My rage was blinding and I was only vaguely aware of Bull, Maverick, and Davey bursting into the room.
I pressed the barrel of my gun against Elias’s forehead.
Again, Indy begged. “Don’t do this, Cade.”
Elias looked up at me, his face already swollen from my foot to his face. Blood stained his teeth. “If you hadn’t turned up, Cade, I was going to mess her up. Fuck her in every hole—” He was almost laughing.
“Don’t listen to him, baby! He wants you to kill him. It will be his ultimate revenge. You’ll go to prison. It will ruin your life.”
“She’s right, son,” Bull said. Out of the corner of my eye I could see he was with Indy. She was safe.
But Isaac, Tex, Irish, Freebird, and Mirabella were all dead.
Jacob, too.
I fidgeted the gun against his forehead. “No court in the world will convict a man of murder—for killing the man he caught raping his girl.” My finger was a breath away from pulling the trigger, and it was only Indy’s voice standing between me and pulling it. I couldn’t stand the thought of what he had done to her. To my family and friends.
“He didn’t rape me, baby. Please don’t do this. It’s what he wants. Think about it, he doesn’t want to go to prison. It will be hell for him.”
I thought of Isaac lying dead in the stainless steel drawer. I thought of Irish with his brains splattered all over the wall behind him. I thought of Freebird lying bloated and black in a ditch, and of Jacob desperately trying to put Mirabella’s head back together as she lay dead in his arms. My finger itched on the trigger.
“But he’ll be alive. And as long as he’s alive, he has more than what Isaac has.”
Elias looked up at me, a hint of a smile on his face, blood dripping from his lips. “That’s right, Cade. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger, or I swear, one day, I will find your girl and I will spoil her—”
“Cade—!” Indy cried.
“I will fuck her. Eat her pussy—”
That was all I needed.
My index finger tightened around the trigger, and this time I didn’t hesitate.
“Eat this, motherfucker—”
And I shot him.
Elias dropped to his knees, a red stain spreading across his chest from the bullet hole in his body.
“You fuck!” he growled, clutching his chest as he fell onto his back.
I loomed over him, pleased he was still conscious so he could still see me pointing my gun at his heart.
“This is from Isaac. He says fuck you.”
And I shot him again.
CADE
The wait to find out if the baby was going to be okay was long and tortuous. Feelings of relief mingled with panic. Indy was going to be okay, but there was real concern surrounding the baby.
Feeling helpless, I rode with her in the back of the ambulance, holding her hand tightly as she slipped in and out of consciousness, promising her that I would never let anything happen to her again.
In my head, I silently begged my baby to live. I put my hand on Indy’s stomach and willed our baby to stay, promising him that I would be the best damn father there was if he would just hang around and give me the chance. He would be loved fiercely, I promised. Because I knew it was my son growing inside of my wife. I knew with the instinct of a father who so desperately wanted his baby to be born.
“When did you know?” Indy’s hoarse voice broke into my prayers.
I looked up and saw she was awake, her sleepy eyes focused on me.
“About the baby?”
She nodded, and I could see a tear pooling in the corner of her eye. When she blinked, it dragged slowly down her cheek.
“I found the sonogram,” I said.
A second tear followed the first.
“I was going to tell you when you got back from Kansas City.” Her face screwed up and she pulled her knees to her chest, moaning in pain. She reached down and her fingers disappeared beneath the blanket. When they reappeared they were soaked in blood.
Fear and pain spun like a tornado inside of me.
“It could be spotting,” Indy said to me. She looked at the EMT sitting next to her for reassurance.
“It could be,” the EMT replied with a nod.
But I was a fucking rock star at reading people, and I could see the EMT didn’t think it was spotting. Fear drove a stake right into my heart. Indy was losing the baby.
“I’m so sorry, angel,” I said, resisting the urge to kiss her face. She was burned and bruised, and the split in her lip had started to bleed again. Christ, I felt so damn guilty about what happened to her. And if our baby died because of it—
“Oh, God,” Indy moaned again and squeezed her eyes shut as another spasm of pain took hold of her.