The threat registers in the man’s eyes. He knows when he’s seeing a feral animal hell-bent on protecting the one he loves, and God help me, I love Kat. If anything happens to her here, if she fucking dies, I’ll go mad. Life without her is an unmatched torture I want no part of. I already know what life without her is like. It’s perpetual darkness, bringing infernos and purgatory, bleak and horrid. The last thing I did was fucking degrade her, use her body, and show her darkness when I should have shown her how valuable she is to me. I should have told her she’s my world and how much I love her.
“Sir, please calm down,” a woman’s voice insists behind me.
I drop my hands. Not because it’s the right thing to do, but because I’m defeated. If killing every single doctor here would make her all right, I’d do it and not think twice. But Kat needs these people to fix her.
They wheel her motionless body down the hall.
“Where are you taking her?” I scream. “I can’t be without her.” My knees buckle as my body sinks to the hospital floor like my spirit has left me. She was bleeding out. So much blood, Kat’s mixing with Henry’s. The paramedics were somber as they stepped onto the grisly scene.
Donovan keeps fucking texting me, but I can’t bear to answer him. I’m floating in purgatory. This is my penance for all my acts of sin, from fucking my sister to making a living from blood money. If she dies, I’ll walk into the ocean and let the surf take me home. I’ll join the others from Wainscott Hollow who went before me because there will be nothing left on this earth that even interests me.
An orderly grips my upper arm. “Sir, you’re bleeding too. Let us take a look at you.”
“No!” A visceral growl rooted in my gut escapes. “I’m fine. Just help her. I don’t care how much it costs or who I need to fly down. Money is no object to me. Save her, and I’ll see you have whatever you want.” My voice cracks and tears trickle down my cheek. “Please!” I beg to no one in particular and everyone at the same time. God, the devil, mother nature, the nurse with the sad look on her face, anyone and everyone who will listen to my plea. I cannot go on without her. I refuse to. “I’ll do anything, whatever you want. Just please don’t let her die. Do not let her die on me.”
Six hours of waiting. Four holes punched into the hospital drywall that almost got me kicked out. Two irrevocably broken hearts. I quickly remedied my faux pas with a two-million-dollar donation pledge for one of the hospital’s new wings in the name of Wainscott Hollow, and they allowed me to stay. It’s shocking how violence can be overlooked when you’ve got a padded checkbook. Had I pulled this same shit when I was a penniless kid, my ass would’ve been tossed in jail so fast that heads would spin. But today, as a wealthy man, money buys me the ability to destroy whatever I want and to royally fuck up every once in a while.
“What’s your plan? Gonna smash that busted fist through all the drywall in this joint? No matter the cheap construction, your hand is gonna give out before these walls do.” Donovan holds out a hot cup of coffee to me. It’s his subtle way of telling me to chill the fuck out.
Donavan is a good guy, “good” being subjective and relative to what side you’re on, the other side, or his. But he’s decent as far as emotionless, bloodthirsty hitmen go. Like me, he survived on his wits by proving how clever he was. Not born into the mob life, but it kicked him down so hard that he had to become a killer to survive.
I nod as I take the scalding cup out of his hand. “Thanks, man.”
“You need food?”
My eyes dart to the police officers in the hall. Their radios have been chattering non-stop, trying to puzzle together all that transpired in the last twenty-four hours. “Nah, I just need someone to tell me what’s going on. The cops are sniffing around, starting to ask questions.”
“I cleared it up.”
“What the fuck did you tell them?”
“The truth. The dead brother was threatening to kill her, and you had to stop him. Explained the stab wounds too. Told them you charged him with the knife and kept stabbing so he couldn’t shoot the gun. The initials carved into her chest were a little hard to explain, but I told them the other guy was a sick fuck who liked to carve people up.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t mention it,” Donavan says.