Page 137

“FUUUUUUUUCK!”

“He’s at his old compound,” Julian says as he runs back in the room and hands me my body armor. “We’re leaving fifty men here to protect the family, and everyone else is rolling out with us.”

“Let’s fucking do this.”

Fifty-One

RINA

For the most part, I’ve been able to lose myself in my mind since this morning. The pain is excruciating, and it’s not just my shoulder, hip, and face that all scream in agony.

My heart. My mind.

Jesus, my soul hurts.

I want my son, and I want my husband, and I feel like I might go out of my mind here in this hot, horrible room. I can’t last another day.

He said that, right? That he’d call Carson tomorrow?

I can’t do it.

I won’t survive another twenty-four hours like this. Sitting in this chair with numb legs, my hip aching, my shoulder bleeding.

Hell, maybe this time the motherfucker isn’t bluffing. Maybe the brothers are dead.

Poor Carson.

I’ve seen what it cost him when he thought he’d lost me. He became a killing machine. Angry and so much scarier than before.

If he loses all four of us, I don’t know if he’ll survive it. But he has to.

For Charlie.

Because Charlie needs his dad. He loves his father so much already, and Jesus, the thought of our son losing both his parents to this motherfucking monster makes me whimper.

The first sound I’ve made since he stabbed my shoulder.

“Did you say something?”

He hasn’t left the room since the call with Carson. And hearing my man’s voice soothed me and gave me a bit of strength, but I didn’t want to show emotion and give this asshole the satisfaction of hearing me cry and beg the way I wanted to.

I refuse to look at him, but I can tell that he’s taking off his suit jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, and rolling up his sleeves.

Because it’s hot as fuck in here.

I’m a sweaty, smelly, piss-soaked mess. Bloody. I drooled when I screamed from the wound on my shoulder.

I’m covered in my own fluids.

He was right, I don’t smell good at all.

I hope I repulse him. I hope I make him so sick to his stomach that he vomits all over himself.

The door opens, and a man I haven’t seen before walks inside, dragging a garden hose, and I feel what’s left of the blood in my head drain.

A garden hose.

Damien strides over, takes the hose from him, and turns to me, and for the first time, I look at his face, and he smiles widely.