Chapter 36 Kairo
KAIRO
“Look out!”
Martin reacts to my yell before the words have fully left my lips and he wrenches the steering wheel to the left as hard as he can.
Racing recklessly to the ping from Devon’s cell phone was a risk in itself, but the glimpse of her in the middle of the road came almost too late.
I brace on the dashboard as my heart flies up into my mouth, praying with everything I have in me that Martin’s reaction time was fast enough.
He slams on the brakes, causing the car to whine and skid in the snow, and as it begins to screech to a stop, I’m ripping my seatbelt out of the holster and shoving open the door.
My foot slips the moment I step out of the still-moving car, but I catch myself just in time and sprint toward where I estimate Devon to be in the dark.
“Devon? Devon!”
As luck would have it, Martin brings the car to a messy stop with the headlights flooding the road and the mound of Devon’s body lies in the center of the snow.
“No, no, no, no!” The cold doesn’t touch me, the wind means nothing, and the snow is nonexistent as I throw myself across the road and reach the mound of unmoving clothes.
If Martin hit her, I’ll never forgive myself for urging him to drive faster than he was comfortable with.
“Devon! Oh my God, no, no, no—”
Solid, frozen ground cracks my knees as I land and grab Devon’s shoulder, and for a single chilling moment, I’m too scared to roll her over.
Luckily, my body doesn’t listen to the fear rampant in my mind and I pull her into my lap, my body tense.
Her eyes open and she looks at me with such intense fear that I almost crumble.
Relief and worry crash together in my mind, creating an unstable fog of tension in my chest as I draw her tighter in my arms and bury my face in her hair.
“Oh my—thank God. Thank fucking God.”
“Kairo?”
“It’s me. I’m here. I’m right here.” Easing her back a little, I cup her face and my fingers come away sticky with blood.
Her clothes are covered in snow and dirt.
There are leaves and sticks caught in her curls, her makeup is smeared from tears, and blood rolls sluggishly from a head wound.
“What happened? Are you alright?”
“Kairo!” Devon clutches at me, struggling to get her legs underneath her. “He’s still here, he’s still here! We have to go, Kairo, we have to—”
She’s cut off by the ear-splitting crack of a gunshot and we both flinch.
The bullet misses, skimming the snow on the ground next to us and leaving a dark scar that reveals the road beneath the white blanket covering the world.
Then Axel melts out of the darkness with his gun aimed right at me.
Without thinking, I drag Devon behind me and block her with my body. “Axel.”
“You motherfucker!” he yells, waving the gun around as if he can reach Devon cowering behind me.
Blood pours from an open gash across his forehead and his nose.
There’s blood soaked into his clothes yet despite that, his eyes are wide and crazed, and his steps are unwavering as he approaches. “You just couldn’t stay away, could you? You think you can get between me and my wife, huh? You really think I won’t kill you?”
“She’s not yours,” I growl, and my pounding heart begins to slow. “Do you hear me? She’s not yours, she’s not fucking property. She’s her own person and she chose to be mine. So if you think I’m going to let you hurt her, then you don’t understand a single thing about love.”
“What’s love gonna do against a bullet?” Axel sneers, his words eerily loud in the quiet blizzard forming around us. “Love won’t save you—”
Axel hits the ground with a yell as Martin crashes into him with a shout and the gun goes off again.
Devon yelps, and I reach for her until the horror of the situation hits me.
Martin slumps to the side as Axel kicks him off him and blood rapidly seeps through the white material of his shirt.
No.
There’s no time to think.
I lunge at Axel as he tries to climb to his feet and we both hit the ground with a yell.
Grabbing his wrist, I slam it down against the frozen ground again and again, trying to dislodge his grip on the gun.
He does everything he can to stop me.
He tries to kick me but from this angle, his knee just glances off my thigh.
His fist collides with my jaw and my head snaps back, but my grip on his wrist remains like iron, refusing to grant him a second of respite.
After the fourth slam of his wrist into the ground and my fist into his shoulder, he’s forced to drop the gun and it vanishes into the snow.
Disarming him was my only plan.
Beyond that, it’s instinct to protect Devon as the sight of Martin, deathly silent on the ground, taunts my thoughts.
A glimpse to my future.
I can’t let him get away with this.
I’ve never been much of a fighter.
Axel punches me rapidly in the face and kicks me so hard in the gut that my entire body contracts inward.
