Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
ALEXANDER MOORE
Time fractured into crystalline moments of horror.
Blood. So much fucking blood streaming from the hole in Aoife's abdomen, just below her ribs, pooling beneath us on the stone floor. Her eyes rolled back, consciousness flickering like a candle in the wind.
"Did you really think you could replace me so easily?" Beatrice's shrill voice cut through the roar in my ears. "Did you think I would just ... disappear?"
My hand moved instinctively to the Glock tucked beneath the chair cushion, the weight of it familiar as breathing. The trigger, smooth against my finger.
Beatrice's wild eyes met mine through the gun smoke still curling from her barrel. For a mere moment, I saw her as she truly was—not the polished society wife, not the broken victim, but a rabid animal that had to be put down.
"My turn," I snarled.
The Glock bucked in my hand. Once. Twice. Three times.
The first bullet punched through her sternum with a wet crack, spinning her sideways.
Her mouth opened in a perfect O of surprise, gun tumbling from nerveless fingers.
The second caught her in the throat, silencing whatever last words she'd planned to spit at us.
Blood sprayed across the stone doorframe in an arc of crimson.
The third was overkill—but I wanted to be sure.
Needed to be sure. The bullet caught her dead centre in the forehead, and for a split second, her wild eyes went wide with shock before the back of her skull erupted like a fucking melon against the wall.
Chunks of bone and grey matter splattered across the stone, painting it all with the contents of her diseased mind.
She toppled backward, arms windmilling uselessly as gravity claimed her. Her body hit the floor with a wet thud that echoed through the lodge—designer dress riding up around her thighs, blonde hair fanned out in a crimson halo, three neat holes pumping blood onto the floor.
Dead. Finally fucking dead.
I stared at her corpse, waiting for something—regret, satisfaction, anything. But there was nothing. Just cold clarity. The rabid dog had been put down. The threat to what was mine had been eliminated.
My chest rose and fell steadily as I watched her blood pool around expensive fabric. No remorse. No second thoughts. Only the primitive satisfaction of having defending my territory, my mate, my everything.
She'd made her choice when she pulled that trigger. Made it when she decided Aoife had to die for the crime of being wanted, chosen … loved.
Now she could rot in hell.
But the pleasure of dispatching her lasted only seconds before reality crashed back. Aoife. Christ, Aoife.
"No, no, no," I whispered, dropping the gun and falling to my knees beside her. Her breathing was shallow, laboured, each exhale weaker than the last. "Aoife!"
I pressed both hands against the wound in her abdomen, feeling her life pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat.
The bullet had torn through soft tissue, possibly nicking organs.
Internal bleeding. Shock. All the clinical terms I'd learned during field medical training couldn't prepare me for this—for watching the woman I loved dying in my arms.
"Stay with me, beautiful," I commanded, my voice breaking despite my efforts to remain controlled. "That's a fucking order."
Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused but finding mine. "Alexander..." she whispered, voice barely audible over the sound of my thundering heart.
"Don't you dare," I growled, one hand maintaining pressure on her wound while the other fumbled for my phone. Blood—her blood—made my fingers slip on the screen. "Don't you fucking dare leave me now."
This couldn't be happening. Not after everything we'd survived. Not when I'd finally found something worth more than the carefully constructed life I'd built from nothing.
"Boss?" Coyne's voice was alert despite the late hour.
"Shooting at the hunting lodge!" I barked, my voice raw with desperation I couldn't hide. "Aoife's hit in the abdomen. I need a medevac helicopter NOW. Call ahead to City Hospital—gunshot wound to the torso, possible organ damage, massive blood loss."
"On it. ETA—"
"Five minutes or less, Coyne. Or I'll find someone who can."
I ended the call, dropping the phone to cradle Aoife's face in my bloodstained hand. Her skin was growing pale, taking on that waxy pallor I'd seen on dying men in combat zones. The sight of it on her face—her beautiful, defiant, aristocratic face—nearly broke something fundamental inside me.
"Look at me," I commanded, my thumb tracing her cheek, leaving streaks of crimson on porcelain skin. "Keep your eyes open, Aoife. You don't get to leave me. Not now. Not ever."
