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Chapter Thirty-Eight
We’d made it inside the boarding house using Alex’s knowledge of the place and the tracker I’d placed in Ivy’s cell phone to locate her. She’d have my balls if she knew I’d bugged her, but I was fine with it as long as I got to her before the O'Connors could harm her.
“We go in easy,” Dom said. His hand was on his gun as we stood outside of the door to one of the rooms. “We don’t know who could be in there, and we don’t want Ivy hurt.”
I stepped forward, my hand on the knob. Dom looked at me, but said nothing. We hadn’t had a chance to talk before we got her, not privately, but we’d been in this situation more times than I could count.
If something were to happen to me, I knew that he would take care of Ivy and our child. Just like I would always take care of Sasha.
BANG
Ice shot through my veins as the sound of a gun going off reached my ears. I didn’t think twice as I reared back and kicked in the door. My gun was trained on nothing as I rushed in. I’d expected to see my wife dead on the floor, but as I looked around, my mouth dropped open.
“Ivy?” I asked. I didn’t lower my gun even as my mind was able to take stock of what I was seeing.
My tiny wife was kneeling before the bloody body of her father, gun in hand, and one of the O’Connor brothers was laying a few feet away. He was dead. I didn’t need to go and check to know it. I’d seen a lot of dead bodies in my time to know what it looked like when a man’s life had left him. And this guy was stone cold.
But Alex and Dom weren’t going to let it go. Alex rushed over to the man and checked his pulse. He looked at me and shook his head. I was grateful that he didn’t say anything aloud.
“Ivy?” I asked. I stepped towards her tentatively. Her arm was still raised with the gun in hand. She was covered in blood, and I worried that she was hurt. “Ivy?” I asked again. I dropped my gun and placed it back into my holster. “Are you okay?”
“I shot him,” she said. Her hand was starting to shake badly, and I worried that she might pull the trigger accidentally. Apparently, Alex was worried about it as well, as he moved away from the body. “He didn’t think I would, but I did. I just shot him…”
She was in shock.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “He was going to hurt you.”
I looked down at her father, whose chest was still, and I knew he was dead as well. I wasn’t sure if Ivy realized that yet, and I wanted to get her out of here before she realized that. “I killed someone,” she said. I could hear the thickness in her voice. “I just...I killed him…”
I was kneeling down next to her, and I grabbed the gun from her. She didn’t put up a fight as I gathered her in my arms. Her skin was ice cold and her normally pale skin was nearly translucent.
“I’m going to go to prison,” she said. She was hyperventilating. “Oh my God.”
“Shhh,” I whispered in her ear. I needed her to calm down. She was pregnant, and I knew stress couldn’t be good for the baby. “I’m going to take care of this,” I promised.
I looked behind me. Dom was already on the phone, talking softly. He’d had the good sense to shut the door behind him, but I wondered who might have heard the gunshot. I needed to get Ivy out of here. There were two bodies on the floor, a gun with her prints on it, and she was covered in blood.
“We’ll take care of it,” Alex said. His eyes were on Ivy, and they were full of concern.
“I’m getting you out of here,” I told her, as I gathered her in my arms.
She shook her head. “I can’t just leave…” She looked at her father, her green eyes wide, and I saw the moment that she realized that he was dead. I would have done anything I could to stop her from having to experience that pain.
Her father was a piece of shit, I would have gladly killed myself, but I knew what it was like to witness your one of your parents pass. I pressed her head to my shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” I promised her.
Her body was shaking, and I didn’t know if it was due to the shock or the grief, but I knew that this wasn’t the time or place to find out. I didn’t wait for her to say anything. I cradled her in my arms and walked out of the scene.
“I’m taking you home,” I told her.
She said nothing, and I didn’t know if that made me more concerned or less. We could take care of it later. What mattered now was keeping my wife and child safe. Everything else would fall into place.
* * *
Iplaced Ivy in the warm tub. When we arrived home, I’d stripped her of her bloody clothing and placed her in the shower. She hadn’t moved as I cleaned the blood dirt from her skin.
She hadn’t spoken one word since we’d arrived home. She’d just stared off into space until I tried to place her in the tub. “Wait,” she said. Her skin was wet, and she was starting to shiver in the cool air. “I don’t think I can take a bath.”
“Why?” I asked. “It’ll help relax you.” I needed her calm. Dom had been texting me. He had a fixer at the boarding house taking care of the bodies and the evidence, but I needed to know what had happened.
