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I watch them go, unable to move my feet. I need a moment alone with my mother to grieve because I know once I leave this room, I will never get the chance again. We’re Romeros, and sentiment would only make us weak.
But when I turn back to the table, it’s not my mother’s lifeless body there. It’s the woman’s, the one who attacked me on my wedding day. And she looks up at me with dead grey eyes, her wavy hair a messy halo around her head. Who is she, and why would she hate me so desperately? Is she some ghost from my past? Someone who hated my father for something he did, and she’s taken it out on me? I don’t know why, but I know her somehow. Every time I try to think of who she is, her facial features twist and change, making it impossible to remember what she looked like.
“Is she awake yet?” someone asks as if from far away. The soft female voice is kind and unassuming.
Who? The woman lying dead before me? From the gaping wounds on her wrists, I highly doubt she’ll wake again. I open my mouth to say so, but my tongue is like lead.
“Not yet. Doctors say they want to let her rest as much as possible.” The deep baritone fills me with comfort, and immediately, I know it’s Gabe. If he’s here, then I know everything will be okay.
But his words don’t make any sense. The woman is in a morgue. Why would the doctors be thinking she might wake?
The world seems to twist and fade around me, and then I’m standing outside the same red shed that’s behind the Blackmoor Devil’s Sons clubhouse. I peer inside, peeking through the small crack in the door, and fear grips me at what I see.
Leather-clad bikers pace the room, none of them the friendly faces I recognize. Their indistinguishable faces are twisted into masks of fury. They’re arguing about something.
“No exceptions!” one demands. “This is our territory.”
He pulls out a gun, and my heart stops when I realize Gabriel is kneeling on the floor in the center of the room, his hands bound behind him as he awaits his fate. To my horror, I recognize Starla’s thin frame lying next to him. She’s clearly unconscious, her clothes in tatters hanging from her brutalized body, and a deep cut runs down the side of her face, bleeding profusely.
“You’re going to tell your boss to stay the fuck off our land,” one particularly mean-looking biker says as he steps forward, putting his gun against Gabriel’s head.
“I can’t tell him anything if I’m dead,” Gabe tries to reason, his tone steady even though his life is about to end.
“You’ll tell him just fine when we deliver you to him in a body bag,” the man sneers.
The gun flashes, and a bang echoes through the room, making my ears ring even from my spot outside. Gabriel collapses to the floor next to Starla, the bullet wound in his head forming a pool of blood on the shed floor. I want to scream, to barrel through the door and collect him in my arms, but I can’t. I have a baby to protect.
When the bikers turn toward the door, I know I have to run. I don’t hesitate or creep along the shadows. I sprint full force across the rock-strewn ground, determined to find safety before these bad men find me. My heart hammers in my chest, demanding I go faster if I want to live.
And suddenly, the dream around me shifts once again as searing pain streaks across my abdomen. I grip the baby belly standing out from my frame and realize I’ve been cut open. All of me is trying to fall out along with my baby. I scream as terror takes over my pain. Slumping to the soft grass of the suddenly bright day, I take a handful of my organs and try to keep them inside me, but they keep slipping through my grasp, the blood coating my hands and making it impossible to keep ahold of anything.
Maniacal laughter from above me fills my chest with ice, and when I look up, Athena Saint stands there, her cold blue eyes looking down on me, judging me as she mocks me for my pain and loss. I know I won’t be able to save my baby, not all on my own like this, but Athena doesn’t seem to care. She just grins down at me, reveling in my suffering. What I wouldn’t give to have Gabe there with me.
“You fucked up,” Dean Blackmoor sneers. “You messed with the wrong people. And now, we’re going to take everything from you. Do you think you’re so safe in your tiny house so far away? I will always find you, Winter. And now, you’re going to pay.”
Dean raises a gun, and my heart stops in my chest at the crack of the bullet being released. But no pain follows. I look around, confused. And that’s when I see Gabe. He crumples in a bloody heap, and I know he’s been shot. Crawling over to him, I sob, begging him not to leave me as I search his body for where the bullet entered him. Blood seeps into his clothing, spreading rapidly across his chest as his heart beats the remaining life from him with tenacity.
“You did this to me, Winter,” Gabe whispers, his face deathly pale. “I told you your thirst for revenge would get you killed. And now it’s taken me down too.”
Guilt constricts my throat, and I try to swallow the lump. “I’m so sorry, Gabe. I’m so, so sorry. Please don’t leave me. Please!” I lean in to kiss his cold lips, but he doesn’t respond. He’s already gone. The hole in his chest made sure of that.
I scream my loss, knowing I won’t live much longer and grateful that I won’t be parted from my love for long. But what about my baby? Is she okay?
Vivid images of me holding our little girl in my arms flash before my eyes. Her little baby face smiling up at me, soft coos issuing through her lips. I rock her gently, lulling her to sleep. She’s perfect in every way, her pale baby skin so soft and warm, her black tuft of hair just barely enough to color her little scalp. She looks like an angel as she sleeps, her plump cheeks moving softly as she gums her tongue. She’ll sleep like her father, I can tell. Deep and peaceful, without a care in the world.
Her little hand wraps around my finger as she drifts away into her dreams. My heart is filled with such intense love that I can barely breathe. I have to live. I have to take care of my baby. She needs me. Fierce conviction consumes me. I refuse to go. My mother might have found this life too filled with pain to bear, but I would never leave my little girl in this big scary world all alone.
And suddenly, I feel as though I’m swimming through a tumultuous sea, the waves crashing down on me as my stomach bursts with agony. I can’t see. I can’t breathe. But I don’t stop. I have to reach the surface or find land—something. I need to do this if I’m going to protect my baby.
I feel as though my lungs might burst. They burn with the need for air, and I suck in a deep, ragged breath that smells of antiseptic and soap. My body arches up off the bed where I lie, and my eyes fly open as horrible pain stabs through my abdomen. Gasping, I grip frantically at the cords covering my face and arms, determined to find what’s making it so hard to breathe and remove it.
“Easy, easy, Winter,” Gabriel commands, his strong hands finding mine and forcing them to be still.
The vise grip on my lungs releases when I hear his voice. And I breathe heavily as I look around with wild anxiety. For a moment, I’m sure it must be a dream, to see Gabriel there in front of me, looking as healthy as the day I met him. But his hands feel so real, and when he wraps an arm around my shoulders, helping me lean back, I can smell his spicy scent and feel the warmth of his body heat.
“You’re alive?” I breathe and immediately burst into tears. Now that I’m awake, all the terrible dreams and memories come flooding back to me. So much violence and anger and fear. I feel as though I’ve run a marathon through my subconscious on a mission to find why someone would attack me and who they might be.
“Shhhhh,” Gabriel soothes. Holding me close and stroking my hair as he lets me cry into the crook of his neck. “I’m here. I’m fine. Everything is okay.”
