“Thank you for giving me one of your kidneys.”
I rub the heel of my palm against the tightness growing in my chest. She has no idea how much her words hurt.
“I may not have been your father for long, Maisy, but now that I am, I’d do anything for you.”
She damn near kills me with her next words.
“I’m glad you’re my dad.”
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, as I lie in the hospital bed in a ridiculously uncomfortable gown, I think about what’s going to happen over the next several hours. A nurse will come in and wheel me to the operating room, where the doctor will cut me open and remove one of my kidneys. They’ll put the kidney in Maisy, and we’ll all hope and pray her body doesn’t reject it. The next few weeks are going to be stressful for all of us. I’m anxious as fuck because as much as I want to stay here in Kentucky until the results are in, I can’t. I’m needed back in Malus. I could probably pull off a couple of weeks total, but after that I have to get back. As the town judge, my responsibilities are too dire to neglect for long. I will, however, be calling often for updates, and as soon as Maisy is in the clear, I’ll be coming back to help Ellie pack up their belongings to move to Malus.
When I made the threat to Ellie about taking Maisy away if she refused to move them both to Malus, I was serious. There was no way she was taking my daughter away from me after she announced I had one. I may not have ever expected to have any children, but now that Maisy’s in my life, it’s where she’ll stay. Now though, after watching the way Ellie is with Maisy and how much Maisy loves her mother, there’s no way I could separate them. It would destroy them both. Of course, I’m not going to tell Ellie that. She needs to believe I’ll follow through on my threat so she doesn’t change her mind about moving. I don’t know what my next move would be if she did, so I don’t want to find out.
My phone rings on the bedside table, and I snatch it up.
“Judge.”
“I know your surgery is today, but do you have a minute?” JW asks.
“Yes.” It’s not scheduled for another forty-five minutes.
“I got the report back on what happened to Ellie that night years ago.”
“She’s told me she was attacked when her car wouldn’t start and she walked to a gas station,” I say between clenched teeth. Just the thought of what happened has my temper rising. “She said she passed out and a man came across her being attacked. Woke up in the hospital a couple days later.
Papers ruffling comes across the line.
“She give you the details?”
“Only that it was three guys; two of whom were sent to prison for fourteen years while the third got away. Speaking of, now that you have her file and the two guys’ names who were sent to prison, I want them taken care of. I want a lock on the third guy as well, but I want him brought to Malus. I’ll take care of him personally.”
“I’m already looking into it.”
Someone must have come into his office, because his voice is muffled as he speaks before he comes back on the line.
He clears his throat. “Did she tell you about her injuries?”
“We didn’t get to that part. I was already on the edge of losing my shit when she told me about the attack.”
He lowers his voice. “It was bad, Judge.”
My stomach bottoms out. “How bad?”
“Really fucking bad. She had to have surgery to repair the damage done to her face. Her collarbone was broken and so was one of her arms in three places. Her other arm was ripped from the socket. The ligaments had to be repaired. Her ankle bone was crushed and had to be repaired, and she had three broken ribs.”
“Goddamn fuckin’ hell,” I growl. Why in the fuck didn’t she tell me this when she told me about the attack the other day?
“I managed to get her medical reports. Her doctors couldn’t see how she didn’t miscarry.”
A miracle baby. That’s what Ellie said her doctors called Maisy. No Goddamn wonder. Ellie was half dead by the time those fuckers were caught.
“I want them dead. Do whatever you have to do, but I want them to suffer.”
“Got it. And Judge? Keep us posted on the surgery.”
“Yeah.”
We hang up, and I throw my phone back on the nightstand, anger making my blood pressure rise. I’m pissed at Ellie for keeping that part of her ordeal to herself, but what really gets my blood boiling is knowing one of the guys who hurt her is still out there somewhere.