Page 95 of Ruined By a Devil

Nolan is gone. He played a perfect hand, bought the right men, and slipped the net. But for whatever reason, I don’t care that he’s gone. As I look down at Jade, watching the slow, steady rise of her chest as Ezekiel packs the wound, the cold, ruthless logic in my brain locks into place.

I lean down, pressing my bloody forehead against hers.

“I don’t care what ocean he crosses,” I whisper to her, the promise carved completely out of stone. “I don’t care where he lands... He doesn’t get to escape again from me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Jade

The ceilings in Malachi’s city house are twelve feet high. The floors are polished dark wood, and the bed I am currently stuck in is massive. It is a beautiful, luxurious house. There is even a cook downstairs who makes three meals a day plus snacks, a butler who manages the deliveries, and maids who move quietly through the halls.

But none of the staff are actually allowed to take care of me. Malachi has this obsession with being the one who handles all of it.

I shift against the heavy pillows. A sharp, burning pain spreads along my waist where the stitches hold the bullet wound closed. I bite down the inside of my cheek hoping that if I pretend it doesn’t hurt, the pain will somehow magically go away, and look toward the open double doors on the right side of the bedroom.

The adjoining room is a formal sitting area. Or, it used to be. Two days ago, Malachi had his men drag a massive oak desk into the center of the rug. He turned the space into his command center. I watch him working, a burner phone pressed to his ear, staring at a stack of printed security logs.

He hasn’t left the second floor since the ambulance dropped me here, and it’s starting to get a little annoying how much he babies me and treats me like a child. Though, on the other hand, him doing this melts my heart entirely. It’s hard to believe that in all these years, this is the first time I actually have someone who cares about me and goes above and beyond to make sure I’m comfortable, that I’m alive.

“Uh-oh,” I grimace as I notice the sudden shift in his face as he finishes his call, and tosses the phone onto the desk. “All good?”

Instead of answering, Malachi gets up from his desk and walks back into the bedroom. He stops beside the nightstand and picks up the small orange plastic bottle of painkillers.

“Just another dead end,” he says, checking the label, and then his heavy silver watch.

“So that’s why you are staring at a piece of plastic,” I say.

“You have to take the meds in ten minutes,” he looks up from the meds, his eyes meeting mine.

“I don’t need them.”

“You got shot, Jade,” he says, his voice calm and steady. “You’re taking these whether you think you need them or not.”

“It just grazed the muscle,” I say, crossing my arms carefully. “And you are hovering. I thought you had work to do.”

“I am working.” He sets the bottle down and pours a glass of water from the pitcher. “And I’m not hovering. I’m monitoring my wife after she got shot.”

“I am sitting in a bed with who knows how many guards outside. The perimeter is perfectly secure.”

A knock sounds at the heavy bedroom door before he can argue.

“Come in,” Malachi says.

A young guard whose name I don’t remember walks in. He is holding a clipboard against his chest tightly and looks extremely uncomfortable standing in Malachi’s private quarters.

“Boss,” the boy says, nodding to Malachi. “Cain sent me up with the supply routes for the south docks. We need a signature to move the trucks tonight.”

Malachi’s burner phone rings on the desk in the other room. He looks at the doorway, then back at the guy. “Leave the clipboard on the bed, I need to take this.”

Dean! The boy’s name is Dean.

Malachi walks into the sitting room and shuts the heavy double doors halfway to muffle the sound of his voice. Dean steps forward and sets the clipboard on the edge of the mattress near my feet, continuing to wait awkwardly.

Bored out of my mind with the curiosity getting the best of me, I pick up the clipboard and start reading over the printed route.

“You need to reroute this,” I tell Dean, handing the clipboard back. “Take the western service road, the interstate is too exposed right now.”

Dean takes the board, but he doesn’t move or say a single word. He shifts his weight from one boot to the other, glancing nervously toward the half-open doors of the sitting room.