Chapter 26 #2
For now, I focus on getting her clean. Still holding tightly to her, I spare a hand to turn on the shower spray. Once it’s at the perfect temp for her, I help Annaliese climb in.
Her breath stutters. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” My voice cracks like a whip before I make myself gentle it. “Don’t ever apologize for surviving. You hear me?”
She sniffles, then nods, and all I can do is join her in the shower, leather jacket, boots and all. She needs me, and I’m here now, and if all I can do is rinse the blood off of her, then get rid of the mess in our room… that’s exactly what I’ll do.
No. That’s not all I can do.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, using the washcloth I grabbed to start washing away the blood. “I should’ve saved you.”
She shakes her head weakly. “Babe… you did. It wasn’t even just the knife… if I didn’t have you to think of… he wanted you to come home and find me on the back lawn just like Julie. I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t let you lose someone else.”
My heart fucking breaks to hear that. Another lump lodges in my throat, and I turn my attention to my wife. I cup her cheek, kiss her forehead… her wet hair… the bruises on her throat. And then I push the washcloth into her hand.
“Stay here. Let the water run. Scrub if you can. I’ll come back for you.”
She nods, and though it’s so damn difficult to walk away from her, I absolutely refuse to let her return to the bedroom and see Eric Ward still lying there.
So I grab a towel, swiping it over my face.
Shucking my jacket, my shirt, my pants, I get naked in the bedroom, then quickly put on a change of dry clothes.
Ruffling through his suit pants, I take out his phone, his wallet, and his keys.
The phone will be destroyed. The keys will help me disappear his car.
The wallet will end up in a dump somewhere.
Returning to my wet pants, I yank out my own phone. Grateful it’s waterproof, I tap a quick message to Dallas.
Need clean-up. My place. EW. Calling in my blood oath.
Barely a minute later, Dallas sends me a thumb’s up, and I smile.
It’s good being bros with the King. I don’t even have to explain why I need clean-up. I probably didn’t even have to remind Dallas that I have a blood oath. Eric deserved to die, and if I say so, Dallas will agree.
From his days as an enforcer, he has connections when it comes to clean-up. I’ll shuffle Annaliese out of our room once her shower is done, leaving Dallas’s crew to take care of the blood in here. As for Eric…
I drag his heavy ass corpse over to the window he planned to toss my wife out of. Throwing open the glass, I punch the screen out. Once it’s open, I heft him up, then drop him down to the ground below. I toss the shovel after him. Once I have Annaliese settled down, I’ll bury the fucker.
It’s the least I can do.
Annaliese is sitting on the shower floor when I return, arms wrapped around her knees, water still pouring over her. Her brown eyes have gone back to glassy, her lips trembling, though I’m not sure if it’s because the water’s cold now, or because she’s still processing her first murder.
She’s alive, though, and that’s all that matters.
For the second time tonight, I climb into the shower. Dropping low, I go to my knees, then fall back on my ass. I pull her into my lap, my recent change of clothes already soaked.
She buries her face in my chest, fingers twisting in my shirt like she’s anchoring herself to me.
I cup her head, holding her close.
“This really was a marriage of inconvenience, wasn’t it?” she murmurs against my pec, voice small, broken, but just as prim as it was when she walked into my living room, binder in her hand, determined to get me to agree to a year.
I huff out a dark laugh, stroking her wet hair. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you just had to dispose of a body for me.”
“Oh, love…”. Pulling away from her, I tip her chin up, forcing her to meet my eyes. “You know damn well that wasn’t my first.”
She blinks. I can see it in her expression. She didn’t know… she guessed, of course, and now she has confirmation. I wait to see if her body language changes. If fear will return to her eyes the same way that Eric Ward left it there earlier.
I hold my breath, then add, “And I’d dispose of a hundred bodies if I had to for you.”
A weak, incredulous sound escapes her throat. My heart jumps. I know that sound. It’s not because she’s frightened. It’s more like she doesn’t believe I could love her enough to actually do that.
“I’m serious,” I insist. “You’ve met Adrian. That man knows where all the bodies are in Harmony Heights, figuratively and literally. And Dallas… before he was King, he was an enforcer. He’s responsible for his fair share.”
Her brows lift slowly. Hesitantly. “And you?”
“I hated being called in for Order jobs,” I admit. “But when one of my brothers needs backup, I’ll answer the phone every damn time.”
She swallows.
“And you,” I add softly, “could’ve called me. I hope you know that there isn’t anything I won’t do for you, Annaliese.”
She looks down into our laps. With a jerk, I think she just realized that she’s completely naked and I…
I’m not. With a quick shake of her head, sending water droplets everywhere, she tells me, “I didn’t know what to do when he let himself in…
or after I stabbed him and stabbed him and just… I couldn’t fucking stop.”
“No binder for first-degree murder?” I tease gently.
“That was self-defense,” she whispers as the shower spray falls around us.
“Exactly.” I smile, feeling a fierce wave of pride. “You know it. I know it. So don’t even think about it. He’s not worth a second of your pity.”
Her head snaps up. A hint of fury—real and bright—shines through her expression. At the same time, relief shudders through me because yes.
That’s my girl. My wife. She’s not broken. No ruined. Okay, maybe she’s in shock, but she’ll be fine.
Because she’s mine.
I bury my hands in the soaked strands, angling her head up so that I can kiss her.
We get water in our mouths at the same time, but I couldn’t care less.
Annaliese is responding. She’s kissing me back.
She’s climbing even further into my lap, clinging to me before she pulls back enough so that she can whisper against my lips:
“He wanted me to choose him. To annul our marriage, claim fraud or some shit. I told him to get the fuck off of me when he grabbed my arm.” A whisper of a laugh. “He didn’t like that I cursed at him. He liked it even less that I told him that I belonged to you.”
I shut my eyes, jaw clenching. It doesn’t matter. I can still see the ring around her neck. “That’s why he… yeah. I figured it was something like that.”
Her hands slide up my chest, tentative but sure. “I didn’t even get the chance to tell him that I love you.”
My heart fucking stops. A second later, my eyes pop open.
Her smile could have me killing a thousand men for her.
“What did you say?”
She scoots closer to me, legs wrapping around my waist as she looks me dead in the face. “That I love you.”
It’s my turn to drop my head as I bury my face in her tits. “Fucking finally.”
And when she lowers her hands, reaching for my button to help me get out of my wet jeans so that she can prove to me just how much she loves, I let her do that, too.
I’ll let her do anything.