She managed a weak smile that tore at my chest. "Still giving orders ... even now."
"Always," I said, pressing harder against the wound, feeling her blood pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat.
Each beat seemed weaker than the last, and the knowledge that I was losing her second by the second made me want to howl like a wounded animal.
"You don't get to die on me, O'Malley. We have too much unfinished business. "
"What kind of ... business?" she whispered, and I could hear the effort it took to form the words.
"The kind where you marry me," I said without thinking, the words torn from some desperate place I didn't know existed. "The kind where we build something together. The kind where I get to wake up next to you every morning for the next fifty years."
Her fingers found mine, cold and trembling but real. "The things... you said... before..."
"I meant every goddamn word." I leaned closer, my forehead touching hers, breathing in her scent beneath the copper smell of blood.
"I love you, Aoife. I love you more than anything in this fucked-up world, and you're going to live because I refuse to lose the only good thing that's ever been mine. "
Tears I didn't know I was capable of tracked down my cheeks, mixing with her blood on my hands.
When had I last cried? When my mother died?
Never since then. But watching Aoife fade in my arms stripped away twenty years of careful control, reduced me to the terrified boy who'd lost everything once before.
"You hear me?" I whispered fiercely. "You're mine now. You don't get to leave. I won't let you."
Minutes crawled by like hours. Each second stretched into an eternity as I watched Aoife's breathing grow shallower, her skin taking on that waxy pallor that made my chest constrict with panic.
I'd faced down armies, survived torture, killed more men than I could count—but nothing had ever terrified me like watching her slip away.
I could hear vehicles in the distance—the growl of engines pushing hard through country roads, racing against time and death.
"Come on," I muttered, pressing harder against her wound, my hands slick with her blood. "Where the fuck are they?"
"Alexander," she breathed, her voice so faint I had to lean close to hear. "If I don't—"
"No," I cut her off with brutal finality. "We're not having that conversation. You're going to be fine. You're going to live, and we're going to figure out what the hell we are to each other, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life making sure nothing ever hurts you again."
"But if—"
"NO." The word echoed off the stone walls, raw and desperate. "I said no, beautiful. I've never failed at anything that mattered, and I'm not starting with you."
Finally—finally—the distant wail of sirens cut through the night air, growing louder as emergency vehicles raced toward us. Car doors slammed, boots pounded across gravel, and then paramedics burst through the door.
Professional competence took over as they assessed the scene—Beatrice's body, the blood, my naked, wounded woman in my arms. But I couldn't let go. Couldn't release her hand as they worked around me, starting IVs, applying pressure bandages, preparing her for transport.
"Gunshot wound, abdomen," I reported, forcing professional detachment into my voice even as my world crumbled. Somehow, at some point, I’d managed to arrange my clothing. "Approximately fifteen minutes ago. Massive blood loss, possible internal organ damage, signs of shock."
"Sir, we need to move her now," the lead paramedic said gently. "You can ride with us, but we need to go."
I followed them to the ambulance, climbing in beside the stretcher as they worked to stabilize her. The ride to the hospital passed in a blur of medical terminology and the rhythmic beeping of machines keeping her alive.
I held her hand the entire way, watching her face for any sign of consciousness, any indication that she was still fighting. Her skin was cold, too cold, but her pulse still threaded weakly through my fingers.
The hospital was a symphony of fluorescent lights and antiseptic smells. I paced the surgical waiting room like a caged animal, Aoife's blood still under my fingernails, my clothes stained crimson.
Five hours. Five fucking hours she'd been in surgery.
I'd called Ronan somewhere around hour three, when one of the doctors had uncharacteristically emerged to warn me about complications, about the possibility that they might not be able to stop the internal bleeding. Perhaps they’d seen what state I was in and decided to cut me some slack.
My voice had been steady when I'd explained the situation to Ronan, but inside, I was fracturing.
"Alexander."
I turned to find Ronan in the doorway, Cressida beside him, her eyes red, puffy and tired.
He’d clearly told her, and this pained me to see.
Travel and circumstances had left their mark on their faces—his usually immaculate appearance was now slightly dishevelled, too, tension and worry radiating from his frame.
"How is she?" he asked simply, and the lack of judgement in his voice nearly undid me.