AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Jaxon, she’s bleeding from a gunshot wound. We need to get her to the medic right now!” Trig moves closer and approaches Stella. “Stella, it’s over. I need you to give me the gun now.” He approaches her as if she was a feral animal, and her eyes dart across his face before fear and confusion crosses her features. Her body is starting to shake, her teeth chattering loudly in the space between us.
“Jaxon, I have to save Jaxon.” Her voice comes out weak and breathy.
“I’m here, my little ice queen. You saved me. You saved me, Stella.” I approach her, my hand sliding carefully to her face, my fingers caressing her soft cheek as her blue eyes meet mine, finally without the haze. Tears race down her face, and a sob wrenches from her chest.
“You are mine, Jaxon.” It’s the last words she utters before she sways, her legs giving out and her body trying to collapse before me. I reach for her at the same time as Trig does, and he catches her, lifting her lifeless body in his arms bridal style. Anger fills me at seeing her draped across another man’s arms. The beast that lives inside of me wants to be let loose from his cage to reclaim what is his.She is fucking mine!
“Jaxon, we gotta move right now. She’s been bleeding for too long.” I shake the fury away from my mind and move with Trig towards the exit door just as the police force their way into the room with their guns drawn. “Police! Put your hands up in the air!” They shout, but Trig doesn’t hesitate to continue moving forward and I follow his lead. My only concern is the limp woman in his arms.
Emergency personnel rushes through the room and approach us with a stretcher. Trig lays Stella down gently on the surface and begins cataloging her injuries quickly while they assess her. “In and out wound” and “Lost a lot of blood” makes its way through the buzzing in my brain. I finally get a really good look at Stella. She’s barefoot, and her feet and legs are covered in blood. Her suit jacket is blood-soaked and ripped, the fabric of the shoulder of her right arm barely present. Her face is so very pale and streaked in more blood. She has chunks of brain matter on her hair and dark streaks of mascara and dirt smeared down her face.
She has never looked more like an avenging angel, a violent queen than she does now. My little viper, the one that just saved my life despite having a bullet wound and bleeding out. I move quickly with the EMTS as they move towards the doors of the building. Trig moving with us, still on high alert. My eyes never leave Stella’s, but the memory of Clark being hurt enters my brain. “Clark, he was shot.”
“Being taken care of now.” His huge, frustrated sigh catches my attention and finally has my eyes moving away from my wife. “Jaxon, you should know, she was out of the building. She made it out. She killed River Stanton, then turned back for you. Refusing to allow me to get her medical attention and to safety.” I can see the look of self-recrimination across his features. He’s blaming himself for not forcing her away from here.
The awareness hits me like a brick to the chest that if he had managed to get her out of here, I would be the one lying dead on the floor of that room instead of Kalista. If my determined and stubborn wife hadn’t come back to save me, Kalista would have murdered me in cold blood and I would have never seen Stella again. My little viper truly did save me. I owe her my life, and I plan to make sure she holds it in the palm of her hands for all of the rest of our years together.She truly is mine, and I am hers.
I stare down at her features once again as they load her into the waiting ambulance, and I climb in beside her, holding tight to her hand and interlacing our fingers. I lean forward and let my lips brush tenderly against hers. “You are mine, Stella, and I will never let you go.”
45
Stella
“Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” Franklin P. Jones
Iwakewithagroan and fire racing down my body, every part of me aches right now, this is becoming a common freaking theme in my life. “Fuck, that hurts!” The words tumble from my dry lips as I crack my eyes open. A chuckle greets my ears as my eyes open more fully and center on the man sitting next to me. “What did you expect when you behave like fucking 'Rambo,' Stella?”
“Jaxon…” His name leaves my lips with relief. Relief that my idiot and reckless husband is still breathing despite tempting fate time and time again. I shift on the hard surface below me, and pain radiates down my back, forcing a gasp to leave my lips and a cold sweat to break across my neck. I swallow the sour bile that is just begging to leave my mouth.
“Easy, my little viper, you were shot in the shoulder a few hours ago, No sharp movements.” Jaxon moves closer, pushing my sweaty hair back from my face and leaning forward to kiss my forehead tenderly, his hand grabbing and holding mine.
