“Sit up,” an echoey voice said, but I was too terrified to respond. “Sit up, Desiree. Let me get the bag off your head.”
It clicked. That voice. I knew that voice.
“Aiden?” I forced out.
Light suddenly filled my vision as the bag was pulled away. I kept my eyes shut as I tried to adjust. When I opened them again, Aiden was in front of me, kneeling on the seat of the car. The sun was directly behind him, making him look like he was wearing a halo. As far as I was concerned, he literally was.
“Desiree, thank God,” he said and pulled me into him.
I sank into his shoulder, sobbing.
“My hands,” I managed to mutter.
“Let me see,” Aiden said, and I turned slightly. From inside his pocket, he produced a knife, and I saw the gun he had sat on the floor of the car. The heat from the nozzle was still warm enough that I could feel it on my ankle.
Suddenly, my hands were free, and I wrapped them around him, heedless of the pain and the blood on my wrists. The sobbing had faded, but tears were still streaming from my eyes. I wiped them on his shirt as he held me tightly.
“You came for me,” I said.
“Always,” Aiden whispered. “Always.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
There was a slight pause, and Aiden pulled me to arm’s length. He stared deeply into my eyes, and I tried to focus on them. Adrenaline was making it hard to maintain eye contact. I wanted to find a path to safety.
“Don’t look around too much,” he said. “Keep your eyes on me, okay?”
I nodded. “I won’t.”
“Okay, follow me.” Aiden began to slip backward out of the car. I noticed him grab the gun from the floorboard, and I snapped my eyes shut. I opened them once more when I got out of the car myself, unable to help myself, before snapping them shut again.
The scene was grisly. Three cars were riddled with bullet holes. With my eyes tightly shut, I followed Aiden with my hand in his. He told me when I had to step wide to get past bodies lying on the ground. After what seemed like forever, I could sense another car, and a door opened.
“You can look now,” Aiden said. “Go ahead and get in.”
I slid into the back seat of one of the cars I recognized as one of Al’s men’s cars. A man was inside, slowly and methodically wrapping a wound on his hand. From behind the seat, there was movement. It was violent, like someone kicking. The man wrapping his hand smacked the back seat.
“Shut up back there,” he said.
“Please,” a muffled voice came from the trunk. I recognized it as tuna man. “Please, just let me join your crew. Al knows I didn’t do nothing but what I was told. I don’t deserve this.”
“Shut the fuck up,” said another voice, and my eyes widened. It was the voice from the phone. The voice that had shown up at my house and had told me not to worry where I was going. The slithering voice of evil incarnate. “If Al is bringing anybody in, it’s me. Al’s smart. He wants someone smart under him. Someone who can give him power. I can give him power!”
“I said shut up,” the man wrapping his hand said.
“Don’t worry about them,” Aiden said beside me, and I curled into him. “It’s over now. We just have to get out of here.”
“I have a problem,” I said. “I need to go to the hospital.”
There was no argument from him. No questions. He just leaned up to the front seat and muttered something.
“Go join Al in his car,” a voice from up front said. “We have business to do.”
Aiden ushered me out of the car and into another, keeping himself between me and the mayhem of the gunfight. As I got settled in the back seat, Aiden spoke to Al up front. Then he got into the back with me, curled me into his arms, and we drove silently to the hospital a town over.
“Name, please,” the lady at the check-in for the emergency room asked.
“Desiree Giannotti,” I said.
“What brings you in today, Miss Giannotti?”
I shuffled where I stood, Aiden right beside me.
“I’m pregnant, and I was in an accident. I need to be checked out.”
Aiden didn’t make a sound of acknowledgment, but his hand, which was gripped in mine, grew tight. As the nurse walked us back to a room, he stayed quiet until we were alone. It took some time as another nurse checked me in and got my vitals, but when we were, he came to my bedside and clasped my hands.
“You’re really pregnant?” he asked.
“I was at the store taking a test when they caught me,” I said. “But… I don’t know. Anymore.”