He didn’t respond and I didn’t expect him to; I simply held his hand and kept watch through the early morning hours.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gideon
I openedmy eyes and realized I was in my bedroom. My face, arms, and hand throbbed with pain.A car bomb.I’d been leaving Slice with Barry and Lync. We’d gotten word that Lorcan was there, and I’d planned to corner him and end this. He wasn’t there but we’d stayed, mingled. I’d felt sure word that I was there would work its way to his ears. And it had, just not how I’d thought it would.
While I’d been inside, plotting what I’d do once he arrived, he’d had someone place a bomb on my SUV…and like an idiot, I’d walked right into it. Usually I had one of my men in the SUV, but I’d ordered Danny to stay inside Slice with Alex. My huge mistake.
I turned my head slightly to the right and came face-to-face with a sleeping Penn. His hand was loosely covering mine. I must’ve twitched or something, because a second later gorgeous green eyes were staring right at me.
“Hey.” His voice was rough from sleep.
“Hey.”
He glanced at my nightstand. “You in pain?”
“Yeah…seriously, Penn, you’re not missing out on this part of life.”
He snorted, carefully extricated himself from me, and stepped to my side. He opened a bottle and dropped two white pills into his hand.
“I have a water and a straw; they’re small.” I couldn’t even move, so I simply opened my mouth. “Now isn’t the time for that, Gideon.”
I chuckled and promptly hissed. “Don’t make me laugh, you sadist.”
He dropped the medicine into my mouth and I drank the water, sighing in relief as if it were already taking effect.
I was glad once Penn returned to his original spot on my bed. “You could’ve died tonight, Gideon.”
“I know.”
“I’m not gonna fight with you, but you can’t leave those kids without a parent. Don’t turn them into orphans. Trust me, it’s soul-sucking.”
I closed my eyes at the thought of my children crying over my death, remembering how they had when Ella died.
“It’s not my plan to go anywhere.”
He propped his head on his hand. “You’re failing.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was told Lorcan was going to be at Slice, so I went there. It’s public—I didn’t think he’d do anything there.”
“Uh, do you not remember Kaleidoscopes?”
“Okay, fair, but Slice seems to be a home base for him. He frequents there.”
“And your plan was to what, wait for him to show, sneak behind him, and slit his throat?”
I pursed my lips. “Pretty much.”
He snorted. “Gideon, you told me he was smarter than his brother. Don’t you think the second he was informed you were there, he would figure out how to hurt you without himself?”
“Clearly, I should’ve run this by you.”
So tenderly, he ran his finger along my unhurt cheek. “This has to end, but you gotta be smarter than him.”
“I thought I was.”
“Rest now. You have to heal.”
