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A rough hand takes my face and my gaze is brought up to meet eyes I once thought friendly. Blood stains the front of his shirt and in a panic, I try to convince myself it’s mine and not someone else’s.
“Let me go,” I say harshly like I have the upper hand here and not the other way around.
Sausage fingers dig into my hair and my head is jerked back.
“What are you doing?” I try to fight free, but another set of fingers clamp around my face. Tears of betrayal sting the back of my eyes. With everything in me, I fight to keep them from spilling over.
Don’t show your weakness. Never show your weakness.
The tears recede. “Why?” I ask in a husky whisper bursting with pain.
“The night you gave birth cost me everything.”
I’m shoved back with so much force I slide across the marble and bounce off the wall at my back. It’s about as comforting as taking another sledgehammer to the spine.
The wind is knocked from my lungs. But the pain is nothing compared to the inferno of rage rumbling just under that man’s thin control. Any second now the firestorm of his wrath will tear free and I’ll be the first to catch the brunt of its force.
“I knew the second your father pulled me out of the ER to deliver your baby he was giving me a chance to right the wrongs against me. I only had to bide my time. And then you walked up my stairs and I knew it was time to seek my revenge.” Spital falls from his lips with the force of his raving tone. Gone is the gentle beast of a man if he was ever real, to begin with.
“Revenge for who?” Despite the spinning and the need to vomit I push to my knees. Nothing about me is stable so when I sway to the left, I counteract gravity’s pull and throw a hand out to keep from face planting.
“Who, Doc?” I state more firmly. “If I’m going to die, I at least have the right to know why, damn you.”
“My girlfriend and unborn child died because of your father. He was so hell-bent on taking out anyone with a gun in his city and didn’t care about the innocent caught in the middle. So now I won’t either. Your death is the first step of the scales of justice balancing out.”
“What’s the second?” I fear his answer far less than not knowing his full plan.
Despite searching long and deep, the harder I stare into his eyes the more I realize there’s nothing there. There’s no man behind the blue eyes. Just endless depths of vagueness where a soul used to live.
I wipe at the blood coming from the edge of my lip from his strong steel-like grip.
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think God did anything. For you, for me, and definitely not for your girlfriend. It was man’s stubborn foolishness and greed. That’s not God’s doing, my friend. Now tell me. Don’t leave me in suspense. What’s your plan? Kill us and ride off into the sunset? Maybe look up a new motorcycle club to betray?”
White teeth flash in the dim light of the fading evening making me tense.
Knuckles across my cheek give me strong indications that he does not agree with my views. I’m on my ass again, this time narrowly missing the hard edge of a nearby indoor raised flower bed.
“You really don’t know when to shut up do you?” A string of Russian falls from his lips and I fear another hit across the face but it doesn’t come. But a size fifteen is a terrible runner up to the knuckles. And this time the blow is straight to the stomach. Right this second, I am kind of wishing I had kept my mouth shut.
All the dry heaving I did is now real and the little bit of the pineapple I had back at Di’s boutique is now on the pretty white marble between my hands.
After I regain my composure and don’t feel like outright dying, I glare up at him which is probably pretty damn stupid of me. But I can only take so much of someone’s stupidity before I snap. I debate not asking anything, just to sit here until the main show of assholery arrives, but the longer I keep Doc talking the more time Dragon has to find me.
I can’t imagine the men rode off without me but then again, I left the papers Sean wants on the living room table. Anyone could have picked them up thinking I was so shaken I would be of no use.
Giving up on getting the full plan out of him at once, I work my way through the layers.
“So you gave me up to Sean? That much is obvious. And what about Heaven? How long has he known about her?” I snap.
I don’t bother wiping at the blood this time.
Doc shakes his head. “I kept that information until I needed it. I followed your friend and kept tabs on her location. Wasn’t hard to do. And then I struck a bargain when you brought a bleeding Hark to me. It was fucking kismet.”
Heavy bike boots stomp across the floor as he paces in front of the pool. Left and then right. Then back again. Only about the tenth time does he pull a gun from the back of his waistband.
My back goes rigid.
“You would really kill a child?”
