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I need to know who attacked my wife and why? My thoughts are a chaotic mess. “Do we know who the attacker was?” I fidget with the electrodes on my bare chest and as I unhook one, the monitor lets out a shrill beep.
Fuck, that will have the nurses charging in here any second.I don’t give a fuck what they have to say, my place is next to my wife. If I need to be monitored, they can do it from wherever she is right now. I refuse to be separated from her for a minute longer. The fear that something could still happen, somehow I could still lose her, runs through my mind and causes my body to lock up tight, and my heart to lurch. Terror stabs my heart, and more alarms go off around me.Damn it! I need to stay calm. Apparently, I now have the heart of an eighty-year-old mother fucker.
That’s going to suck big time when I want to pound into Stella’s perfect cunt.Don’t think about Stella’s pink, juicy, tight, pussy right now asshole. We need to bring our heart rate down not up, plus we don’t want a boner when the nurses walk in here.My mind screeches in irritation at my stupidity. That would be fucking humiliating, not to mention hard to explain without looking like a deranged psychopath. Yeah, my wife is in critical condition fighting for her life and I’m standing here thinking about sliding my cock inside of her.I roll my eyes at just the thought.
“The police believe he was hired to attack her. There was a vehicle found a block away with her picture and a picture of Tyson’s car in the glove compartment. They think that he followed Tyson and that’s how he knew where she was and that she was alone once Tyson left to return to Manhattan.”
“Who? Do we have any leads on who might have hired him?” Who the fuck would be brazen enough to hire someone to kill my wife? Who hates her enough to do that? Could it be Kalista? Would she have been able to organize something like this? She hates Stella for sure, especially after the incident with her parent's house burning to the ground and the billboards all over the place. She would still have the financial means to hire someone, but somehow even with all the malice between them, I can’t see Kalista having the audacity to go after Stella that way. She wouldn’t have had the ruthlessness nor the brain power to pull something like this off. No, it has to be someone else other than Kalista, but who?
Originally, I had thought that it might have been Thomas Penticton that was trying to hurt his own daughter. To get back at her for taking his board seat at Penticton Industries and forcing him into an early, unwanted retirement, but then that information about Ajax suspiciously fell into my lap and I didn’t know what to think.Did he give me that information?He could have still been responsible for the other two threatening incidents, but after his display in my office where he clocked me, I’m less convinced that it was, in fact, him. He seemed to finally have realized the true value of his daughter. A little too late, because now she’s fucking mine, and I have zero intentions of giving her back.
Who the fuck is out there trying to hurt my Stella? Now that this attacker has failed, will they stop or will whoever they are, keep coming after her? How many new enemies are out there just waiting to plunge a dagger into her chest? I need to be more vigilant, no matter how irritated Stella gets with me. I need to keep her safe and in order to do that, I need to be by her side. I rip the last of the monitor wires off and pull myself to my feet just as a nurse and a doctor rush inside the room.
“Mr. Stratford, you need to get right back in that bed sir, you just had a mild heart attack three hours ago. You shouldn’t be up and walking around yet.” The doctor tries to corral me back into the hospital bed, but I’m not having it.
“Get the hell out of my way and tell me where my wife is!” My voice is icy with panic and fear. I take another step away from the bed and watch as Jake shakes his head at me in disbelief and, no doubt, annoyance.
“Sir, your wife is in stable condition. She is being looked after, there is no need for you to rush in there.” The doctor, who no doubt wants my fist down his fucking throat, utters and then takes a rushed step back when I direct my furious and malignant gaze in his direction.
“No one is going to keep me from my wife, not you, not fucking death, motherfucker. You had better just point the way before I wrap my hand around that thick fucking throat of yours.”
I make a move in his direction and he lets out the most undignified squeak and hides behind the nurse, who supplies him with a look of utter disbelief.Fucking coward. “Nurse…take Mr. Stratford...to see his wife.” The doctor’s voice comes out at an octave that would suggest the fucker’s balls never dropped.
She moves away from the trembling coward and leads me out the door with Jake quickly at my heels. “Great job boss, threatening violence in a place trying to keep you and Stella alive.” Jake whisper-shouts from behind me.
I follow her down a long corridor, wearing nothing but the boxers I was wearing this morning and the shitty thin hospital gown that is wide open in the front instead of the back. No doubt to allow them to have all those electrodes attached to me, and that is way too fucking short on my six-foot-one frame. I keep my head held high as I pass gawkers on my way down the hall, giving everyone a menacing look that has them lowering their gaze. I can hear Jake trying not to laugh behind me, but I don’t give the slightest fuck.
