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Rowan appeared from wherever the fuck he’d been once I’d decided what needed to be done.
“Talked to Finn,” he said, standing in front of me and assessing me.
“So did I,” I replied. “He was drunk,” I said flatly. “The driver. He was fuckingdrunk.And he’s in this hospital.”
Rowan’s gaze was guarded, his posture tight, and I could see him preparing to go into combat mode should the situation call for it.
Which was exactly what I wanted. Combat mode. I was already fucking there. I was the person who had taken orders, ended lives without hesitation, without losing a wink of sleep. Of course, I lost a lot of sleep once I was home, but I got the job done. And once you turned into that, that person was inside you for life. They never died. You just got better at containing them. Like Rowan.
Mine had been crippled with grief and then booze and womanizing, but that man was not dead. Not by a long shot.
“Yeah, he’s in this hospital, likely with a cop guarding the door,” Rowan told me what I already knew.
“Even cops have gotta piss,” I said through my teeth.
“Then what?” he asked, folding his arms.
“Then what? I go in there and finish the job,” I replied, knowing he was only asking to make me say it out loud.
Rowan’s face stayed composed. “Yeah? You’re gonna kill him in a hospital where there are security cameras, where they can determine the cause of death, where a pretty straight fucking line will be drawn back to you, and you’ll land yourself in prison before Fiona even gets discharged and miss the birth of another baby?”
If he’d punched me, I would’ve felt less impact. And that fucker had one hell of a left hook. I had an overwhelming urge to smash his face in. To get him on the ground and not stop hitting him.
But he said everything for a reason. Because he was trying to shake me out of it. And he knew those words would work better than anything physical.
“Tell me you’d be different,” I said quietly. “If it was Nora lying in that hospital bed, with broken bones, covered in bruises, her skin torn, fuckingpregnant, tell me you wouldn’t tear apart the fucker who did that to her. Fuck, you damn near did it to the man who caused her to walk into a fucking cabinet before she was even yours.”
I’d talked my friend down from anything too rash when he and Nora first started up. We’d come into the bakery, and she’d had a black eye and an asshole ex. Rowan put two and two together and went on a rampage.
His nostrils flared. “She was mine then, and before then,” he said quietly. “And you’re right, if that was my wife in there, I’d be out for blood. But I’d also have you standing here stopping me from ruining my life, telling me to go back to my wife, mylivingfucking wife, and be the man who chases life instead of death. We’re not those men anymore.”
I regarded my friend. “We’ll always be those fucking men.”
Then I walked away.
Away from Fiona’s room and with the intention of finding the fuck who did this to her.
* * *
I was right.
Cops guarding a drunk driver did have to take a piss. And they weren’t exactly thrilled about the shitty job either, so the middle-aged badge with a fancy haircut and a smarmy look to him did not seem to be in any kind of rush.
Fate was on my side.
I slipped into the room once he was out of sight.
And there he was. The man responsible for Fiona’s broken bones, her bruises, the fear I saw in her eyes. Not for her. For our baby. The one she treasured. Because she’d lost babies before. Because our child was her fucking miracle. And he almost took that away from her.
He was hooked up to tubes and shit, but he looked pretty fucking okay to me despite a cut on his head.
“You always survive,” I said, stepping toward the bed, my blood hot. “You plow through lives and cause destruction and pain, and then you survive with barely a fucking scratch.”
I didn’t know if the fuck in the bed was on any drugs, but he was alert enough to look afraid of me.
He pushed himself up against the bed as if he were trying to crawl up the wall. “Who are you?” he squeaked.
I didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate to grab him by the throat the second I made it to his bedside. I could’ve crushed his windpipe right there and then. I knew how. It only took less than five pounds of pressure against a neck for ten seconds to cause unconsciousness. A little longer and harder to completely cut off air supply and eventually kill the person, but we weren’t there… yet.
