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“Thomas, calm down!” My mothers stern voice rents the air.
“Don’t tell me to calm down, woman! Someone almost killed my daughter, AGAIN!” He shrugs off her hold and charges into the room as Jaxon stands up, like a knight putting himself before me and danger. It gives me the chance to get a good look at him. He’s in nothing but a pair of tight boxers and an open hospital gown, which does nothing to hide his body from anyone’s view. He has electrode stickers across his chest that I didn’t notice before.
What the hell happened to him, was he attacked too?Panic that he has once again been hurt fills me and I move my body forward to reach for him, causing a sharp pain to sizzle up my side and a cry of pain to leave my lips. Jaxon turns his head to stare back at me, his eyes locking onto my hand, holding tightly to my bandaged side, and his nostrils flare and eyes widen, showing the whites of his eye, speaking to the anger and panic he’s feeling.
“Thomas, I won’t have you coming in here and upsetting Stella further! She needs rest. Whatever your feelings for me, I had nothing to do with this! We can take this outside like men!” Jaxon faces off with my father, his spine rigid and his hands tight at his side, the veins in his forearms protruding with restraint.Have his arms and veins always been that sexy?I shake my head to clear my mind, that is obviously in the gutter, and focus back on the two raging bulls before me. The ones my tiny mother has put herself in between to try to calm down.
“Upset her? You have got to be kidding me, boy! Ever since I gave you my daughter, the world has ended up upside down and on fire. Someone has been actively trying to kill her the whole length of your marriage! You are a danger to her!” My father’s face is beet red, and sweat is dotting his forehead. I have never in all my years of being alive seen concern for me across his features. Most of the time all I see is regret and disdain in his eyes. Right now, he looks like a terrified man. Is his fear genuinely for me or for the remainder of his legacy? After all, if I had died, the Penticton line would have died with me.
“Thomas, I am sure Jaxon had nothing to do with this.” My mother places a firm hand on both of their chests and pushes them apart. I can see the determined look on her face. To my surprise, my father steps back and acquiesces to her demand to move away from Jaxon. His large body is tight with frustration, and he cracks his neck from side to side in a blatant effort of intimidation. I’m watching two fucking wolves trying to outdo each other. God, give me strength to deal with the foolishness of men.
“In fact, I know it.” She gives Jaxon a chilling stare, one that has a shiver racing through Jaxon’s large body. What the hell was that? Is Jaxon afraid of my mother? The thought of Jaxon being afraid of my five foot nothing, hundred-pound, timid mother is laughable, but still very evident in his wary look.
“Folks! I need you all to vacate this room immediately!” A gray-haired older nurse in light pink scrubs enters the room, arms crossed against her large chest, and gives each of us a determined glare. “Mr. Stratford, you just had a mild heart attack. You need to be in bed under observation.” She turns her angry glare in my direction. “Mrs. Stratford, you were just stabbed and lost a lot of blood, ma’am. You need rest!” Her fierce dark eyes turn towards my father, and I watch as she straightens her posture, preparing to do battle with a grizzly bear. She must be used to dealing with wealthy, obnoxious tyrants up here in the Hamptons. She doesn’t even blink an eye. “You sir, need to lower your voice and calm down! This is a hospital, not a boxing match. If you cannot keep your voice lowered and your tone respectful, I will have you removed.”
My father stares at her in horror, while my mother does her best to try to hide the satisfied smirk on her face. If I had the energy to give this woman a high-five for putting my father in his place, I would. My father is not used to women talking down to him, and right now, he looks like he swallowed something sour and his anger is eating him alive from the inside out. I have no doubt though, that if he replies back to her in rudeness, she will have his ass forcibly removed from this room.Whoever she is, she’s my new fucking hero.
“We will all be leaving shortly, and they will behave themselves with respect, nurse.” My mother nods at the queen of nurses, while raising an eyebrow in my father and Jaxon’s directions. Her glare almost daring each of them to dispute her words.
With one last look at each of the testosterone-fueled idiots in the room and a wink at my mother, the warrior nurse steps back out of the room. My mother shifts away from Jaxon, and my father approaches me on the bed. Her fingers reach out to cradle my cheek and tears glisten down her face. “Stella, my darling. How scared I was that I almost lost you.” My hand cradles hers against my skin, and I feel her warmth and strength in the touch. Strength that I desperately need to get through this ordeal and process all that has happened to me.
“I’m alive, mother.” I reassure her, the thought of the alternative, causing my breath to stutter in my chest.
