“You’re wrong,” he says. “I don’t make mistakes.”
“You’re making one right now,” a deep, chilling voice says from the door of the office.
Relief settles through me knowing that I won’t be dying today, but that doesn’t mean that I’m getting out of this unscathed.
Grayson cautiously steps into the office with Cruz, King, and Carver coming in behind him, and while I feel their gazes hitting my face, I refuse to look away from Harding’s haunting stare. The guys stand around us, not making any sudden movements, knowing that just the slightest pressure on the knife could have it sinking deeper into my abdomen.
In a flash, Harding winks and slams the knife deep inside of me, and as I crumble to the ground, clutching at my stomach, Harding sprints to the window and throws himself through the thin glass.
“Don’t let him get away,” I cry as Carver dives down to catch me. “He’s behind it all.”
Without another word needed, Cruz, King, and Grayson race after him. Grayson launches himself through the broken window while King and Cruz race out the door they just came through.
Carver adjusts me in his arms and reaches across to the desk. He grabs the landline phone and dials 911 as I groan in pain, desperately holding onto my stomach, though one thing is for sure, this doesn’t hurt nearly as much as getting shot did, or maybe it just didn’t go as deep.
Carver lays me down and puts pressure against the wound as he holds the phone between his ear and shoulder. Within seconds, an ambulance is dispatched and Carver is looking down at me with wide, fearful eyes.
“We’re not doing this again,” he spits, the panic in his eyes breaking my heart. “I’m not going to lose you like this.”
“I’m fine,” I groan through my clenched jaw, desperately wishing that he’d just hold my hand and tell me that everything is going to be alright. “It just hurts like a motherfucker.”
Carver looks over me, focusing on my hard stare. “Are you sure?” he demands, not ready to take my word for it.
“Yes,” I snap back at him, positive that I’m not about to bleed out all over the floor. “Just don’t let go and we won’t have any issues.”
“Then talk to me, babe. What the fuck just went down in here?”
I cringe as he presses down a little harder, getting a good hold on the wound and judging from the look in his eye, he’s calling on every little piece of control inside his body to not berate me for slipping out of the house by myself. “Harding and Paris Moustaff,” I tell him. “They’ve been working against us since the very beginning. Your dad and Scardoni were just pawns in their game.”
“Who the fuck is Paris?”
“My mother’s twin sister,” I pant before slowly sucking in a breath and trying to think of anything but the pain. “It’s been her all along. She wants to take me out and claim my mother’s identity so she can have it all for herself.”
“Fucking hell,” Carver mutters, shaking his head. “How the fuck did we miss a twin sister?”
I shake my head, wishing I knew.
“We’re not going to let them win,” Carver tells me just as King strides back through the office door.
“He didn’t get far. The boys are taking him back to Winter’s place and we’ll ‘talk’ to him there,” he explains before dropping down beside me and cradling my head. “But the real mystery is how the fuck do you keep getting yourself in this situation?”
I shrug my shoulder, cringing at the pain the movement causes. “Beats me,” I say. “But if someone doesn’t get some epic doses of morphine in me soon, you’re all going to be feeling it.”
CHAPTER 22
The sunrise peeks out over the horizon as I lay across the back of Carver’s Escalade. Technically, I should be lying in a hospital bed right now, but considering everything, the guys thought it’d be safer to break my ass out and take me home.
I can only imagine what the doctors and nurses must be thinking right now, but Grayson has enough medical training to take care of me. Don’t ask me how though. I thought he’d only just finished school like the rest of us. So it came as a shock when he explained, not only had all the boys been trained in weaponry skills, combat, and martial arts, but Grayson was trained as a field medic. He won’t be performing heart surgery anytime soon, but he could keep us alive until help arrived.
To be honest, I shouldn’t be so surprised. I don’t know why every time the boys open their mouths and give me just a snippet of new information about themselves, it surprises the ever-loving shit out of me. Anyone would think that I’d be used to it by now. When I was bleeding out on my parents’ garage floor, he remained cool, calm, and collected as he fought to keep me alive.