Another knock sounds at the door, but instead of filling me with concern, it stirs nothing but uneasiness in my chest. A strange whimpering sound immediately follows, and I swallow over the fear in my throat.
Could this be Elias, finally coming to finish what he started? Come to even the score with his brother?
Fuck.
“Check the cameras,” Knight murmurs, digging into his pocket and pressing his phone into my hand as he pulls me along, his arm braced across my body like a human shield while somehow managing to keep me directly behind him.
I scramble for the phone, quickly finding the right app before opening it up and hating how damn long it takes to load, but before I know it, the perfect visual of our front porch appears on the screen, and right there, on her hands and knees, is my mother, covered head to toe in blood.
“MOM!” I cry, racing past Knight and lunging for the door, only he grips my arm and yanks me back.
“Don’t,” he growls. “Could be a trap.”
Fuck.
My whole body shakes, desperate to get out there and figure out what the fuck is going down when Knight fixes me with the kind of stare that keeps me pinned to the floor. “Stay,” he commands as he slowly reaches for the door and twists the handle. He opens it just a fraction, his gun taking the lead as he skillfully sweeps the front porch and surrounding areas, ignoring my bleeding mother at his feet.
The moment he decides the coast is clear, he opens the door wider before reaching down and scooping Mom into his arms, just like I had wanted to only a moment ago. He kicks the door shut with a loud thud a second later.
“Lock it,” he tells me, and I don’t hesitate to dive in behind him to lock the door before going for the deadbolt as well.
Knight gets her down on the ground, and I rush through the house, searching for my medical kit. Once I find it, I hurry back and fall to my knees before her, assessing the damage. My gaze roams over her body as her chest heaves with uneven, shaky breaths. Knight’s already calling for an ambulance, and despite knowing they’re on their way, I get started, doing what little I can from the bag at my feet.
“She’s gotta have a collapsed lung,” I tell Knight as I take in the bruising and the way her chest rises unevenly as she gasps for air. But what gets me the most is the blood dripping down her thighs, seeping through the thin fabric of her pants. Everything inside me breaks. Over these past few days, I’d only just started getting comfortable with the idea of having a baby sister and potentially being able to care for her.
Knight sees what I see, but neither of us mentions it, unsure if Mom has realized it when she reaches for me, gripping my hand.“You were right.” She gasps sharply, her chest struggling to take a proper breath. “He’s back.”
Fuck.
The paramedics arrive within six minutes, kicking Ace’s record of seven minutes and fifty-three seconds. As they tirelessly work to stabilize my mom, I stand back with Knight in absolute shock.
I have so many questions.
Did he beat her? Was it because he found out about the pregnancy, or did she finally get the nerve to ask him about his involvement with me? Did she push him on the double homicide in the morgue or my accusation of sexual assault? Or was he just fucking bored and looking for something to pass the time?
Tears fall from my eyes while Knight holds me, guilt tearing through my chest so violently it almost drops me to my knees. I should have tried harder to protect her. I shouldn’t have taken no for an answer. Now there’s a possibility that she’s lost my baby sister, and she might even lose her life.
The paramedics get her stable enough to transport, and the moment she’s put on the stretcher and wheeled out to the ambulance, I hurry out after her with Knight on my tail, both of us climbing into his truck.
We follow the ambulance, and as Mom is taken into surgery, I’m left with Knight in the waiting room with nothing to do but wait. I hear him on the phone, giving orders to Diesel as he gets the team together to go find Elias, but I doubt he stuck around to wait for the fallout. The moment he left Mom to fend for herself, he would have taken off. Hell, he would have been miles away before she’d even found the strength to drag herself into her car and drive her ass to me.
It’s a miracle she’s alive, having gone so long with a collapsed lung, but why the fuck didn’t she call for help? Why waste her time coming to me when she could have headed straight for thehospital? Why not crawl to the neighbor’s place and ask for help? I don’t understand it.
The night ticks by painfully slowly, and when Mom is out of surgery, we’re allowed into her recovery room to sit with her until she wakes. Knight comes in and out, giving me updates on the raid at Elias’s home, and I’m not surprised when he comes in looking ashen, telling me that there was no sign of the bastard.
Had he gone home with the intention to hurt my mother? I don’t know. All that matters to me is the baby growing in her womb. Is it cruel to believe that she brought this on herself? That in not believing me and choosing wealth over her own safety, she had this coming? She stepped directly into the lion’s den, dressed as a vulnerable little lamb, and batted her eyelashes, thinking that’d be enough to save her.
I begin pacing the hallway outside her room as the sun peeks through the hospital windows. It’ll be shift change soon, and so far, her surgeon still hasn’t come to speak with us. But it’s been one of those nights, patients have been coming in by the truckload, and while I’m desperate to find out the state of the baby, I also know how it can be during night shift.
Knight watches me as I make my way up and down the hall when I hear the slight shift in Mom’s heart rate monitor and pause at the door, looking in. She lies in her bed, attached to all kinds of machines, panic in her eyes as she tries to piece together how the hell she got there.
“Mom,” I say, walking into the room and automatically checking her vitals on the screen before taking the seat at her bedside. “You’re okay. You’re in Blackstone Hospital.”
“Harper?” she croaks, fear in her eyes.
“You’re alive. You made it in time,” I tell her. “How’re you feeling?”
She shakes her head as though unable to believe the night she’s had. “I really thought he loved me,” she murmurs, tears welling in her eyes. “I thought that would be enough.”