“No thanks to this asshole here.” My father seethes, glowering in Jaxon’s direction. I can see Jaxon’s chest rising and falling rapidly as he takes deep breaths to try to calm himself down at my father’s accusations. They are two alpha male gorillas, moments away from beating on their chests. I roll my eyes at the amount of male toxicity in the room.
“Do we know anything, Jaxon? Who the assailant was? Why he was after my daughter?” My mother questions, her hand dropping from my face to reach for my hand and squeezing my fingers in support and reassurance. My mother’s support strengthens me to speak my thoughts aloud.
“Ajax?” I question, although that doesn’t feel right. Somehow my gut knows that Ajax wasn’t involved in this, despite what Jaxon and I did to him. Despite his attempt to scare me into leaving Jaxon. No, this attack was vicious, premeditated and meant not to scare me, but to end my life. Ajax truly believes that he loves me, I don’t believe he would try to have me murdered.What if it was the only way to keep you from Jaxon? Would he do it then?The thought whispers through my mind, but I dismiss it.
“No my darling, this wasn’t Ajax.” My mother replies with conviction.
“How do you know that, Rachel? He’s tried to scare her once before. I’ll fucking kill him with my bare hands.” Jaxon drags his hands through his dark hair in frustration, leaving it standing in all different directions with his aggravation, and gives my father a side-eyed look that I am not sure what to make of.
A snort leaves my mother, and her eyes twinkle with mischief. “Because I have had him… occupied, where he wouldn’t have the ability to make another move against my daughter. Well, at least, since you maimed and punished him viciously for his last one.”
“What?” My father’s voice echoes in the silent space.
Mine and Jaxon’s mouths hang wide open in shock at my mother’s words. What does she mean she has had him occupied? How does she even know about Ajax’s betrayal? My father has a look of miserable confusion across his face, like he’s missing a large piece of the pie.
“It was you. You sent me that information, not Thomas.” Jaxon stares at my mother in astonishment. I can see respect blooming in his eyes as he stares at her and maybe a tad more fear.
“Yes Jaxon, I was the one that let that information drop into your lap. I wanted to see what you would do with it. If you would avenge my daughter, before I took matters into my own hands.” She smirks in his direction. “As for Ajax being behind the current assassination attempt, it’s highly unlikely. He’s been a guest of a… friend of mine, for the last couple of weeks since Jaxon dropped him off beautifully broken on his doorstep. The man can barely speak and certainly wouldn’t be able to make the arrangements needed from his current location. This was someone else.”
“What have you done, Rachel?” My father questions with horror and fear. My mind wonders who her “friend” is. My mom is a wealthy socialite, attending charity galas and spending time at the spa. What friends does she have that could keep a man under lock and key? I’m starting to see that my mother is a prism, one I took at face value, when I should have been looking at all her refractions.
My mother turns her cold, vengeful glare on my father, moving away from the bed and grabbing his fat chin in her pink-tipped fingers. “What you should have done, Thomas protected our daughter.” She squeezes tight until a small cry of pain leaves his lips and then releases her grasp, wiping her hand across her pant leg, as if the mere feel of his skin underneath her fingers disgusts her. For the first time in my life, I watch my father stare at my mother in abject fear. The woman that he often took his frustrations out on with his raised hands. She is no longer a cowering, whimpering mess, but a terrifying militant queen rising.
“If not Ajax, then who?” I question, my eyes darting a glance at each of the inhabitants of my room, confusion at what is happening with my parents adding to the muddled mess in my mind. The realization of why I am even in a Hampton’s hospital rises,Kalista. The cunt, she’s the reason I hid in the Hamptons like a vengeful deity.
Kalista and Jaxon, intimately embracing on the cover of that magazine, unaware that they had been caught. How he humiliated and deceived me, after all, we had been through together. How my last thought before I passed out from blood loss was how I loved him. How I stupidly and weakly wrote that message to him in my own blood. Did he see it? Did he lay witness to my weakness, when I thought I was going to die?
A chorus of emotions makes their way through me all at once. Betrayal, loathing, sadness and love. Jaxon must see the direction of my thoughts; he braces himself as he lowers himself to his knees on the floor by the side of the bed. His features rapidly turning over with different emotions. I watch as his eyes widen and he licks his bottom lip nervously. He takes my hand forcefully in his and smooths out my clawed fingers, the ones that want to scratch his and Kalista’s eyes out.
“Stella, I swear to you…I swear I never cheated. She set me up, with a hidden camera and made it appear like…like we were together.” His words race and stumble from his lips, his eyes never leaving mine. “She wanted to hurt you, to get back at you…and I was an idiot that walked right into a trap.”
38
Jaxon
