Chapter 38 #2
I swallowed hard, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees and my head bowed to deprive them of a good shot. “I don’t…know that I really give a fuck. Do you?” Because Brodie was a hell of a lot more public figure than me. His agent would be having kittens when these photos hit the internet.
Brodie shrugged and shook his head. “Nope. Let them speculate. So long as Evie is okay, that’s all that matters.
” To prove his point, he slouched back in his seat with his elbow hooked on the back of mine, hiding nothing.
If he’d been with any other random person, he could explain this away as a scene from a movie but with me?
The president’s son? Yeah, it was going to go viral.
Apparently the hospital staff must have decided the same, because within a few minutes a nurse came over and asked us to accompany her to a private waiting room in the VIP wing of the hospital.
Probably for the best, because when our brothers joined us some hours later they looked like they’d just stepped straight off the screen of one of Brodie’s action movies.
The amount of blood covering the three of them was enough to alarm the staff, until they agreed to wash up in one of the hospital bathrooms.
“What took you so long?” Brodie asked, when Ethan rejoined us with wet hair and wearing a fresh pair of borrowed hospital scrubs.
“You took the car,” he replied with a grunt. “And we maybe decided to finish things properly this time. No loose ends left to come back for revenge later.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, straightening as Connor re-entered the private waiting room in a pair of scrubs himself. The two of them looked startlingly similar like this.
Connor looked around the room, shaking his head. “Do we have an update on Eve? Have they given you any inform—”
“No,” I snapped, barely holding on to my own patience without him making it worse. “Nothing. We are waiting, because harassing the medical team for updates won’t make them work faster. Now, tell us what happened after we got Eve out.”
For the first time in a long damn time, the Sullivan brothers shared a smile. “We took a leaf out of Abraham’s book and fixed it. Once the Crusades were all dead, Abraham helped us track down the real culprits. Nancy and Gerard Von Dwilt.”
Shock rocked through me. “Daisy’s parents. Why? And why go after Eve and not me?”
“Because you didn’t kill Daisy, son,” Abraham said, entering the room quietly as we spoke.
“She was still alive when you called me in, and I let her die. There was plenty of time to get her medical attention, but I made a choice and have been living with the consequences ever since. I’m so sorry I let you think you were the one who’d killed her, but it was my fault.
I killed their daughter, and they wanted revenge. ”
I was out of my seat, my fist meeting Abraham’s face, faster than I could even fully process what he’d just said.
I couldn’t hear anything my friends were saying over my head rushing with white noise, but the one thing that snapped me out of it was the fact that it was Haze who pulled me away from Abraham.
Haze.
He wrapped his huge arms around me and lifted me clear off Abraham, carrying me across the room like a naughty puppy before setting me down.
“Are you good?” he asked, keeping his hands on me voluntarily as I blinked at him in confusion.
I jerked a nod, swallowing hard. “Is it finished? Did you—?”
“It’s done. Our girl is safe…for now. With us, though? Who knows how long that will last.” He said it with a sad, lopsided smile, and I knew perfectly well what he meant. With us, she would always be in some level of danger, so it would just be up to us to protect her every damn day and night.
I was up for the task, and confident I wouldn’t be alone in it. If we had to all spend our lives in hiding to ensure this never happened again, then we’d all do it with a smile on our useless faces… or as long as she would keep us.
Hopefully forever.
“Mr. Knightsbridge?” a polite voice cut through the tension, and my pulse thumped faster.
“Yes?” I quickly replied, stepping around Haze to speak with the doctor who’d just entered the room. “That’s me.”
“I’m Doctor Miller. I’ve been working on Evelyn since you brought her in…
” The doctor spoke with calm authority, and as he started to explain the various injuries my love had sustained, my stomach churned.
Burns, breaks, bruises, internal damage…
he detailed at length the ongoing testing they’d need to check her heart rhythms and monitor for long term damage from the electrocution.
But the bottom line? “…your wife should be okay to go home in a week or so, depending on how fast her body recovers.”
“She will?” I croaked, my head swirling from how rapid my breaths had been.
The doctor gave a few more positive statements, then left the room as a suffocating tension fell around us all.
“Sorry…whose wife?” Ethan asked into the silence.
An unhinged laugh bubbled out of me as my knees weakened, and I collapsed to the floor. I’d forgotten to mention that along with my insurance and credit card, I’d also given her my surname while filling in her intake forms.
Evelyn Knightsbridge sounded so much better anyway.