Chapter 2
Chapter Two
KNOX
Irun outside and immediately spot Carter. His eyes darken, reminding me of the last time we lost her, and my chest tightens as panic sets in. I don’t think I could survive that again.
“Are you alright?”
He nods, balling his hands into fists.
“Let's go check on Kill and get his phone. The sooner we track Heather and get her back, the better. Noah will not waste time before hurting her. The longer it takes, the worse the chances are we find her-”
I don’t question why he didn’t finish his sentence because I get it.
He shakes his head as we get into the vehicle.
“Some words are too painful to speak. Like saying them gives them more power, and instead of my worst fear, they become our reality. How could we live without her? Without Kill? Some things are too fucking devastating to risk forming into words.”
Since the moment he took our girl, I’ve been thinking the same thing.
Don’t fucking go there, Knox.
Like my brother, it feels as if putting those words out into the universe could be dangerous for us. And for her.
“Agreed. Neither of us speaks our worst fears about either of them. Can we also agree that we won’t do anything stupid?”
He glances at me before darting his angry gaze to the passenger window.
“I’m not the same man I was before. She changed me.
I’ll live for her and for my brothers. My family is everything.
If that’s taken from me, I’ll burn the entire world to ash on my way out.
I never got revenge on the man who hurt me.
I’m not a child anymore. I will fucking kill anyone who hurts my family.
It’ll be a bloodbath, and I’ll enjoy every fucking minute of it. ”
I nod as I pull into the hospital garage and park the SUV.
“She didn’t change you, Carter. You changed yourself. She just helped. Give yourself a little credit, brother.”
He glances at me like I’ve lost my mind but doesn’t say anything in response.
The mood is heavy as we walk into the hospital to find out if our brother is alive.
We knew going into this fight that we could lose him, but now that we are here it’s even worse than I had imagined.
We came from the same goddamn egg and have always had a connection most people don’t understand.
When one of us is taken, it’s an unbearable pain.
Like someone cut a fucking chunk from our heart.
Killian and I went through this when Frank took Carter from us when we were kids, and now here I stand, at risk of losing one of my brothers again. The pain is fucking intolerable.
“I’m going to fucking gut them. Everyone of them. I cannot wait to be coated in their goddamn blood.”
The lady in the elevator with us moves to the side as far as she can get, her eyes widening as her breathing accelerates, the panic visible.
Could he have waited until we got out and this poor lady wasn’t around?
Of course not.
The doors slide open, and I glare at Carter.
“Wait.”
As I expected, the frightened woman runs out, obviously wanting to get away from my brother.
“What the hell was that about?” He asks as we approach the nurses' desk. Only Carter could make me laugh at a time like this.
“You, dick. That was about you.”
I focus on the brunette in front of me, staring at a computer screen deep in thought.
“Killian Bonetti. He was brought in by ambulance.”
She types away on her keyboard, not bothering to spare me a glance.
“Are you family?”
She adjusts her glasses, raising her gaze to mine and gasps.
“You’re definitely family. He’s in surgery. Have a seat and someone will speak to you when they’re able to.”
Carter and I both walk into the waiting room and take a seat. An elderly man sits beside him, but it doesn’t take him long to switch chairs.
He taps his leg repeatedly, and I don’t have to ask what he’s thinking about.
He wants to kill anyone standing between us and Heather.
My brother is bristling with anger, it bounces off him in waves, which is probably why everybody in this room sits far away from him.
As always, I have to control myself. I’m the stable one.
The keeper of peace, as I attempt to keep Carter from unraveling and taking innocent lives.
Just once, I want to give in to my urges.
Destroy everything in my path because I’m furious that, once again, I could lose my brother and the girl that makes everything make fucking sense.
“He’s hurting her.” Carter says in a quiet, distraught voice. I’d like to assure him that he’s wrong, but I can’t. We’d both know it’s a lie. There are few guarantees in life, but this is one. Noah is hurting her.
My poor, Tesoro.
Under my breath, I whisper into the abyss, hoping it reaches her heart, “Sii forte, Tesoro.” Stay strong, Tesoro.
Heather has been through more trauma than most people experience in a lifetime. For her, it seems she gets a brief reprieve, but it never truly stops. She escapes the trauma to ultimately get pulled back into more of it.
“Killian Bonetti.” A male nurse yells, and we immediately rise to our feet.
