Chapter 81 Kashton #2
I ignore them, keeping my eyes on Adam. His hands remain raised in surrender. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’d kill an unarmed man. I’ve done worse to a human.
“She needed to die.” He licks his lips. “The Lords would never allow you to be with her. She knew that.”
“Why?” I demand.
Haven’t I done enough for them? Don’t I deserve to love who I want?
Is this a punishment? They had to have put her in my path.
They sent Haidyn and me to pick up that Lord from the cathedral, and I guarantee they knew I was looking for her and that she was his half sister.
So why give me something only to take it away?
They will take away what you love most, she once told me.
The doors open, and I see Ryat and Sin rush in but come to an abrupt stop.
I put my attention back on the brother who betrayed me.
I’m not sure why I’m surprised. He’s done nothing but fuck us over for the past four years.
I just kept hold of the idea that he’d come home and everything would go back to normal.
Like a scared little boy begging his big brother to come back.
It was a stupid thought; we’re better off without him.
“Listen,” Adam growls, getting angry but also dodging my question, “you went to Bill and told him to make her your Lady. He told you what to expect.”
“No.” I shake my head.
“Yes. You said you could handle it. You said she could handle it.” Adam nods over to Sin. “You were there with me. You know.”
I whip around to glare at Sin. “You knew my wife wasn’t dead?” I bark.
“Eve is alive?” he asks, wide-eyed, looking at Haidyn for confirmation.
He nods in answer while standing in front of his pregnant wife, shielding her from me.
As if I’d ever hurt her. But I get it. I’d protect Eve if the roles were reversed.
I’m a suicidal madman running on very little sleep and still trying to decide if this is real or not.
“I don’t know what’s going on.” Sin looks back at me.
“We got a text from Saint that you were on your way home and to get to Carnage ASAP. There was an emergency.”
I place my attention back on Adam. “Three weeks,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Three fucking weeks you’ve let me think she was dead.
” It was the most agonizing thing I’ve ever been through.
I’d rather take three years of training than live a day without her.
Cuts and broken bones will heal over time, but what I felt when I lost my wife?
I’ll never recover from that. Even if she is alive.
“We’ve known she was alive for the past week,” Saint says.
I turn to him and ignore the sobbing Ashtyn in his arms. She’s trying to pry his hand off her mouth so she can beg me to not kill her brother. “What the fuck did you say?”
“I—”
“You knew she was alive?” I ask, even more confused than before. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”
“We tried,” he says through gritted teeth. “You left. No cell phone. No tracker. Calls, texts, and voicemails went unanswered.”
“How did you know?” How am I the only one between my brothers who didn’t know my wife was alive?
“I had Sin call Bill and demand contact with Adam. A few days later, we were told to call Bill.” Saint nods to Adam. “Adam answered, and I begged him to come home. To help us find you. You left, and Haidyn was on a warpath. I needed help, but Adam refused to come back.”
“Wait. Wait. Wait.” I feel like I’m losing my mind. “Did Bill know she was alive this entire time?” I growl at Adam, and the fact that he can’t look at me answers my question. “His wife helped me plan Eve’s funeral, for fuck’s sake.”
“Janice didn’t know,” Adam rushes out, shaking his head at Sin. As if his mother could be such a coldhearted bitch.
I turn my attention back to Saint and the previous conversation. “How did you know Eve was alive during that phone call? He just told you?” I take a quick look at Adam, and his arms are still raised since I have the gun pointed at him.
“Eve started shouting for me in the background,” Saint adds. “She seemed confused and was crying. I asked her where she was, and she didn’t know.”
My teeth grind, and my pulse quickens at the thought of how scared she was. Did she not choose to leave me? I thought that maybe it was her idea to pretend to be dead, but now I’m not so sure.
“She started screaming…he hung up—ended the call—after I found out she was there with him. I immediately told Haidyn, but there was nothing we could do. We didn’t have Adam’s number for contact. We had called Bill directly to talk to Adam, and he was no longer answering.”
Adam sighs. “I did what needed to be done.”
I give him my attention once again.
He takes a deep breath, adding, “The Lords needed to see what you would do.”
