With each breath, a montage of images flash in front of me one after the other.
Ellie on the ground, Michael standing over her. A gun pointed at her head.
“ELLIE!”Her name rips from my throat, and then a gunshot rings out.
“NO!” I tackle Michael to the ground, knocking the gun out of his hand. We roll over the thick lush grass, struggling for control. I pull a power move, grabbing under one of his legs and hooking an arm around his neck. He punches me in the head and kicks out of my hold. We both get to our feet and I don’t waste a second going back at his body, grabbing hold of his chest and landing a kidney shot. He knees me in the stomach, but I barely register it. There’s so much adrenaline pumping through my system it feels like I have wings.
“I’m going to let you be the first to see what happens when someone fucks with what’s mine.” I smash Michael right in the face and his nose explodes with blood.
“Fuck!” He stumbles back making a go for his gun. He grabs it and points it at me, but I kick it out of his hand then punch him again. He drops to the ground, and I continue to pound on his face. Soon, it’s barely recognizable. His cheeks are swollen, his lips are split, and his eyebrows are ripped open. I pull my fist back about to slam him again when he speaks.
“Do it! Kill me, you motherfucker! Just like you killed my father!” I pause to look at him mid punch. He thinks I killed El Rey? Everything begins to make sense now. Ellie, Endeavor, he was trying to get to me.
I lower my fist and respond harshly. “You’re wrong about one thing. I didn’t kill your father.” He sputters blood as I speak. “But you’re right about the other. I am going to killyou.”I jerk a Glock out of my back holster and pull the trigger, shooting him square between the eyes. Then I pull it again—and again and again. I pull it until the chamber clicks.
Then I reload and repeat.
“Kayne!” I hear Juice’s sharpened voice cut through my murderous rampage. “I think he’s dead!”
“Not enough for me.” I squeeze the trigger one last time.
“Heel man. Jett needs you.Ellieneeds you.”
“Ellie!?” I snap out of my lethal haze and turn to see Jett leaning over her body under the bright moonlight.
“Ellie? Ellie?” I crawl over to them. “Ellie?” I examine her face. Her eye is swollen, and her lip is bleeding.
“Give me your shirt!” Jett roars. It takes a second for my mind to catch up with my body as I process the scene in front of me. Jett’s hands covered in blood. Ellie lying still as a statue, a pool of red staining the grass underneath her, growing larger by the second.
“Kayne now! She’s going to bleed out!”
Without thinking, I rip off my holster and tear off my shirt. “I need you to hold here.” He takes my hand and places it on his already soaked T-shirt pressed against her abdomen.
“I think it went straight through. I need to compress the exit wound.” He tilts her body, assesses her back, and then applies pressure with my shirt.
“There’s a medivac already on its way. The house is secured.” He talks to me, but all I see is Ellie, dying right before my eyes.
We hear the chopper in the distance. “Two minutes max,” he says.
It’s going to be the longest two minutes of my life.
“Kayne,” Ellie’s faint voice calls my name.
“Ellie, I’m right here. Hold on.” I wish I could scoop her up in my arms and hold her, but I know my hands need to stay where they are.
“You were right,” she murmurs.
“About what, baby?” I try to keep her talking.
She doesn’t open her eyes as she speaks. “I am a terrible judge of character.” I nearly lose it. That’s what I said to her when she was locked in the dungeon. “I won’t hold it against you for being a bad judge of character.”
“I don’t know shit. I was talking out of my ass,” I choke.
“It’s so cold in the city.” She shivers. I glance at Jett.
“She’s hallucinating. She thinks she’s in New York,” I say, shaking.
“She’s going into shock,” he tells me as her eyes flutter and chest compresses just as the air ambulance hovers overhead.