Winded, I gasp against the snow-covered road as Axel kicks me off.
Then he’s on top of me with his hands around my throat and such venom in his eyes.
I grab his shoulder and dig my thumb into the source of the bleeding and Axel screams, releasing my throat and falling backward away from me.
As I scramble to my feet, I slip in the snow but raise my arms in time to block Axel’s next punch.
My left hook cracks his ribs, his knee lands in my crotch and makes me see stars, but I keep going.
Punch after punch.
Ducking his rage-induced swinging arms, he comes at me like a maniac with more speed and ferocity than I’d expect from a man.
I block blow after blow until my forearms are aching.
Sweat coats my skin, creating a sickly contrast between the heat of my shirt and the cold snow.
Then Axel turns away from me and lunges toward Devon where she’s on the ground with both her hands pressed hard over Martin’s wound.
“No!” I leap forward and tackle Axel around the waist.
We land hard enough that my elbow pops and sharp pain shoots all the way up to my shoulder.
As we roll and grapple with one another, our scuffle uncovers the discarded gun on the ground and we scramble over one another to reach it.
His elbow cracks back into my face, and my vision dulls for half a second.
Half a second too long.
He’s on his side with the gun in his hand and I barely blink before it goes off.
White-hot pain shoots through my thigh.
I barely contain my yell of pain as the bullet penetrates my leg.
“Kairo!” Devon yells from somewhere behind me, and my heart breaks.
I’ve failed. I couldn’t protect her.
“You motherfucking son of a whore!” Axel yells, spitting blood down onto the ground as he slowly climbs to his feet, panting heavily. “When you take your last breath, I want you to think about how no one will find your body for hours while I’ll be miles away—”
A sharp crack rings out like the snap of a whip and Axel’s face contorts.
He stumbles once and then slowly collapses forward onto his knees.
Then, with a groan, he falls face-first into the snow, motionless.
Devon stands behind him, panting, with the crowbar from Martin’s car clutched in her hands.
She drops it almost immediately and dives for Axel’s gun, throwing it far away into the darkness, and then she’s over me with her frozen, bloodstained hands clutching my face and her tears dripping down onto my cheeks.
“Kairo? Oh my God, Kairo, are you okay? I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please be— oh my God.”
Her face loses all color as she glances down to where nothing but hot agony radiates from my leg.
But it’s a distant pain.
Far away.
Because Devon is above me and that’s all that matters.
“Devon…”
“I’m so sorry, oh my God, how did this happen? How did this get so fucked? Your leg—and Martin, oh my God.”
She’s back over me, clutching my face and shoulder while scarcely able to breathe.
“Devon…”
“What do I do? How do I fix this? Where’s your phone? Oh God, oh God—”
“Devon…” I reach for her, and her frantic panic calms when my hand cups the side of her warm neck.
Her hair spills past my wrist and caresses my forearm, her eyes sparkle with the tears clinging to her lashes, and blood stains the side of her face.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Kairo,” she gasps. “I’m sorry—”
“No, I’m sorry. I never should have trapped you in the penthouse or forced you to stay there. I never should have done that. I’m so sorry.”
“What?” She swallows hard. “That hardly matters right now!”
“No, it does. It matters.”
“No, because if you’re talking like that, it’s like you think you won’t be able to tell me later and I—”
A sob tears from her chest as a rumbling gradually fills the air around us.
It’s subtle at first but it’s rapidly increasing, and the noise brings a sense of comfort to my heart.
“I’m apologizing because it’s important. I misread everything. I just wanted to keep you safe and in turn, I pushed you away.”
“Shut up,” Devon sobs, lightly shoving my chest with her hands. “Don’t talk like that!”
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you, just shut up and—”
She cuts herself off and looks up, squinting hard as a new set of lights floods the street and blinds her.
She ducks her hand and her fingers curl into my chest, her body tense until car doors open and the rest of my security team pour out.
As soon as Devon recognizes the men she’d seen around the gala, she slumps against me with a whimper.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “Everything’s such a mess.”
“No, it’s not.” The cold numbs my leg, my fear for Martin eases with my team here, and Devon’s alive.
That’s all that matters. I cup her face and draw her attention back to me. “Look at me.”
She does, and everything else melts away. “Kairo…”
“I love you, Devon. I love you.”
As the team busies around us, tending to Martin and trying to talk to me, nothing reaches me other than the soft gasp from Devon and the sweet, precious taste of her lips against mine.