“You don’t work for the Lords,” I shout. “You’ve betrayed them. No longer acknowledge them.” That’s why he had to leave us again, right? Because he was going to take them down from the inside. At least that’s what I got from our talk on the jet that night. Yet here he is, back in our lives.
“It’s complicated.”
“So you’re putting Sin in danger?” I arch a brow. “Because they ordered him to kill you, and instead of doing what he was told, he saved your sorry ass. How many of us are you going to fuck over?”
He looks quickly at Sin and then back to me. “You don’t understand—”
“Of course I don’t!” I scream, my lungs burning. “Because you’re not telling us anything.”
“The Lords didn’t want you to marry her because she can’t give you children,” he grinds out. “She can’t reproduce, which renders her useless to you.”
“My wife isn’t useless,” I shout. A woman is worth more than having fucking kids.
I pull the trigger.
Charlotte yelps, Ashtyn falls to her knees, and Adam stumbles back, grabbing his arm. Blood slips through his fingers.
“Oh my God,” Ashtyn sobs while Saint scrambles to keep a hold of her, needing to use both hands.
He’ll survive. It was just a warning shot. Skimmed his fucking arm. I should have blown it off.
Someone speaks from behind me. “That’s not entirely true.”
I turn to see its Gavin. “How is my wife?” I drop the gun to my side and fully face him.
“Still in surgery,” he answers.
“Then why are you out here?” I bark.
He scans the room before meeting my hard stare. “She’s in good hands. May I speak to you?”
I run a hand through my hair. He’s just trying to defuse the situation. Doesn’t want me to kill Adam in front of everyone.
I walk toward Gavin and slam the side of the gun into Sin as I pass him. He hisses in a breath when the heated barrel burns his chest before he grabs a hold of it.
Following Gavin into a room, he ushers me to sit down at a table. There’s already a rolling cart waiting that has instruments on it. “What is that for?”
“This is for you,” Gavin states, pulling on a pair of gloves.
“Oh, no. I don’t—”
“You need stitches, and that eye needs to be looked at. I’d be surprised if you don’t have some kind of infection.”
“Fine,” I growl. “Make it quick.” I want to be with my wife when she wakes up.
EVERETT
I arch my neck and try to relieve the pressure in it. It feels so tight, but it doesn’t help. Sighing, I open my heavy eyes, and I’m met with a familiar blue set that reminds me of the sky on a clear day. I never thought I’d see him again.
“Hey, angel.” Kash smiles down at me, running his tatted knuckles over my cheek, and I lean into him. “Don’t cry, Eve.”
Am I crying? “What…happened?” My voice is rough and my throat sore.
I look around to see I’m in an unfamiliar room that resembles a hospital.
I remember the motel, us having sex, and then afterward I felt dizzy.
I got up to use the restroom and there was blood.
I needed to shower. I tried to stop it with a towel but there was just too much.
I knew I’d gone too far. Adam told me not to have sex, but I couldn’t turn Kashton down. He needed me and I wanted him.
“Devin called it a wound dehiscence, but to explain it in a language I understood, he said that your fresh stitches ripped open from overexerting yourself.” He frowns, tilting his head to the side.
“Why did you let me hurt you?” He grabs my hand and brings it to his lips, gently kissing my knuckles.
“I was fine.”
Kashton sighs, running a hand down his face. “Clearly you weren’t.” His brows furrow. “I would have never—”
“I wanted you.” He needed me. I love my husband, but we both crave the physical aspect of our relationship as much as anything else. We’re both addicts who needed a fix.
I go to sit up but flinch. My hand immediately goes to my chest, wanting to reduce the pain.
“Lie down,” he commands gently and then pulls up the blanket and crawls under it and into bed with me. I curl into him and let him hold me. “Why would you let me hurt you, angel?”
I want to ask him how he could even ask me that when we both know that he was planning on killing himself in that motel room, but there’s time to talk about that later. The thought that I could have been too late makes my body shake. What if I had found him dead? To even imagine that is terrifying.
“I’m right here,” he assures me, softly rubbing my back as if he knows what I’m thinking.
I sob into his T-shirt, and he lets me get it all out.
So many emotions I’ve never felt before that I’m not sure what to do with.
I ran into the cathedral to save him, and it almost ended up killing him anyway.
What if he had succeeded? Would I have ever found him?
How long would Adam have kept me from him?