“Baby,” I breathed and carefully stroked a finger over her jaw. Now that I could see her—touch her—my heart finally felt like it was beating again.
“Hawk.” A sob made her shoulders shake as tears fell faster. “You’re alive. Oh God, I was so scared that you were dead.”
“Never. I’d always find a way back to you, baby. Always.” I lowered my head and gently brushed my lips over her eyes.
“Hawk, I want to go h-home.” She was starting to shiver, but I didn’t know if it was from pain or if shock was setting in.
“Get me a blanket,” I yelled at the room, not caring who carried out the order as long as someone got it done.
“We’ll take you home as soon as we get you checked out, honey,” Trigger told her, keeping her distracted.
Her eyes went to the other man, her chin trembling uncontrollably. “I-I thought it was just a piece of glass.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ll get you all better soon.” He carefully turned the arm closest to him and showed me the gunshot wound to the back of Gracie’s arm. There was only an entrance hole, no exit. The fucking bullet was still in her arm.
What worried me the most was the red streaks around the wound. She was already showing signs of a bad infection. “Did you call an ambulance?”
“On their way, brother. They said they were about fifteen minutes out.” Raider called from across the room where he was helping the others clean up the dead bodies. The cops were about to be all over the place. They would put the bodies in one of the SUVs and take them somewhere else to dispose of them.
“What do you want me to do with him?” Ciro called out, waving his gun in Morgan’s face, making the old man blanch and flinch away from the gun. He was gray in the face, his eyes terrified.
I looked back down at Gracie. “What do we do with the old fuck, baby?”
Another tear fell from her eyes and she turned her head away, not looking at me. “I don’t care. I don’t care.”
The pain in her voice was from more than just physical pain. It went soul deep. She’d been betrayed by her family—or what she thought was family. I’d have to find a way to tell her that they weren’t. Would she hate me for keeping that from her? Would she be glad that the people she’d thought she shared DNA with weren’t her family?
“Take him down to the warehouse by the pier,” Jet told Ciro. “We’ll be down tomorrow night to deal with him.”
“Got it,” Ciro assured him as he lifted his gun and used the handle to knock Morgan out. The room was filled with the sickening thud as the old man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped onto the floor beside his dead son. “Call me when you’re ready. I’ll be waiting.”
Without another word, Ciro and his men left. Seconds after I heard three sets of tires burning rubber out in the wrap-around driveway, I caught the sound of sirens in the distance.
Gracie grasped my hand. Her fingers were ice cold but she held on to me with a surprising strength. “Don’t leave me.”
“Never,” I vowed and brushed another gentle kiss over her eyes. “Never.”
Chapter Twelve
Felicity
“Twice in just a few months. This is a real treat, Felicity,” Mary Donati said with a smile as we shared a cup of coffee in her huge living room. “I’m so glad you could spare a little time for me, darling. I know how busy you’ve been with your new job. How are the Armstongs doing?”
Pain sliced through my heart at the thought of Emmie and her family, but it wasn’t nearly as harsh as it had been the night before. Only twenty-four hours and I was starting to handle the loss of them in my life a little better. “Things are still crazy with them, I’m sure.”
I’d seen my aunt just a few days before Demon’s Wings had started their summer tour. When I’d come to visit her and my uncle, I hadn’t worried that they would sell me out to the Club. If there was anything that I knew about my aunt it was that she was loyal to a fault. Unlike my mother, I knew that Mary would keep any secret I dared to tell her. Not for the first time, I wished I’d been born to this woman rather than Marcie Bolton.
I wasn’t about to explain to my beloved aunt that her son had basically deposited me on her doorstep like a sack of potatoes before going off to what I could only figure was going to be a war zone. I knew she wasn’t blind to the reality of who and what her son was, but I also knew that the less she knew, the better off she would be if the Feds were ever stupid enough to bring her in for questioning.
“I’ve missed you, Aunt Mary.” I took another swallow of my coffee and gave her a smile that wasn’t nearly as forced as it had been when I’d first arrived.
“I’ve missed you too, darling.”
More than two hours had passed since Ciro had dropped me off and my anger had dropped from boiling over to slightly simmering. I wanted to stay mad at him—and Jet—but I understood why they had done it. Once I’d started to calm down, I’d realized that I probably would have been in their way. I would have been a distraction that could have gotten someone hurt or killed.
Hating that I was admitting that Jet had been right to tell my cousin to drop me off—even if it was just to myself—I finished the rest of my coffee and listened indulgently to Mary as she continued on and on about how proud she was of her son. Another hour passed and my gut started the churn with anxiety as each second seemed to take forever to tick by.
Eleven thirty came and went. Where they okay? Was Hawk?