Chapter 75 Kashton
SEVENTY-FIVE
KASHTON
Haidyn pulls up to Carnage, and I get out of the back seat with her in my arms. I rush up the steps and shove the doors open with my boot.
“Devin?” I shout, but he’s already waiting for us. “You have to help her,” I tell him.
His wide eyes go from mine and then drop to her before looking at my brothers standing behind her. “Saint said…she had passed.”
“Help her,” I shout.
“Follow me.”
I walk numbly, following him.
We exit the elevator, and the coldness hits me like a slap to the face. We’re in the same hallway where I once found my brother lying in his own blood after his wife shot him. I avoid coming down here for that very reason.
Devin leads me into a room with nothing more than a metal slab in the center and a chair in the corner.
I place her on it. Gasping for breath, I turn to see Devin just standing there. “What are you doing?” I snap at him. “Do something. This is your job.”
“Kash—”
“No,” I shout, interrupting Saint. “Devin can help her.” I put my attention on the doctor in the room.
“She’s had one syringe of adrenaline. She just needs more.
” She’s going to need a blood transfusion as well.
I don’t know her type, but she can have whatever she needs from whoever she needs it from. I’ll slit throats if I have to.
“Kashton, it’s been too long,” Devin says softly.
“No.” I refuse to believe that. “The brain can live up to seven minutes after…” I can’t say the word. She’s not…gone.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I look to see its Haidyn. His bloodshot eyes drop to Eve lying on the table beside me. “I’m sorry, brother.” He clears his throat. “She’s gone.”
“No.” I turn and pick her up. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” I pull her into my arms and fall down into the chair in the corner. “Charlotte was given…something.” The same drug that Haidyn used when he pretended to die on us. “Adrenaline brought her back. It will work. She just needs more.”
My chest is tight as I rock her back and forth.
Looking up, I realize he led me to the morgue.
That lump in my throat gets bigger, seeing I had laid her on the metal slab that’s now smeared with blood.
My chest tightens. It’s getting harder to breathe.
I haven’t been in here since my mom’s body was in this room.
“Kashton?”
I blink at the sound of my name to see Devin standing in front of me. His eyes go to a blood-covered Eve and then back to mine. “Let me take her.”
“I…can’t…” I clear the lump in my throat and finish my sentence. “Let her go.”
I cradle her tighter to my body. My arms have gone numb. I can’t feel anything. Just the massive hole in my chest.
“Take as much time as you need,” Devin says and then turns, exiting the room.
I glance over her face. She looks so peaceful. How she appears when I watch her sleeping next to me. It’s the blood that reminds me of the truth. It’s my mind playing tricks on me. Refusing to believe she’s truly gone. That I’ve lost her.
“I’m sorry, angel,” I tell her, struggling to breathe.
Her body trembles in my arms because I’m the one shaking.
The door opens but I ignore it. Instead, I hold her tighter. Devin can’t have her. Not yet. I’m not ready. I was holding onto hope that he could do something that would bring her back, but deep down I knew it was hopeless.
My angel is officially an angel. I may not believe in heaven, but I hope that wherever she is, she’s getting the rest she needs.
She deserved to be loved longer. To know what it felt like to be important. To know that she was my world.
“Kash?” Haidyn speaks softly. “They’re here.”
“Who?” I ask, not even looking up from her, unable to recognize my own voice. I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
“Ryat and Sin,” he answers. “They found him.”
My stinging eyes meet his. “Who?”
Haidyn frowns and runs a bloody hand through his hair. “The guy from the cathedral?” He words it as if it’s a question.
He and Saint were talking in the SUV on the way here, but I’d tuned them out. Instead, I silently cried in the back seat while I held my dead wife.
“They’ve got him in the basement.” His eyes drop to Eve before he looks away, unable to look at what’s left of his sister. Or maybe me. I’ve failed both of them. Because of me, he no longer has a chance to know her. “They’re waiting for you.”
“I…I can’t—”
“I’ll take care of her.” I hadn’t realized Devin had returned. He gives me a soft smile. “I promise. I’ll stay here with her until you return.”
My vision blurs as tears fill my eyes, and I swallow the knot in my throat. “I can’t…let her go.”
Devin steps toward me and holds his arms out. “May I?” he asks.
Fresh tears fall down my face.
“Let me take her, Kash,” he insists. “I promise she’ll be here when you’re done.”
