Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69063 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Shasha read the situation very clearly.
He knew I didn’t want him here, or Desi.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Come on, Des.”
Desi looked at me like I’d broken her heart, but I shook my head once.
This was one time that cute little pout wouldn’t win her anything.
“Go.” I said one word.
Shasha ushered Desi out of the room.
The paramedics had Nastya seconds later.
Once they were gone, I finally turned to survey the damage.
Rich was lying on top of the two others.
“What’s going on?”
The familiar sound of Auden had me turning around, only I realized quickly it wasn’t Auden, but Atlas, his twin brother, who worked for DPD—Dallas Police Department.
I gave him the complete rundown.
Atlas started to peel Rich off of the other two.
“This one is the one that Rich pushed?” Atlas asked, feeling for a pulse on a heavily bleeding Julia.
“Yes,” I said.
“She has a pulse,” he said as he moved her to lie on her back. “Got the gun?”
“On the floor by the fireplace,” I said.
He glanced at it and nodded before turning back to the one that I’d hit.
“This one has no pulse,” he said. “Dead.”
I couldn’t scrounge up the desire to care.
Good riddance.
First he terrorized my daughter, then he tried to kill the woman I was desperately in love with.
My only regret was that he didn’t have a longer and harder death.
The one I’d given him was too easy.
“Dispatch, this is unit…” as Atlas called it in, I went to sit on the fireplace to survey the damage.
Medics arrived.
One took Julia to the hospital.
The other stayed with Eddison’s dead body until the JP—Justice of the Peace—arrived to pronounce Eddison dead.
Rich was sitting on the concrete when I came outside, cuffed with his hands behind his back.
He was giving his statement to a redheaded woman who wasn’t falling for his shit and was staring at him like he was nuts.
“…came in and scared us, and then he pushed my son down! Of course, I’m going to threaten to shoot him! This is Texas!”
The redhead clocked me, and she reluctantly blocked my way toward the dumbass.
Another detective I hadn’t seen until now walked up to me and offered me his hand. “My name is Detective Dorsey, with DPD. Can you tell me what happened?”
I did, leaving out not a single detail, starting with how my day had started with Finn.
By the time I was finished, Detective Dorsey was looking at me like I’d rocked his world. “She ran over your dog?”
My phone vibrated, and I stopped mid-sentence to answer it.
“She’s awake,” Shasha said. “Her blood sugar is under control. Her heart rate is a little erratic, but they’re stabilizing that with drugs.”
I wilted.
My knees hit the ground, and I just fucking…broke.
A sob left my throat, and my hands covered my face as I listened to Shasha tell me about her injuries.
It took me two more hours before I could get to the hospital.
By the time that I was able to walk into the ER, she’d been stabilized, and they were talking about moving her to a floor room where she would remain overnight for observation.
I walked in on the tail end of the explanation as the doctor went over everything with her.
Her eyes were open. She was breathing. She was even smiling and nodding.
She was sitting upright in the hospital bed when her eyes came to me.
Tears started to spill onto her cheeks as she said, “My hero.”
I rubbed the ache in my chest as I said, “Any fucking time, baby. Any fucking time.”
Hours later, I was asleep in the most god-awful chair in existence when I was woken up by laughter.
“Every single depression of his hands into her chest you could hear the bones grinding together,” Shasha said.
The memory made me wince.
It would not be a sound I would soon be forgetting.
“I feel like I’ve been kicked by a horse,” Nastya whispered.
When she said it, I knew that she was looking at me based on how her voice sounded.
I blinked open my eyes to see her staring at me with so much love in her eyes that I found it hard to breathe myself.
“Six broken ribs,” she said, though didn’t take her gaze off of me. “I’ll take them all day every day if it means I get to spend another day with him.”
Tears once again stung my eyes.
I hadn’t cried in fuckin’ years, yet I’d done it multiple times today.
Needless to say, this day had been one I wouldn’t be forgetting.
I reached for her hand, and she tangled her fingers with my own.
“Desi?” I asked quietly.
“Went home after multiple assurances that I was okay,” she replied. “I got her checking the mail and writing reviews.”
I blew out a relieved breath.
“Okay, so now that you’re awake,” I heard Shasha say. “I’d love to give you the full update. Hope you’re truly awake, because this one is a doozy.”