Chapter 37
Ahigh-pitched ringing echoed in my ears, loud enough to block out everything but the destruction.
I watched my distillery, the core of my business, blow up.
It wasn’t until Luc grabbed me and shook me that everything came back, and I could hear people shouting, some for help and others as they tried to pull pieces of debris off of survivors.
Sirens wailed in the distance. There were going to be a lot of injuries, as most people were around what was left of the barrels and vats.
It made sense that was where the rescue teams were going to focus and try to put out the fires that were raging so they could rescue the most people.
But Stella wasn’t there.
Stella wasn’t anywhere near the vats.
She had been in the tasting room on the other side of the building.
Without a second thought, I took off.
Luc called after me, but I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop.
Stella needed me to protect her, and I had failed her.
I got to where the tasting room had stood. Now it was a pile of rubble and wood.
“Stella!” I called her name as I dug, pulling pieces off the pile, trying to find her.
I tried to lift a massive beam that had so much pinned under it. It was solid oak, I had picked the piece of polished wood myself, but I couldn’t budge it. I used my knees, my back, everything I had, and I could only lift it a few centimeters.
Then Luc was next to me counting.
“One, two, lift,” he grunted, and we both managed to pull the beam off the pile, allowing us to get to the smaller pieces under it.
We worked together frantically and silently until Luc called, “Here!”
I ran over to where he was.
He was holding a feminine hand with beige polish.
It wasn’t her. I knew it wasn’t.
Ever since Stella dyed her hair, she refused to wear anything beige or white, insisting that a second chance at life meant she had earned the right to color.
Still, maybe she had been with Stella.
Her new assistant? Or a friend who was helping out?
We dug her out, but the poor woman was already gone.
Luc carefully brought her to the side and called out to the paramedics who had just arrived.
I kept searching for Stella.
A fist gripped my heart tighter with each passing moment, and I was starting to realize exactly how much Stella meant to me.
I told her that I admired her, and that was true.
I had told her that I wanted her, and that was definitely true, but there was more here, and I refused to let her die without telling her what she meant to me.
Fuck that. I just refused to let her die.
She wasn’t allowed to die before I did.
I forbade it.
No one knew the sting of losing a wife better than I did, and I refused to go through it again. Not now, not ever.
More rescue workers came to help dig people out, but they couldn’t find anyone.
“Could she have been somewhere else?” Luc asked.
“No, she was in the tasting room, trying the signature cocktails for the party. She has to be here.” I stopped to look around. The most charring was over by where the door should have been.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. The manager sent me a text when she went in there to make sure I was here in time to take her to lunch afterward. I wanted to tell her how proud I was of her and—” The smoke and dust made my throat thick and my eyes water.
“Are you okay?” Luc asked, concern lacing his words.
“No, not until we find her and make sure she’s okay.” I started digging again.
Luc tried arguing that I should let the professionals do this, but they weren’t as motivated as I was.
They didn’t have the woman they loved under the rubble, and they weren’t the ones to blame for all of this.
This was my fault.
I had lost my temper and fired Ronan’s fucking douchebag of a cousin. I had said things that he would be forced to respond to, and I had taken another stream of revenue from him.
I had turned my back on the O’Murphys and then underestimated how quickly they would respond.
This was a personal attack on me.
He was sending a message that he’d helped me build all of this and could just as easily tear it down.
Stella wasn’t even a target, but an innocent caught in the crossfire of a war she had no part in.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I hit the wood floor with nothing to show for it again.
I tried to calm down and think logically.
The blast had happened by the door. She was most likely by the bar. That had been the last of the bombs to go off. She may have been smart enough to get behind the heavy oak.
I looked over at where the door would have been, tried to estimate where the bar had been before the explosion to judge where to dig.
Luc was still right next to me, lifting with me, pulling away the debris, and looking for any sign.
We found a man I didn’t recognize. He was badly bruised, judging by the gut-wrenching angles some of his limbs were in. He had broken several bones. But he was alive and barely conscious.
Luc yelled for the paramedics while I looked at the man. “Where is Stella?”
His eyes looked glazed. I knew he was hurt, but I was desperate.
For the first time in my life, I begged, “Please, try and think. Please, I need to find her.”
“The blast sent her that way,” he said, pointing in the vague direction we’d found the other girl. The other woman was much taller than Stella. Maybe if she was blown back by the blast, Stella had gone farther.
I handed the man over to the paramedics surrounding me and moved out of the way, heading over to where we’d found the other girl and scrambled to move the bricks and debris.
I gave everything I had, every ounce of determination and strength to find her. The sun began to set, and most of the rescue teams had already departed, having no hope of any more survivors.
But I was not giving up.
Then I saw it: one of her bright pink shoes that matched her hair.
She was so excited when she found them and insisted on showing them off the second she came home from shopping with Olivia.
I remembered the way the sharp stilettos dug into my back as I made her scream my name, wearing nothing but those shoes.
“Over here,” I called as I dug faster.
The dull aches disappeared into a second wind as I pushed to find her.
Finally, I pulled off a large piece of drywall to see her lying crushed in a pile of broken wood.
A small trail of blood was coming from her lips, and her skin was so pale.
I lunged for her, pulling her into my arms and holding her cold body to my chest.
“I am so sorry, baby girl. I did this. This is my fault, and I am so sorry.” Tears streamed down my face, and I didn’t care.
Some men in uniforms came to take her away, but I wouldn’t let her go until Luc put his arms around me and pulled me away.
“Let them help her,” he said over and over.
I still didn’t breathe until one shouted, “I have a pulse!”
“Save her,” I yelled. “Do whatever it takes, spare no expense, just save her.”
One of the paramedics looked at me, her blonde hair in a high ponytail and her face and body covered in soot.
“Sir, if you want to come to the hospital with us, be ready to go the second the ambulance gets here, but stay out of our way.”
“What hospital?” Luc asked, still holding me back.
They shouted something I couldn’t hear, and Luc pulled me away.
“No, I want to go with her. She will be scared if she wakes up.”
“There is no way you are going to stay out of their way. We are going to get there before them and make sure they know who is coming in and the best doctors are ready.”
In the next second, Luc threw me in the back of the car, and we pulled out as the ambulance pulled in.
Luc got behind the wheel and drove like a madman. The ambulance ended up a few blocks behind us. Luc used their siren to help clear the way.
“We are going to make him pay for this,” Luc promised.
“As soon as she is safe,” I agreed. “Not until I know she is going to be okay.”
“She will be,” Luc said, taking another tight corner, ignoring how his back tires spun out just a little. “She is going to make it because you refused to give up on her.”
“I will never give up on her. She is strong and a fighter. She has already survived so much. I will spend the rest of my life making this up to her.”
We pulled up to the emergency room, and I bolted out of the car before it even came to a full stop, marching into the ER like I owned the place, because I practically did.
In seconds, I had the medical chief calling the best trauma team together.
It didn’t make me feel better when I saw Stella’s limp body on that gurney with the blonde paramedic straddling her hips, performing CPR.
“Do not let her die,” I said under my breath, unsure if I was talking to the doctors or threatening God himself.