Panic and rage slammed into me, and I’d never moved so fast in my life, but it was still like slow motion as I watched Riley fall backward, smashing her head.
“Butterfly!” I roared, wanting her to know I was coming. Needing her to hold on.
I had no idea what her injuries were or if she had taken the vest off. I knew nothing except that I had to get to her.
My butterfly.
31
An incessant beeping woke me, pulling me out from under the cloying darkness I’d been in. A sense ofdéjà vuswept over me and for a moment my heart seized in panic. Had everything been a dream? A coma hallucination after the crash with my parents?
Then a sharp, agonizing stab of hope hit me. If it had all been a dream, then maybe they were still alive.
A broad-shouldered man sat in the corner, his head in his hands and his body shrouded in shadows and I knew...
“Dante?” I croaked, knowing what would happen next. He’d look up, tears in his eyes and tell me that my mom and dad were—
“Butterfly?” It wasn’t Dante who answered me, and it definitely wasn’t Dante that raised his head and stared back at me with gray eyes full of love and sheer relief.
I blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the haze of pain medication. Slowly, the pieces all clicked back together, and my breath rushed out in a whoosh. Sadness pricked at my eyes, making them burn with impending tears.
“Sebastian,” I replied, my voice breaking with a sob. As if my speaking his name had broken a spell, he rushed out of his chair and to my bedside. He reached out but hesitated just an inch away from touching my face.
“Butterfly, you gave us a nasty scare. What were you thinking, taking on Catherine alone?” His tone was scolding but only softly. He touched his hand lightly to my cheek.
“I don’t know,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him. “I guess I was thinking that Iwasalone. That all of you guys were dead and I had nothing left to lose.” I gave him an accusing frown, and he looked away with a guilty twist to his mouth. “What the fuck happened?” My voice was soft, broken with the fresh pain of thinking he was dead. “I saw you get shot. All of you.” Another puzzle piece of memory clicked into place, and I gasped, bringing my hand to my chest. “Catherine shot me too! How—” I pulled down the neck of my hospital gown, expecting to find bandages over a bullet wound but there was just a mass of black and purple bruising instead. “Sebastian, how are we still alive?Arewe still alive?”
It was a valid question. Maybe this was some fucked up afterlife where you carried your dying wounds and pain with you.
“Yes, Butterfly. And thank fuck we are. Our story is only just beginning; it’d be a tragedy for it to end now.” His gaze returned to mine, and I glared back at him. As poetic and romantic as that statement was, it didn’t answer the most important part.
“Start explaining,” I ordered him in a menacing growl.
A sheepish grin tugged at his lips. “I had a bad feeling about the meeting. I don’t even know why, it was just nagging at me. So I had those vests made...”
My eyes widened. “Those vests were bulletproof? You’re kidding. They just felt like a rough cotton.”
He shrugged. “New technology that Delta has been funding. Patent pending.” He shot me a cheeky wink, and I scowled back.
“You prick,” I said softly. “I thought you were dead. I thought you were all—” I broke off with a sob as tears blurred my vision and my throat tightened.
Beck’s arms circled around me then, gentle over all my bruises as he hugged me into his chest and stroked my hair. “I’m so sorry, Butterfly. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you.”
We stayed like that for a long time, and at some stage he shifted to sit on the bed with me, so I could snuggle in tighter. I was crying not just for how Ithoughtthey were dead and they weren’t, but for that glimmer of hope when I woke up and thought maybe, just maybe, my parents were still alive.
Eventually, my tears dried up, and I swiped an IV-connected hand over my face. “Catherine,” I croaked. “Is she—”
“Dead,” Beck replied before I even finished my question. “Same with Graeme Huntley, and all the other board members.”
I strongly suspected it made me a terrible person, but a flutter of satisfaction traveled through me at this news. We didn’tneedto find the vault, after all. The empire was toppled, and somehow the five of us, the heirs, had survived. No doubt this was going to be a legal nightmare to sort out, but we’d figure it out. Together.
There was one loss that hurt though. “What happened to Richard?” I asked, taking the tissue Beck offered and blowing my nose. Crying always made my nose both runny and blocked up all at the same time.
“He made it,” Beck told me, and I gasped, the tissue falling from my hand. “He flat-lined four times in the ambulance, but they managed to revive him, and four hours of surgery saw the bullets extracted. If you hadn’t called 911 when you did, he would have been dead for sure.”
I released the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Holy shit. Richard was still alive. My last remaining family ... by blood, that was.
Something I’d learned since arriving in Jefferson was that family could be so much more than just blood relations. And mine? Well...
