There are people everywhere, and the more that stand in my way, the more frustrated I become. “Clear out,” I hear Diesel say from somewhere behind me. “Blackstone SWAT. We’ll take it from here.”
The hospital security team finally begins clearing out, and as I’m able to make my way deeper into the bathroom, I finally find Harper on the ground in the last stall being cared for by my friend Carly on the security team, the one who has been there every time I’ve needed something and had my back whenever Harper was in trouble.
“Fuck, doll,” I say, dropping to my knees beside her, looking over her ripped scrubs and the bruises already coming out on her skin. And if there’s one thing I know for sure, after seeing the kind of brutality that I’ve witnessed during my long career, there’s no way in hell she could have sustained these injuries herself. Somebody did this to her.
Tears fall down her cheeks, and she tries to sit up. “Knight,” she cries.
“No, no, doll. Stay here,” I tell her, going against every overwhelming need in my body to pull her into my arms. I don’t know the extent of her injuries, and until a doctor can get down here and assess her, she won’t be moving anywhere.
“She’s not in a good way,” Carly says. “I don’t think anything is broken, but . . . shit, Knight. This guy. It was messed up. He was wearing this creepy mask and screaming at her like she owed him something. I’ve never witnessed anything so . . . so brutal.”
My back stiffens, my gaze shooting between Harper and Carly, my gut twisting with guilt. “Mask?” I ask Carly, my body sagging as I grasp Harper’s hand.
“It was him,” Harper tells me, her voice breaking. “Just as I’ve been telling you.”
“Yeah, it was fucked up. It was like some kind of vampire skull,” Carly tells me, shaking her head as if still rattled bywhat she’s seen, clearly misjudging the horror in my eyes for what happened here today, and not the guilt that’s tearing me to shreds for not having believed Harper when she needed me most. “He was trying to rip her scrubs off, and I think if . . . if we hadn’t come when we did . . . I don’t know what might have happened to her.”
“Fuck.”
The guilt is like nothing I’ve ever felt, chipping away at pieces of my crumbling soul as I look down at my girl, broken on the bathroom floor, tears pooling in her beautiful green eyes as an overwhelming helplessness washes over me. She was sexually abused in my home, he threw her against our bed and forced his fingers inside her, and I told her she needed to get her meds checked.
She should have left me and never come back. I don’t deserve her.
“Doll, I . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t. I—”
I cut myself off, unable to find the words to convey just how fucking sorry I am for not trusting her when she needed me the most, for not being there when she was hurting, for not having her back the way I should have. And despite all that, she still offers me a sad smile, as though I’m somehow deserving of her love. “I’m guessing an I told you so probably isn’t going to go down well right now?”
“Fuck, Harper. How am I ever going to make it up to you?”
She lets out a shaky breath, and I can’t help but notice the way she tries to mask her pain. “Just help me nail this bastard first,” she says. “And then we can work on the rest after.”
I nod, more than down with that plan, but there’s no denying that I will spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
The medical team pours in to stabilize Harper, and I have no choice but to clear out. Making my way into the hall, I stand with Ace and Diesel, barely able to keep myself in check.
“How is she?” Diesel asks.
I shake my head. “Not good,” I tell him. “She’s pretty banged up and in a lot of pain. I don’t think anything’s broken, but until we get scans done, I can’t be sure.”
Ace nods. “I spoke with some of the security team. They said there was a man in a mask, and he fled once they arrived. But the description they gave, it sounds a lot like that stalker Harper had in her hallucinations, but that can’t be right. There can’t be some kind of connection to that. It was a hallucination.”
My jaw clenches, and I ball my hands into fists, unease pulsing through my veins. “It’s connected,” I confirm. “The bastard stole her hospital records and is re-creating her hallucinations. That’s who stabbed her in the parking garage and broke into my house to assault her.”
“The fuck?” Diesel demands, gaping at me in horror. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
The rage takes over, and I whip around, my fist slamming straight through the drywall. “Because I didn’t fucking believe her,” I grit, my whole body trembling with uncontrollable rage. “Every time she brought it up, every time she came to me, needing me to be her fucking rock, I told her the meds must have been wrong. I thought it was all in her head, that she was still sick, all while she was being fucking assaulted in our goddamn home!”
I start pacing up and down the hallway, shaking my head as I try to come to terms with this, when I recall the conversation we’d had in my truck after leaving Elias’s place. I was so wound up that I was barely even listening as she drank and ranted, but she said Elias was the man behind the mask. His eyes and tone were the same, and she should have seen it sooner. I shrugged it off, thinking she was trying to make connections between this man in her head and someone real. But if this is true, if it’smy brother who’s been threatening her life . . . shit. It’s already personal, but this just makes it that much worse.
If Elias thinks he’s going to touch what’s mine, he’s got another think coming.
“We’re gonna find this fucker,” Ace tells me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it takes. We’ll get him. She won’t like it, but we’ll put a twenty-four-hour protection detail on Harper until this is over. Between you, me, Diesel, and the rest of the team, no one will touch her.”
“Okay,” I tell him as the medical team makes their way out of the bathroom with Harper on a gurney. “Reach out to the team. Put a schedule in place, and we’ll get it done.”
The boys nod and take off as I fall in line with Harper, taking her hand as the medical team pushes her toward the elevator. “I’m going to make this right,” I tell her. “He won’t hurt you anymore. I’ve got you now. I was wrong to tell you that it was in your head. I swear, doll, I’m going to be the man you deserve.”
Harper nods, her left eye already swelling. “It’s Elias,” she tells me, gripping onto me as though she’s terrified I won’t believe her, and that’s on me. I’m going to have to put the effort in to ensure I have her whole trust again.
