Because Dianaismine. Not sure how anyone will feel about it, but I don’t give a fuck. She’s put me first, and now I need to take a page out of Kooper’s book and put her first. She protected my daughter. Probably protecting my kid even now. She put her own needs and wants to the side so I could handle being a granddad. Always being the selfless one in this relationship.
That ends now. If anyone is going to be self-sacrificing, it’s going to be me.
“Sir, stop. Get back. Sir, you can’t go in there. Sir!” The cop who told us we needed to get behind the barricade the last time keeps shouting at me, but I ignore him.
I glance right and see the other cop. He looks at me, and whatever he sees makes him sprint over and walk beside me. Well, me and my brothers. Mad Max and Casper are at my back as I go in to find my woman.
And claim her.
Chapter 27 - Diana
Tears stream down my face. I don’t dare brush them away. I’ve stopped trying to slow the blood coming out of Ashley’s stomach. It keeps flowing, but it’s slower. Her breathing is gone.
The smell of smoke hits, and I cough, looking up to see the hall clouding over with smoke I hadn’t noticed before, too lost in my grief.
A door closes, and I look up to see Barry coming closer to me.
“Come on.” He nods to the waiting-room door.
I shake my head.
“I said, come on.” He huffs like I’m being a stubborn child and reaches down to pull me up.
I shrug him off. “No.”
“Suit yourself,” he mutters and steps past me.
“She’s dead.” His footsteps stop just behind me. I turn just enough to make sure he hears me. “And her kids. Dead.”
“Not mine,” he says with a finality that pisses me off enough to turn on my ass to look at him take another step toward the door.
“Don’t you care? You killed her. Killedthem. Your babies. Yours. She didn’t step out on you. She’d never do that. She has donenothingbut be there for you. When you’re sick, she stays home to care for you. She’s turned downpromotions twice so her schedule wouldn’t change. So you two could be together.Together!”
Tears and snot run down my face, but I don’t care. None of it matters now. My friend is dead. Killed by a man she foolishly fell in love with. A man society called a hero, yet he judged mine for wearing leather, something that others consider dangerous. The Houndsaredangerous, but only if you fuck them over. Then I’ve got no doubt they’ll destroy everything to take that person down.
I cough again as the smoke irritates my throat and darkens the hallways.
“She loved you,” I say as I look back at my lifeless friend. “She wanted to surprise you and tell you one of the twins was a boy. One each.” I smile at the memory. He didn’t want to know the sex till they came. She did, so she snuck a peek and found out. She was holding it in but had to tell someone. So she told me.
“She wanted to call him Barry Jr. She couldn’t think of a name for the girl, but the second she found out about the boy, she just knew.” A laugh bursts out, then a sniff and a cough. “I told her his initials would be BJ, but she didn’t care. She wanted everyone to know that you had a son.” I turn back to him with a glare that I hope he can see through the smoke. “You. Not someone else. You. And you just destroyed it. All of it.”
He smashes his fist into the wall over and over, and I flinch away.
“Fuck!” he yells, then sinks down the wall he just smashed, rest his elbows on his knees, and cries into his hands, not caring that the gun is pressing into his skin as he rubs them over his eyes.
Part of me enjoys watching him suffer. Relishes the hurt he’s experiencing. And I just want to make it worse. To make it last longer.
“She bought it for you.” He looks at me, so I continue, not hiding the bitterness in my voice. “The lingerie. She didn’t know how to put it on, but she wanted you to see it. To know she would try it for you. Just another thing she was doing for you while you were out with someone else.”
He sniffs and wipes the snot away with his forearm. “It was a one-night thing. A mistake. I didn’t mean it. But Ashley kept working and then throwing up. She didn’t have the energy when I wanted her.”
“So it’s her fault? She was carrying your kids. Instead of making sure she was okay, that she had your help when she needed it, that she was well rested and taken care of, you snuck off to get your dick wet?”
He shakes his head as he looks at the wall ahead of him. “She never had time for me. It was always them. Not me.”
His words take a second to register, and then I bark out a laugh. “Are you fucking serious? She was growing babies.Yourbabies. Jesus, you really are a selfish bastard.” I shake my head and hate that I ever thought of him as a good man. Nothing about him was good. Not a damn thing.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” he mutters with enough venom that my eyes slowly meet his. “You’re just a lying whore too.” He nods to the dead woman between us. “Sleeping with a fucker who should be locked away.”
