
She glared at me and I wanted her, she sneezed and I wanted her. She was everything, and it had been more than a year since we lost…but the science behind how made sense. It was just a lot.
“What do you want to do, Mel?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away.
