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“No.” She gasped, shaking her head. “I just tripped and fell down. It didn’t hit me.”
“Okay.” I said again and took a deep breath. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Cora, are you okay?” A woman asked from behind me, and I turned to find Aurora standing outside her store with a ghost like look on her face.
“I’m taking her home. Can you do me a favor Aurora?” I asked her and she nodded quickly.
“Of course. Anything.”
“When the police get here, tell them the truck tried to run her down and that I took her home to get her away from the crowd forming. And give them our address, they can come there for a statement.” I said, telling her our address, though most everyone in this elite neighborhood knew where I lived anyway.
“Absolutely.” She said, taking my card I handed to her and giving Cora a small smile. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder before shutting Cora’s door and hurrying around the car, pulling out and weaving around the stopped cars on the way to our home.
I picked her hand up from her lap, gently trying to avoid the few scrapes on the palm and kissed it, needing to touch her to assure myself that she was really okay. She had a death grip on my hand the whole way home, refusing to let go.
And I was all too happy to indulge her.
Chapter 24 – Cora
It was Friday night, and we were due to leave for the city in the morning so we could get ready for the memorial fundraiser at the penthouse. We’d finished dinner and were laying on the couch watching a movie, but my mind was elsewhere.
Someone had tried to kill me.
That’s what Maverick had said after we spoke with the police on Wednesday. Two days ago, someone tried to run me down on the street and kill me. And I couldn’t… wrap my head around it.
I was a nobody.
No one.
Inconsequential.
Sure, I was married to a powerful man. But this didn’t feel like an attack on him through me. But what the hell did I know about it, I’d thankfully avoided assassination attempts up until this point in my life.
When we’d gotten home from town, Maverick had been… deranged. He had withdrew from the present reality and sank into a dark, dark hole inside of himself as he processed everything. He’d been doting and affectionate and caring for me hand and foot, but I’d seen the darkness in his eyes. Someone had tried to take me from him.
And he was going to move heaven and hell to find them and make them pay.
Cellphone footage of the attempt had quickly made it’s way into the biggest tabloids in the country, and with it came a barrage of different stories about the who, or the why someone would try to kill me. And according to police, they had no leads.
But Maverick was not a man to sit idly and let something like this just…go. He’d hired guards upon guards to literally just stand around the house and follow us around when we left to go home tomorrow. I was informed that I would have a personal guard with me at all times that I was outside of our home, from this moment on. And he had also informed me that I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, without him.
Which to be honest, I was absolutely fine with that, because I had no ambition to go somewhere so there could be a repeat performance of the truck fiasco. But I also knew, in the back of my head, that I couldn’t stay prisoner to my own home for the rest of my life.
“What are you thinking about?” Maverick asked, from where he laid with his back pressed into the corner of the sectional couch in the den, holding me with my back pressed to his chest.
“How do you know I’m thinking about anything? We’re watching a movie.” I said, trying to take the melancholy out of my voice. I didn’t want to ruin our last evening as honeymooners with thoughts about something I had no control over currently.
“Because I can feel your brain spinning from here.” He said easily, tightening his hands arms around my waist and laying chin on my shoulder. “Talk to me. You’ve been quiet.” He whispered gently against my ear.
I sighed and hit pause on the movie that was playing and relaxed into his arms. “Who would want to hurt me?” I asked. “I don’t understand it Mav. I’m a nobody.”
“You’re wrong.” He said firmly. “You’re the very center of my universe.” I scoffed at him. But he didn’t relent. “I mean it Cora; someone may have tried to hurt me by taking you away from me. And unfortunately, the list of people that I’ve angered over the years is… daunting.”
I could hear the remorse in his voice, and I ached to sooth it for him, but I couldn’t. Because he was right.
Someone was trying to hurt him through me and neither of us knew who it was. And that made me feel vulnerable.
