Page 133 of Dark Surrender

My wife.

How do I tell her what happened? What do I say if Dark dies? My grandkids. Fuck.

My grandkids.

Offering me a genuine smile, Olivia pats my arm as she pulls me through the door her cousin holds open for us. “It will be okay,” she says in her thick accent as I drop into a chair with a groan and send up a silent prayer to whatever or whoever might be listening.

Please don’t let my kid die.

From the other room, I overhear them working.

Admittedly, my Spanish is crap, so I don’t understand what they’re saying, but the fact that they haven’t given up gives me hope.

Olivia leaves me for a moment, and when she returns, now dressed in green scrubs, she rolls a cart over. I’m dying to ask about my son, but I don’t. Not yet. I’ll know when I know. Shouldn’t a parent feel when their child leaves this plane? Isn’t that how it works anyhow? Fuck if I know.

Olivia pushes a needle into a little vial and fills the small syringe.

“If that’s pain meds, I don’t want them.” I nod toward her table.

Olivia hums as if she understands but doesn’t care. That much is confirmed when she cleans a spot on my arm with an alcohol pad and stabs me with the damn thing.

“Hey,” I hiss as the burn spreads and my eyelids grow heavy.

“You’re a…mess,” she comments, her accent laced with humor as she sets the empty syringe on the tray and pats my knee. “It’s sleep time, El Sol.”

But I don’t want…

Her cousin’s ugly mug is the last thing I see before I pass the fuck out.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Dark

A hoarse scream rips from my throat as my entire body erupts in the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Rolling onto my side, I puke on the floor. It burns. Everything burns. In an endless loop of please-let-me-die, I purge and shudder. Tears flow freely as I hold my stomach.

Something squeezes around my arm, and I rip it off between exorcising these god-awful demons. Just when I think it’ll stop, another wave takes over. I grip the bedsheets. A person rubs my back, and I don’t like it. It hurts. Everything hurts.

“Death,” I wheeze, scanning the blurry room for a knife, a gun, anything. All I can see is white walls, white sheets, white, white, fucking white.

Where the hell am I?

What the fuck happened?

My teeth rattle, and my eyes roll back into my skull.

The world goes blank.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Dark

Ugh!

No more. I throw the television remote on the floor. It slides across the tile and clatters against the wall.

It’s been two weeks since I woke up in Mexico at Angel’s family compound. For two weeks, I’ve looked my father in the eye and begged him to let me go.

I don’t want this.