Fucking ego.
It’s always the fucking ego.
“I shouldn’t have taunted him. I shouldn’t have fucking said anything. The car that hit our parents was hacked. No one was driving it. I bet it was him.” I feel all the blood leave my head. Dizzy, I collapse on the chair. “It’s been like two fucking hours, and while I’ve been here this asshole has been trying to get into my fucking company. They almost killed Dad because they knew then I wouldn’t be in there defending my system.”
“Eli,” Lex whispers, but Shirley steps in this time.
“What do you need to stop this person?”
Her eyes are unflinching, her posture so rigid I bet a hurricane couldn’t nudge her.
That’s . . . reassuring.
“I need to get to my office but I don’t have a car, and even if I did, it might be too?—”
“Let me get a chopper here. Harry, why don’t you make sure they can land on the roof of the hospital?”
With that everyone gets to work.
I look at Lex, share a precious few seconds where we’re alone and none of this is happening.
Then the world starts moving around us again, and Shirley’s pulling me out of the room, into the elevator, out to the frigid heights of Manhattan.
A helicopter lands minutes later.
This timeit takes eight hours to beat Gotcha back.
It’s probably—hopefully—the biggest fuck up of my life, and I swear to myself I’ll never again let arrogance dictate my actions.
My eyes hurt, and as I shut them for what feels like the first time in hours, my other senses start to come back.
My mouth is dry, my whole body stiff, and... yeah, I’m hungry.
Carla isn’t faring any better.
“Go home,” I tell her, sounding as tired as I feel.
We get through shutting everything down, and when she leaves I finally look at my phone.
I debate on who to call first for exactly two seconds.
“Eli, God, are you okay?” Lex’s voice is like a balm to my heart.
“I’m okay. He didn’t get through. It was fucking close but...” I trail off because honestly, this is the last thing I want to talk about. “How’s my Dad? Did the doctor say anything?”
It only occurs to me now that maybe Dr. Kully kept his word and didn’t say anything at all.
“He’s in recovery now, so we can only visit one at a time, and he’s still out of it. He only came out of surgery like an hour ago. That lawyer dude is apparently the one who put your dad’s medical stuff together. It turns out that if you’re also not available, the next person on the list is Harry, so he got to hear about it all and yeah, your dad made it through just fine.”
He sounds tired too.
I pull back my phone to see it’s midnight, not that late considering, but still... with everything that’s happened today, I feel like I’ve lived three lives since the kids birthday party this morning.
“Thank God,” I whisper, and my shields finally break.
A sob leaves me and before I know it I’m falling on the chair, covering my mouth to try to keep quiet, to not worry Lex.
“Fuck, angel, you need to come here so I can hold you. Or I’ll come get you. Just as soon as you tell me where you are.”
