I lie in the street staring up as the rain pelts down on me. “Shit, are you okay? Mr. Ackles, I got this,” I hear someone say.
“Got this? You just hit someone,” a deep voice rumbles.
“This could be a set-up. Stay in the car, Mikael,” the man that hit me responds.
“I’m the one that gives the orders around here, Marco,” the same deep voice bellows as he comes to tower over me. Seconds later, he’s dropping to his knees beside me. “Are you okay?” He brushes my wet hair out of my face. The headlights that are shining on us allow me to get a good look at his handsome face. I try to push myself up. “Don’t move.”
“She’s with me.” Panic fills me when I hear Edward’s driver's voice. He caught me. I ignore the man in the suit's order and sit up, grabbing on to his suit jacket.
“Please don’t let him take me,” I whisper, but I don’t know if he can hear me over the pounding rain.
“Clearly she doesn’t want to be with you,” the man in the suit responds.
To my utter horror, Edward’s driver starts to pull out a gun. I gasp, but he suddenly stops before his gun is fully drawn. I turn my head to see Marco—I think that’s what I heard the suit call him—has a gun out and pointed at him.
“I just want the girl.”
I whimper.
“That's not going to happen,” the suit says before his arms are around me and he’s lifting me off the ground. “I suggest you go before we call the police or Marco unloads his gun into you because I’m not handing her over.” Relief fills me instantly.
I keep my face buried in his broad hard chest. He must take off because a moment later we’re moving. The rain stops coming down on me.
“Hospital,” Suit orders.
“No!” I lift my head to see I’m in their SUV. Mr. Suit has me in his lap in the back seat. Marco starts to drive. “They’ll find me there, and then they’ll call her and he’ll show up. Please,” I beg as tears start to fall.
“I need names here, sweetheart.”
I swallow. “Do I have to?” I don’t want to give names.
When Edward left me in that back room, he made it clear it would be stupid for me to run. That I’d only end back where I started and that he’d be livid. I would prefer not to see him angry. I’m not sure if what he said was true, but I do know that rich men always have a lot of power they shouldn’t have.
“Did he do that to your lip?”
I shake my head no. “Not the man chasing me. That was his driver.”
“The driver of the man who hit you?” I nod my head again. He stares at me for a long moment. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. Today, actually. It’s my birthday.” Damn it. I probably just gave some information I shouldn't have. Again, he stares at me. Those dark blue eyes of his feel like they’re looking into my soul.
“Call my brother. Tell him to meet me at my place.”
“Who’s your brother?”
“A doctor.”
“But—”
“If you won’t let me take you to a hospital, then this is your only option, little one.”
“I’m not that little,” I mutter for some stupid reason.
“You’re little.” I suppose compared to him, everyone is little. “Do we have a deal? You’ll let my brother look over you?” I nod, dropping my head back down onto his chest as my body starts to shake and more pain starts to become noticeable. My feet are the worst of it.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Mikael.”
“Mikael,” I repeat. “Please don’t let them take me.”
His hold on me tightens. “Never,” he responds, and it almost sounds like a vow.
2
MIKAEL
“She will be okay,” Ezra assures me. He taps the morphine bag he set up next to the bed. “The painkillers will help her sleep. Bring her in tomorrow, and we’ll do a CT scan to make sure there are no hidden fractures.”
He reaches out to put a salve on her lips. I grab the bottle from his hand and knock him away. “I’ll do it.”
I ignore his arched eyebrows because I don’t have a good reason why something visceral rose up in me when I saw his fingers near the girl’s cut lip. Not girl. Aurora.
Before Ezra pumped the drugs into her, she gave us her name. That was all the information we could pull from her. She seemed too frightened to say more.
Someone got her good in the mouth. That someone will be burned in the basement soon. Same with whoever cracked her behind the head.
“Aurora,” I murmur as I spread the salve carefully along her lip. The name sounds right on my tongue. Like I’ve said it a thousand times before. Her dark hair fans out behind her head on the pillow like the rays of a setting sun. I glance up to see my brother eyeing me. I give him a faint smile of reassurance. “I’m fine. Not a nick on me.” I stretch my arms out so he can see.