Because that’s all he was now.
Stella
I’d just finished eating.
They’d served me steak, rare, and potatoes. Though my stomach was roiling at the sight of meat, I’d eaten it because I knew I needed my strength. And because I needed the steak knife I was cutting up the bloody meat with.
The old man watched me eat, sitting across from me eating his own steak. It was a predictable move, the hostage pocketing the silverware, so I knew that I’d never get away with it without a distraction.
And we were kind of running short on distractions. Being a hostage was actually a lot more boring than I’d thought it would be. Of course there was the undercurrent that I could die at any moment. But I knew that they’d taken me for a reason, they wouldn’t kill me until they sat down with Jay.
Jay would do anything to keep me alive. Us alive.
So I waited.
There was a lot of waiting.
No more hitting me in the face. Dimitri had come and gone from the room, finally settling himself in the corner, drinking vodka, muttering to himself like a surly teenager.
My cheek felt tight and hot. I knew I’d have a black eye. The first time in my life I’d ever been hit by a man. I knew he wasn’t long for this world.
“I did not think Jay Helmick was stupid enough to fall in love,” the old man commented to me, inclining his head with interest. “I figured him much too smart for that.” His eyes ran over me, making it an effort to keep my steak down. “But I understand it. You are a beautiful woman.”
“You ordered the shooting that killed my best friend’s unborn child,” I spat. “Therefore, you are an evil, despicable piece of dirt, and I can’t wait to know you’re rotting in hell.”
He grinned, showing all of his teeth. “Fiery too,” he nodded. “No one who speaks to me like that is long for this world.”
I gripped my steak knife, longing to sink it into his wrinkly neck. “This is not your world, buddy,” I snapped. “It my husband’s.”
And like I’d fucking timed it, the doors crashed open.
The first man through it was covered in blood, wearing a black suit and a wedding ring. A gun in one hand, knife in the other. Jade eyes focused on me. Dimitri stumbled out of his chair, knocking over his bottle of vodka as he did so. I figured he was going for his gun, but Karson was quicker. It was a beautiful sight to see, Karson holding a knife to the man’s throat.
I moved quickly, without thinking, pushing out of my seat and sprinting toward Jay, still gripping my steak knife.
Jay moved quickly, too, toward me. But he didn’t give me what I wanted, he didn’t pull me into his arms, didn’t let me smell him, touch him. He moved to the place he’d promised me he’d stand ... in front of me.
He had to do that. We were still kind of in the middle of something right now, we couldn’t exactly have a romantic union. So I made do with pressing myself to his back, breathing easily for the first time in hours. I did not smell the blood, the death, if such things had a smell. I only smelled Jay.
The old man had stood from the table casually, looking far too calm for someone who was severely outnumbered by a lot of men and women with knives and guns. I recognized most of them.
Not Eric, though. Eric was dead.
“Your men are dead,” Jay declared, speaking to the old man.
His voice was music. Poetry. It was a glass of ice-cold lemonade on a blissful summer day.
For his part, the old man nodded once, without grief or loss.
“Take her away,” Jay ordered, eyes not on me but on Dimitri and his father. His voice was ice cold. It was coated in death.
Though it scored my skin, that voice, that void space where my husband should’ve been, I held fast, staring at his profile.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I declared, yanking my arm from Karson’s hand.
When Jay’s eyes flickered to me, I hid my flinch well. He stared at me like I was a stranger.
He nodded once, then turned back to father and son.
“You overstepped,” Jay stated. “By a long fucking way. You overestimated your power, underestimated mine. You lost the second you went after women.” His eyes flickered to Karson then my stomach. “And children.”
My stomach dropped, and my mouth went dry. He knew. Somehow he knew. Whether he’d figured it out himself or someone—likely Zoe or Wren—had told him, it didn’t matter. He knew. This was not the way I wanted to share that news with my husband, not at all. Then again, I hadn’t planned on doing some kind of cutesy surprise with a pregnancy test in a box with some booties or whatever people did on social media these days.