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Isatonthecouch, stewing in my rage. Only the occasional sip of the Glenmorangie kept my anger from spilling into violence.
I let her go, despite my threats. I did that because even I could recognize that there was something insane about what I felt. The only way to douse this fire was to take her, lock her up, surround her with bulletproof glass and make love to her again and again until she knew no other existence than the one where our bodies joined. I wanted her naked on top of my Baldwin piano, as I surrounded her with music and wrote odes to the skin beneath her ear, and the place at her clavicle.
But I knew that was insane. Knowing that didn’t stop the howl in my body that I was trying to quiet down with drink.
I heard a loud crack, the sound echoing. Gunfire?
I rose to my feet, her name on my lips. Something was wrong.
It wasn’t just that she was out of my sight, but there was something viscerally wrong, as if she was calling to me, but I couldn’t hear it. I grabbed the key, and rushed out, leaving it on the hostess desk as Fiona called after me.
I ran out the door, scanning left, then right. There was only one house for short term rental in the whole town. I ran towards the cottage, hoping to find her along the way.
A few streets past the main strip, when the shops had ended, and the pavement abutted fields and woods, there it was. A scene that would give me nightmares for days. Three men lay on the ground. One had an arm dislocated at the elbow, a familiar blade in his eye socket. Another was on the floor, a pool of blood near his head, but it didn’t look like it was from a gun. There was a younger one, pimpled, his mouth open, his head on the ground. No blood.
And in the middle was a broken Rose, a hand on her stomach. The hand was stained red, her skin gray in the moonlight.
I rushed to her side, crying her name. “Rose! Rose! Can you hear me?”
There was no response. I put my hand over her stomach and felt the warm, thick blood squeezing between my fingers. I pulled up her shirt and there it was, a bullet wound with an exit at her back. I swore under my breath. There was blood everywhere.
She was breathing. I could tell from the rise and fall of her chest. I took off my blazer and placed it over the wound, wadding it up as best I could, and applied pressure with one hand. I put as much of my weight on it as I could without breaking her, feeling the skin bow underneath me. I swear I could touch her organs, and I felt the sweat on the back of my head.
My other hand fished out a phone, and I called my only back up.
“Oui?” His annoyed voice came over the line.Yes?
“Hugo, she’s been shot.” To his credit, he didn’t ask who. “She’s bleeding. There are three others here, and they’re all unconscious.”
“Okay.” And he hung up on me. He didn’t ask where I was. He didn’t need to. He’d just track my phone. He should be here fast. The town wasn’t large, but I wasn’t sure how much longer she had.
I dropped my phone and brought my free hand to her throat, trying to feel for her pulse. It was so weak and thready and I howled in terror and self-loathing.
“What the fuck? What the fuck have you done!” a voice growled from behind me.
I turned my head to see the despicable face of Brett Bradley who was looking at me like I was Jack the Ripper and she was my latest victim. I chose to ignore his glare and his assumptions.
“Gunshot wound.” I said to him, “I have someone coming.”
“Who are the other three?” He asked.
“I don’t fucking know. I don’t care.” I said, concentrating on putting more pressure on the wound. “Fuck, baby, wake up.” I begged.
I felt Brett rustling around behind me, inspecting the corpses.
“The little one’s alive.” He said matter-of-factly. How was he so calm when the universe was bleeding out of my hands?
I saw him come around me to inspect the one who was prone. He pushed down the collar and put his fingers on the guy’s neck. I got a glimpse of a tattoo but couldn’t tell what it was in the darkness.
Brett’s brown eyes looked up at me and scowled. “They’re bratva.”
He stood up, looking at the three.
“Two are alive.” He looked at the one on his back. “She fought them off.”
There was a hint of pride in his voice. He didn’t smile, but there was a hateful lift in his lips as if to say that the men had it coming for having the audacity to go after Rose. I agreed.
“Do you have a place to store these… corpses?” He got a cruel twist to his lips, and I knew his meaning. Even the ones who were alive would soon be dead. He’d make sure of it.