“Your brother?” He asks with an arched eyebrow, spotting the obvious resemblance.
I nod, and he continues.
“Your brother is in recovery. He was banged up pretty badly when he was brought in and had emergency surgery to remove his spleen, but he should make a full recovery. Killian is agitated, demanding to leave the hospital. The doctor would like to keep him for forty-eight hours. For observation.”
Closing my eyes, I exhale a long breath as relief floods me.
Killian is alive.
“Can we see him?”
It’s not optional. Killian has the goddamn tracker on his phone. I’m so pissed we never put it on all our phones.
“He’s in recovery, so he’s in and out of it. It’s probably best to wait.”
My brother glances at me and then back at the nurse who has ‘Greg’ on his nametag.
Carter steps forward, and Greg steps back quickly.
Chuckling darkly, Carter stares at him, his eyes filled with an unspoken threat.
“I’m sorry, my brother misspoke. We are not requesting to see him, but demanding it. Now take us to his fucking room.”
The nurse holds his hand up. I think trying to calm Carter down, but when he opens his mouth to speak, I am slightly worried for his safety.
“Sir, we will let you know as soon as you can see him.”
Carter continues forward until Greg's back hits the wall, and my brother snarls.
“Wrong. Fucking. Answer.”
Once the nurse spots a fist pulled back, he has a change of heart.
“I guess you c-c-ould see him now.”
Carter steps away from him to give him room to move, and we follow him down the hall. Greg walks with a hand over his chest, no doubt trying to calm his racing heart. I’m not generally on board with scaring the hell out of innocent people, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
I’m equally surprised and grateful that he didn’t have us thrown out instead of giving into Carter’s demands.
We step into the elevator, and Greg presses the button for the sixth floor, not saying a word to either of us. The doors slide open, and we follow him to room number 609.
“He’ll be in and out of consciousness, like I said.”
I roll my eyes when we step inside and find Killian alert and getting ready to yank the IV from his arm.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask, and he glances at me with a smirk on his face.
“Getting out of here. Where’s Heather?”
Fuck. Telling him will not convince him to stay in the hospital to get the medical attention he needs. There is no avoiding his question, so I guess I’ll go with the ‘rip the bandaid off’ approach.
“Noah, the brother, took her.”
Carter interrupts me and finishes my sentence.
“At fucking gunpoint. She went with him-”
I take a deep breath as the hatred fills me, hatred for myself that she did this to protect us. Carter shakes his head as if he can’t even believe the words coming out of his mouth.
“To save us. He was going to kill us to hurt her, and our fucking crazy girl was not going to allow that to happen.”
Killian balls his hands into fists, his face turning red with fury.
“Goddamn it. Why would she fucking do that?”
Carter grabs a bag from under the bed that has Killian’s clothing in it, and rummages through it.
“Where the fuck is your cell phone?”
Kill grabs his phone from beside him and holds it up, and I grab it from him, quickly pulling up the tracker.
We are all color-coded on the tracker. Killian is red, Carter is black, I’m blue and Heather, the obvious choice, is purple. All of our dots are on the map except for hers. Why isn’t she showing on the fucking tracker?
“Her dot isn’t there.”
Carter snatches the phone from my hand and paces back and forth.
He stares at the phone, holding it in one hand, while running his free hand through his hair, pulling aggressively.
“How can she just disappear? Where the fuck are you, Little Heathen?”
I turn to Killian with a warning.
“Keep your fucking stubborn ass in that bed so we don’t have to tell Heather bad news when we find her. We will find her, but we have to go talk to Benji about this goddamn tracker.. Stay fucking put, Killian. I’m not kidding.”
I want to smack him when he holds his finger up.
“Want me to pinky swear, brother? I will. Pinky swear. Promise. Scout’s honor. All that shit. I’ll fucking stay here, but you better call me when you find her.”
I glance at the IV bag, wondering what drugs my brother is on, but shake my head and walk to the door with Carter beside me.
“Do you believe he’ll stay here?”
Laughing as I shake my head I say, “Not a fucking chance but neither of us can stay to babysit a grown man.”
I meant what I said. We will fucking find her. If Noah has hurt her as we suspect, he’s going to pay dearly for his crimes. There is nowhere far enough he could take her to keep her from us. Tracker or not, we are taking back what’s ours.