The memories of shooting River and then Kalista flash through my mind causing me to grimace and cry out.I killed two more people. I really am a murderer now, there is no disputing the truth.He must see the turn of my thoughts, his other hand coming up to cradle my face gently.
“Stella, baby, look at me. Everything is going to be alright. We are safe, it’s finally over.” Jaxon’s platinum gaze bleeds into mine intensely. His fierce words and tight grip on my hand has me leaning back into the mattress and staring at him with hope.
Hope that this might finally be over and we are safe. Safe from the villains of the world,well other than ourselves, I guess.Hope that we won’t have to keep fighting off people that want to hurt us. That I won’t have to dirty my already filthy soul with more murder in order to stop anyone who comes for us. Hope is a dangerous thing for someone with dirtied hands and a stained soul.
“Clark?” The question leaves my lips with fear. He got me out of there and turned back for Jaxon, only to be shot himself by Jeffrey Cain. “Alive, in a room down the hall.” A relief I didn’t know I was craving fills my tired body at Jaxon’s words.
“Jeffrey? Kalista?” Their names leave my lips and burn like acid across my tongue. Rage once again fills me with the knowledge that they were behind all of this. All those people were hurt and died because of their actions. Deeds of revenge against Jaxon and me. Conduct caused by our own actions in retaliation. I will have to forever live with the stain of all those deaths on my heart.
“She’s dead, Stella. She can never hurt us again.” He stares at me with compassion in his gaze as I struggle to swallow the sour saliva pooling in my mouth. The memory of her head blowing open and her brain splattering across my face from the bullet I put in her skull at close range flashing before my eyes in vivid technicolor. A shudder races down my spine, the sensation of still feeling parts of her clinging to me, making me nauseous. “Jeffrey is alive, but in police custody. He confessed to it all.”
“Why? Why did they do this to us?” My voice sounds pitiful to my own ears, a woman broken from the experience of bringing death to others. I need to comprehend how someone could cause all of this destruction and pain. I know that my actions were petty, burning down his house and robbing Kalista of her livelihood was indecent and harsh, but was that really a reason to kill all those people? What about River and Fisher? I never even did anything to provoke those two. What reason would they have had to join in Jeffrey and Kalista’s cause to harm me? None of this makes sense. .
Jaxon releases a deep nervous, sounding sigh, pulling his hand from my grip and dragging both his hands down his face. Remorse and shame is written across his features. “What did you do, Jaxon?” My voice is a strangled scream, my heart pounding like a loud drum in my chest.
“Ah, fuck!” He shakes his head and meets my gaze, blue meeting silver in a harsh embrace. “I’m going to tell you Stella…but first….first I need you to understand how much I love you. I need you to promise you’re not going to run from me.” His gaze is so intense, the fear in the room is palpable and clawing at my throat, warning bells are sounding in my head.
I swear to God if this man tells me he slept with another woman, I am going to rise from this bed and end his fucking life. There is a limit to how much I can take right now before I completely lose my sanity. Any more betrayal, and I am just going to give into my primal urges for darkness and allow it to turn my heart completely pitch black. I need his answers like I need my next breath for why this all happened.
I swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat and grind my back teeth. “I won’t run.” I don’t bother uttering any other words. If the next words out of his mouth involve his dick, he’s a dead man, and it won’t matter how much I love him. He must see it in my cold gaze. He sighs and grabs a fist full of his hair, pulling on it tightly.
“Remember the deal, the one we were looking at right before we went to the charity gala? The low-income housing acquisition?”
I nod my head but am utterly confused about where he’s going with this. “Stella, I stole that out and under from River, Fisher, and Jeffrey. They lost millions of their own money and investors’ money.” He tugs harder at his dark hair, his eyes wild with fear and remorse. “I had the local gangs terrorize the sites and set fires to the developments. I made sure that they couldn’t collect on the insurance.” I watch as he clenches his fists and forces them into his lap.
“What I didn’t know was that Fisher and River had sunk all of their fortunes into it… hell Stella, all of it is now gone. Jeffrey didn’t invest as much but coupled with everything you did to Kalista and the savage way you burned his house to the ground, well he wanted just as much revenge as the other two, maybe more. Kalista has always been very close with him.”
