They wheel her motionless body down the hall.
“Where are you taking her?” I scream. “I can’t live without her.” My knees buckle as my body sinks to the hospital floor like my spirit has left me. She was bleeding out. So much blood, Kat’s mixing with Henry’s. The paramedics were somber as they arrived on the grisly scene.
Donovan keeps fucking texting me, but I can’t bear to answer him. I’m floating in purgatory. This is my penance for all my acts of sin, from fucking my sister to making a living from blood money. If she dies, I’ll walk into the ocean and let the surf take me home. I’ll join the others from Wainscott Hollow who went before me because there will be nothing left on this earth that even interests me.
An orderly grips my upper arm. “Sir, you’re bleeding too. Let us take a look at you.”
“No!” A visceral growl rooted in my gut escapes. “I’m fine. Just help her. I don’t care how much it costs or who I need to fly down. Money is no object to me. Save her, and I’ll see you have whatever you want.” My voice cracks and tears trickle down my cheek. “Please!” I beg to no one in particular and everyone at the same time. God, the devil, mother nature, the nurse with the sad look on her face, anyone and everyone who will listen to myplea. I cannot go on without her. I refuse to. “I’ll do anything, whatever you want. Just please don’t let her die. Do not let her die on me.”
* * *
Six hours of waiting. Four holes punched into the hospital drywall that almost got me kicked out. Two irrevocably broken hearts. I quickly remedied my faux pas with a two-million-dollar donation pledge for one of the hospital’s new wings in the name of Wainscott Hollow, and they allowed me to stay. Violence can easily be overlooked when you’ve got a padded checkbook. Had I pulled this same shit when I was a penniless kid, my ass would’ve been tossed in jail so fast that heads would spin. But today, as a wealthy man, money buys me the ability to destroy whatever I want and to royally fuck up every once in a while.
“What’s your plan? Gonna smash that busted fist through all the drywall in this joint? No matter the cheap construction, your hand is gonna give out before these walls do.” Donovan holds out a hot cup of coffee to me. It’s his subtle way of telling me to chill the fuck out.
Donavan is a good guy, “good” being subjective and relative to what side you’re on, the other side, or his. But he’s decent as far as emotionless, bloodthirsty hitmen go. Like me, he survived on his wits by proving how clever he was. Not born into the mob life, but it kicked him down so hard that he had to become a killer to survive.
I nod as I take the scalding cup out of his hand. “Thanks, man.”
“You need food?”
My eyes dart to the police officers in the hall. Their radios have been chattering non-stop, trying to puzzle together all that transpired in the last twenty-four hours. “Nah, I just need someone to tell me what’s going on. The cops are sniffing around, starting to ask questions.”
“I cleared it up.”
“What the fuck did you tell them?”
“The truth. The dead brother was threatening to kill her, and you had to stop him. Explained the stab wounds too. Told them you charged him with the knife and kept stabbing so he couldn’t shoot the gun. The initials carved into her chest were a little hard to explain, but I told them the other guy was a sick fuck who liked to carve people up.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t mention it,” Donavan says. “Everyone’s got their kinks. Yours just happen to be more fucked up than most.”
“Ahhh!” I growl as my fist connects with the wall again, creating another hole. I want to go back and kill Henry again just to make it more painful. I should’ve chopped his limbs up piece by piece and forced him to eat them, to savor every single moment of torture.
“Hey, man,” Donovan says, patting my back. “You can’t question the kill. Do your job and move on. Otherwise, that shit will make you crazy.”
“He deserved worse.”
“It’s coming to him. The devil will finish the job.”
“Mr. Clifton,” a doctor says as she scans the room. She removes her surgical mask as she takes us both in. “You can see Mrs. Lind now if you like. She’s unconscious, but she can likely hear what you say.”
“It’s Mrs. Shaw. She didn’t like to use her married name,” I tell the doctor. Not that it matters, but I don’t want the terrible memory of Eddie to taint her life more than it already has.
CHAPTER 25
Heath
I thankthe doctor profusely for her team’s swift action, and she nods her head, waving my compliments away.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Shaw is going to have a long road to recovery, but I feel comfortable saying that she’s going to be okay.”
I brace myself on the wall to keep from crashing to the floor as my equilibrium seems to correct itself at the news, and my world comes into focus again. With my hand on my heart, I try to express my gratitude to the surgeon, but all that comes out is a garbled cry and my chest heaves with the sob I’ve been holding in for hours. I cannot remember the last time I cried. Perhaps at my mother’s funeral.
What do I say to the doctor to explain my emotion? She’s my adopted sister? My lover? My entire fucking universe? The reason I trudge on through the adversities hurled in my path, destroying and conquering, all of it’s for Kat. Everything I do in this life, I do with my woman in mind. She’s my motivation and the only reason I can sleep at night.
“You said I can see her?” is all I can manage.