Nothing matters except getting to Stella. Not these people’s opinions of me, not if my ass is hanging out, nothing. Nothing can touch me as long as she is still breathing. My impulse to protect her, to keep her safe, is so strong that it is becoming an obsession, and the only means I have for satisfying it is to get to my little viper.
37
Stella
"A woman is like a teabag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water." Eleanor Roosevelt.
Mybodyissosore that even the slightest movement brings pain and fire ricocheting through my limbs. My fingers are tightly imprisoned in someone else’s hand and going numb. My eyes flutter open to the mirage of Jaxon slouched down in a chair opposite of where I am lying. His eyes shut in slumber, a grimace painted across his haggard and pale features. His arm is fully extended, and his long graceful fingers are intertwined with mine.
How can this be? How can he be here with me? I look around in a panic at where I am and the tell-tale beeps and distant noises confirm my suspicion that I am in a hospital. A groan leaves my parted lips at the pulling sensation from my side. I cheated yet another attempt on my life. I. Fucking. Survived. Somehow, I survived bleeding to death on the floor of my room. How did I? Who found me? Did Jaxon find me?
“Ja..xon” I try uttering his name, but my voice comes out raspy and dry. He twitches in his sleep but doesn’t wake. I pull on our intertwined fingers, and a groan leaves his lips before his eyes open at half-mast.
“Stella! Jesus, thank fuck you’re awake.” He quickly leans forward in the chair, a moan of pain leaving his lips as he clutches his chest and focuses on me. He brings our intertwined hands to his pouty full lips and kisses my knuckles. The sensation of his warm lips across my skin makes the hairs on my body stand on end and warmth fill my limbs. He is so beautiful to look at, so stunning even when he is a disheveled mess.
“Tried…to…kill…me.” I force the words out after clearing my parched throat. Jaxon reaches over to the bedside table for a cup and a pitcher, filling it with water and a straw and bringing it to my lips. I study him from below my lashes as he holds the cup steady. He looks exhausted, bedraggled, and pale. Dark shadows mar his handsome face, more than a few days worth of facial hair graces his jaw, and he’s got a massive bruise on the side of his cheekbone, just below his eye. One that makes me irrationally mad that someone has hit him, someone other than me, that is. He’s wearing a hospital gown opened in the front, which is weird, and patches of his golden skin and hidden ink tempt me as he moves. He pulls back once I’ve had my fill and his slate-gray eyes meet mine, filled with fear.
“I almost lost you, Stella. Someone tried once again to take you from me.”
The memories of what happened flash through my mind. Running for my life while I was chased by a masked intruder through my new home, while he threatened me with a knife. Rushing upstairs to the master bedroom and locking myself inside with a gun, only to have the intruder break down the door in an attempt to reach me and end my life. Pressing the gun’s trigger over and over, while bullets landed in his body, causing macabre red spots to appear. The sound that he made as he took his final breath, a noise that will forever haunt me. A cry leaves my lips and tears cascade down my cheeks. I killed someone; I murdered the man that was trying to kill me.I’m now a murderer.
Jaxon moves to sit on the side of the bed, pulling both my hands into his and leaning down, his lips kissing each of my eyes and then my forehead. “You are safe now, baby. No one is going to hurt you.”
“I killed him.” The three words leave my lips but feel like acid in my throat, corrosive and sharp, the knowledge devastating. I always knew I was ruthless and cold, but I never imagined I was capable of murder. Now I know that my soul is truly tarnished and that I am the ice queen that they have named me. I want to regret my actions. I want to say that I would change what I did if given the opportunity, but the truth is I would pull the trigger again and again if that man came at me to hurt me.I am an unredeemable sinner.
“You protected yourself, Stella. You saved yourself. You saved what’s mine. Don’t fucking ever regret that, baby.” His words are fierce and filled with anger. He pulls back from me, and the look on his face has fear skating down my spine. He looks unhinged and filled with wrath, like he’s just one moment away from setting the whole world ablaze. Is he angry that someone tried to kill me or that I had to save myself? Perhaps his alpha caveman tendencies are hurt, knowing I didn’t need a white knight as my rescuer, that this ice queen saved her damn self. His lips open, but before words escape, the hospital door crashes open with a jarring noise.
“Get the fuck away from my daughter, you heathen!” My father’s loud voice booms into the room as he makes his appearance in the doorway evident. His frame, large and intimidating, as is the scowl across his malignant face. A part of me, the little girl that always feared him, wants to cower back into the bed, but Jaxon tightens his hold on my hands, preventing any movement.
I can see my mother in the small space behind him, her worried expression evident as she holds firm to his arm, preventing him from charging into the room and no doubt accosting Jaxon. It’s almost comical, their difference in height and body size. She isDavidrestrainingGoliath.