I nod, unable to say anything but knowing she deserves revenge. That whoever hurt her should be here, stripped naked, lying on a cold slab all alone. Not her.
Devin places his arms under her lifeless body and lifts her from my grasp, and I watch him carry her to the table in the center of the room.
She’s practically unrecognizable. I didn’t think someone so small could bleed so much.
I’m not even sure how many times she was shot.
I think Saint has counted three bullet wounds, but I can see bruises on her neck where my face smeared the blood while I held her to me in the car.
Where I kissed her and told her over and over that I loved her.
That I was sorry for not being the man she married. The husband she deserved.
All I can do is hope that it was fast. That she didn’t suffer. But I know the truth. I’ve seen it enough. The blood smear where she dragged herself to hide behind the altar. She suffered. She felt pain. I deserve to feel the same pain. Know the same fate.
I get up on my shaking legs and walk over to her.
I push the bloody strands of hair off her gorgeous face and lean down to kiss her forehead.
She’s so cold. I look around and see a gray blanket.
Grabbing it, I drape it over her and speak softly.
“I’ll be back, angel.” I need her to know I’m not leaving her. That this isn’t goodbye.
I turn to leave when Devin’s voice stops me.
“May I wash her?” I just stare at him, and his eyes soften. “I’d like to clean her up if you don’t mind.”
All I can do is nod. I’m incapable of speaking at the moment.
Then I exit the room with Haidyn. “Kash—”
“Please, do-n’t.” My voice cracks.
He grabs my shoulders and spins me around. I think he’s going to hit me. Knock me on my ass for her death, but instead, he pulls me in for a hug.
My shoulders slump and fresh tears fill my eyes as I try to hold in a sob. We were raised to not show emotion. Especially over a woman. “I’m sorry,” I whisper through the lump in my throat.
“Don’t,” he growls, pulling back and gripping my upper arms. His hard eyes are filled with tears that he doesn’t want to cry. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
“It’s my fault she’s gone.” I shake uncontrollably, glancing at the door her body is behind. “I…love her. I tried. I would have done anything—” I can’t finish the sentence because my throat closes.
He pulls me back into him, hugging me once more. “I know, Kash,” he whispers hoarsely. “She knows. She loves you too.”
My knees give out, but he holds me up.
I’m not sure how long we stand in the hallway, but we manage to get ourselves together. It’s hard to be intimidating when you’re a sobbing mess.
“We’ll get them,” he promises, and I nod.
I don’t have any doubt in my mind. I will tear this town apart to get the answers I want. But it won’t bring her back.
He slaps my back, and we turn, heading to the basement. We stay silent, and thoughts of my last conversation with my wife fill my mind.
“You’re my purpose.”
“I love you.”
It’s crippling to think I won’t crawl into bed next to her tonight or wake up with her in the morning.
What life I had is over. She’ll be the one I place in the ground, but I’ll never live after this.
I might as well bury myself with her. And I will.
We will rot together. But I’ll make sure to take everyone that was involved with me first.
We enter the basement to see Sin and Ryat standing next to Saint while Hooke hangs out over in the far corner. Tyson is also here, and there’s a guy in the center, lying on the floor by the pits. He’s bleeding from what looks like his arm by the way his opposite hand grips it.
He looks up at me. His wide eyes search mine before they glance at my blood-stained clothes.
“Well, well, well,” I say, the dots instantly connecting, and I want to strangle him to death. It was right there in front of my face all this time. “My neighbor Christopher.”
Saint looks at Haidyn and whispers, “Neighbor?”
Haidyn shrugs at Saint, just as confused. They still don’t know about the house I bought to be close to Eve.
“It’s starting to make sense now.” I nod to myself. “How Evan knew to enter and leave her house from the back door. I didn’t have cameras back there. I bet you had the car ready and waiting for Evan after she stabbed him.”
He looks away, and I walk over to the counter and pick up the pack of Haidyn’s cigarettes. “String him up,” I order, my voice now as cold as this room. Then I grab the lighter next to the pack.
The crying session that Haidyn and I just had in the morgue was exactly what I needed—almost therapeutic. It reminded me of the cry that Elli had after her therapy session.
Giving them my back, I listen to him struggle as the guys get him ready for me. Numbly, I dig through the cabinets to find what I’m looking for. Honestly, I’m winging it.
Picking out a few things, I turn back, taking a drag from the cigarette. He hangs from his tied wrists above his head.