Page 175 of Angel

‘I’m head over heels for you, Roxy,’ I growled. ‘Never forget that.’

‘I won’t,’ she breathed with a smile.

I guided her up the stone steps toward the porch, keeping my arm on her waist to support her balance.

As I unlocked the front door and pushed it open, a sudden flash of movement down the hallway triggered my spidey senses.

I shoved Roxy sideways onto the lawn just as a deafening blast shattered the quiet afternoon.

Buckshot shredded the timber doorjamb, spraying wood splinters and shattering the foyer window into a thousand sparkling shards.

‘The hell? Stay down, babe!’ I growled to my wife. ‘Call the cops, we’ve an intruder.’

Roxy dropped to her knees in the flowerbed, her face pale as her fingers scrabbled through her bag for her phone.

I kicked in the door and slipped inside, hugging the wall through the front hall until my vision locked onto the trespasser standing by the dining room.

Evangeline.

She stood swaying beside a console, her hair matted, skin blotchy, and eyes wild and dilated.

She was high as fuck, tweaking and twitching all over.

Her clothes were filthy and stained, her fingernails caked with dirt, as her trembling hands clutched a sawed-off shotgun.

Behind her, the back kitchen door was a mess of shattered glass and wood.

That was her ingress. Fuck.

She must have broken out of her rehab facility, got high, and tracked us down with murder on her mind.

Out on the porch, Roxy’s voice echoed through the broken front window as she shouted our address to the emergency dispatcher.

I raised a hand to stay Evangeline as she fixed her savage eyes on me.

‘Eva, put the gun down; this could get ugly.’

‘It needs to get ugly!’

Her hiss carried pure malice and madness.

‘This house, that baby, Angel, was all meant to be mine!’

She fumbled with a shotgun shell, rambling about how Roxy was stealing her dream life and how I was betraying her.

‘You kissed her outside!’ she shrieked, her knuckles white around the grip. ‘How dare you! YOU WERE MINE!’

She swung the muzzle in my direction.

‘You’re out of your mind, Evie,’ I snarled, lunging over the granite kitchen island to bridge the gap between us.

I reached her just as she slammed the action home, my hand slapping the barrel upward as another round punched into the plaster ceiling.

Wrenching the hot metal out of her grasp, I tossed the weapon far into the living room, out of reach.

Evangeline shrieked, snatching a gleaming chef knife from the wooden block on the countertop.

She stabbed in frenzied abandon as I moved around the space, dodging her frantic swipes until she backed me up against a marble counter.