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Jay lowered his head to my hand, pressing his lips against it. My hand was wet from his tears. They were like acid on my skin.
When he lifted his head, his eyes were devoid of whatever sorrow and regret had been living there before. Now they were full of only one thing: death.
“They will all die.” He vowed through his teeth, each word ripped from a dark and ugly place. His tone made my skin crawl.
I thought of the blood still staining my hands, how small and empty Wren looked in that bed. I thought of what her life would look like when she woke up, about what had been stolen from her.
“They will all die,” I agreed.
Chapter 15
I was kept overnight. Jay slept in the armchair beside me. That was after he had me moved to a different room. A private suite. The rich person hospital room. As if it made a difference.
Wren was in one of the suites too. Her parents had arrived, her father making sure she got the best of the best, calling surgeons, doctors, specialists. Her mother ordering flowers, candles, fresh fruit, silk nightgowns. Anything to stop and let the reality of what happened to their daughter hit. Avoiding the knowledge that all the money in the world could not change what had happened, could not buy back the life that had been lost.
Wren had been in and out of consciousness, eventually lucid enough to be told what had happened. I was there when the doctors told her the news because her parents couldn’t handle it. They gave their daughter the world but did not know how to witness it being taken away from her.
Jay had left this morning. After my interview with the police, after they’d discharged me, murmuring about things that needed to be done with violence and death in his eyes. He’d stroked my swollen cheek, wincing as his finger trailed the discolored skin. Then he’d kissed me. Not gently. Not with the hesitation and regret that he’d been touching me with since he’d arrived at the hospital. With something hungry, desperate and dark. I kissed him back with all of my hungry, desperate darkness too.
There were orders not to leave the hospital, to stay in sight of one of the men who were stationed at the doors to our rooms. Wren’s parents hadn’t asked about them, which made me wonder how much they knew about Karson and the business he was in.
My father hadn’t been told about what happened. Not yet. I’d eventually tell him about Wren and the baby because he considered her a second daughter. Because he was as excited as a grandfather might’ve been, which meant he’d also be as heartbroken as a grandfather.
Truly, it was fear that stopped me from telling my father. And because I knew that he’d fly up here to try to help, to try to suck up the hurt and sorrow like men did. Because I couldn’t let him see my face. I was going to wait until I healed to tell him. I didn’t know whether that was the right decision, didn’t know what lies I was going to tell in order to inform my father of what happened.
The lies had already been told to the police. I’d been interviewed with Jay at my side. He hadn’t coached me to say anything, but the familiar way he shook the hand of the detective in charge told me that they were acquainted.
I didn’t tell any lies to the police, obviously, but I did withhold some truths. About whom my enemies might be. I didn’t have any, that was correct. But Jay did. And we were married, what’s his was mine now.
Then the detective left, and Jay did too.
Jay’s absence was a yawning chasm in this horrible nightmare. There were things to be done, I knew.
People who had to die. Wars that had to be planned. It was interesting to me. War had always been a far-off concept, either it was images on the news, explosions, guns, men and women fighting for our country. Or it was swords, knights and fucking dragons in Game of Thrones. Either way, war was something that happened away from my world. It was something that existed on screens, in books, still images. Not in my life. And it was nothing like the books, the news stories, the fucking television shows.
Jay and Karson would seek blood for this. More than blood. They would seek utter destruction. And as much I hadn’t considered myself a bloodthirsty person, I was glad about it. Because I had to sit beside my friend’s hospital bed, my hand in hers and help her navigate a loss like this. Watch the grief overtake her with absolutely no power over it. I had thought I was a make love not war kind of gal, but it was love that made me thirst for war.
