Now I would be dragged into the car and to my end. To Dino’s car, although how David had gotten his hands on it I didn’t want to guess. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Dino. I loved Dino. And now he was possibly all fucked up because David was a sociopath who only had one fixation for some reason and it was me. Even after all these years it was me. There wasn’t anything special about me that made men go crazy. After all this time and the self-help books and the YouTube videos about victims dealing with recovery I had learned by now that it wasn’t anything I did. David was how he was because something was broken inside of him. The difference between David and other dangerous sociopaths was that he didn’t have other triggers. For some reason I was the only one. But trying to figure out the “why me” part of things was also a form of self-punishment, so I decided a long time ago not to waste my time trying to figure it out.
I was so tired of hurting. Tired of running. Tired of hiding.
Fuck David Ashely and his psychosis.
I wanted my life back.
I wanted to go shopping with Angel and make sure Gabe kept his calendar organized and that he started up the new protection business that I know he had been mulling over because heading the investment firm was just so boring.
I wanted to go on dates with Dino. I wanted to say his first and last name together and I wanted to meet his Grandma and tell her what a good man her grandson was even though I bet she already knew.
I wanted to drink all the margaritas I wanted with Gerta and Jolene and not worry about having complete self-control. I wanted to laugh and drink and eat too many carbs.
I wanted David Ashley to get his fucking hands off me and make it so he could never ever put them on me again.
Taking advantage of his difficulty with the door, I gave up struggling to make it to the front door of the building and decided if he wanted to go out the back door then I would help him. I didn’t have the strength to get to my feet, but I still wrapped my arms around his legs and pulled them forward, so his knees bent, and he lost his balance falling over me and onto his ass.
I tried to get up. I really did, but the injury in my back and tailbone finally decided to take matters out of my hands. It wasn’t that it hurt so bad to stand up, my legs literally wouldn’t do it. I could only scoot backward, moving further into the parking lot. Closer to where David had been dragging me in the first place. My throat was too hoarse to scream. I tried, but nothing would come out but dry gasps. Tiny noises that were covered up by the passing city traffic on the other side of the building.
David got to his feet and smiled, wiping the gravel that had embedded itself into his palms onto his jeans. The little pebbles scattered, making little tumbling sounds as they fell. It was a very weird thing to notice, and I probably did because I was finally going insane. “You are going into that car, Gabriella. Then I am going to rip you up right in front of your boyfriend so you can scream it out together. Just remember, you brought this on yourself.”
I waited until he was on top of me before I used the last of my strength to kick him right in the fucking face. My foot met the bones of his nose in a glorious crunch, and his scream of pain was better than any cry for help I could have uttered. But he recovered too quickly, and with blood streaming down his face from his quite obviously broken nose he brought his leg up and then straight down on my inner thigh, grinding his heel in the soft tissue of my groin. There was no more moving for me after that. I had used my last life on this boss level, and there was nothing I could do but stare at the back of the apartment as he dragged me by my shoulders across the parking lot, closer to the car, further away from freedom.
A glint in the lower left window caught my eye. A curtain that had moved just a little bit. Gerta and Jolene weren’t around, they couldn’t have been back from lunch already, could they? I didn’t want them to see this. I didn’t want them to witness anything that would involve them or get them hurt in any way. Because David would hurt them. He wasn’t even trying to hide how fucked up he was, beating the shit out of me and cursing at me in broad daylight. It was an empty parking lot, hidden by some trees, but still.
He was still grunting and pulling at my shoulders, running out of steam himself but still dragging me steadily towards the car when I noticed the glass of the lower left window start sliding open slowly. In my dazed state it was funny to me, because windows should open bottom to top, but this window slid open from side to side. I saw an old man with a white crew cut and a stained-up white t-shirt, and then I saw the barrel of the rifle as he eased the tip of it out the window and fired. Even though I saw him doing it, the pop pop surprised me. I couldn’t move though, I had nothing left in me, even when David’s body thudded against the side of the car and slid down on top of me.
Was he dead? I didn’t know. Maybe I hallucinated the dingy grandpa vigilante shooting out the window, and in my deluded state I didn’t notice I had been stuffed into the car and was on my way to my doom. But no, the heavy weight was relieved as David was unceremoniously shoved off of me and the heel of a busted gray house slipper appeared in front of my face as it kicked David’s body the rest of the way off of me and rolled over onto its back.
Oh shit, yeah, he was dead.
And I wasn’t even scared, I mean, nobody wants to be trapped under a dead body, but I could only feel relief that he was fucking gone. My decrepit hero stood in front of me, shuffling from one slippered foot to the other while I just laid there on the ground looking up at him, probably smiling like an idiot.
“I don’t hear very well.” He also had a problem with close conversation because he was definitely using his outside voice.
“Yeah?” It was a weird conversation starter considering, but he had just saved my life, so I wasn’t going to pick apart his vocabulary.
“Yeah,” he said as he looked down at me with concern on his face. “I didn’t know until I saw him trying to get you out the door. I felt it banging against the wall because my apartment is right there.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the still open window on the first floor. “It looked like you guys had been going at it for a while, but I couldn’t hear, or else I would have shot him sooner.” He leaned down to give me a hand up, but I couldn’t take it.
“I can’t get up, I think I need an ambulance,” I said shakily, and almost on cue I heard the sirens blaring up the street. Well how’s that for timing, I thought to myself. They can’t possibly be coming here.
But the closer the sounds came the more I wasn’t sure about that. And right before I saw the red and blue lights reflected on the windows as they came screaming around the corner, a black Escalade pulled into the parking lot. The vehicle barely came to a stop before Gabe flung himself out the driver’s side door. I heard his feet pounding against the pavement and felt the rumbling of his approach through the asphalt under my back.
“Gary,” Gabe exclaimed as he came to a skidding halt next to me and started feeling around my arms and legs for injuries. I swatted at his hands, fuck I was tired, I just wanted to close my eyes. “What happened, Gary?”
“Castle laws, Gabe,” I heard the older man shout. “This is my home, and the people in it are my family. He was trying to hurt my family, so I shot him. Two times.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyelids. That stranger called me family. Although I was familiar with the castle law and this one was just a tiny bit of a stretch, I bet Gabe would find a lawyer that would make it work.
I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more, the adrenaline was leaving my body and I was crashing hard. Too much pain, too much exhaustion, my consciousness was being stolen from me even as I heard the police pull into the parking lot as well.
“They are probably going to take my gun,” the old man said sadly.
“Gary, you are my hero,” I heard Gabe reply, his voice thick with emotion. “If they take your gun I will buy you another one. A better one.”
“I’ll buy you two,” I yelled with the last of my strength, making sur
e Gary could hear me, and then I passed blissfully into the black.
16
Dino
I’m allergic to opioids, but I didn’t get a chance to tell the nursing staff at the hospital, so when I came out of surgery on my shoulder and got my first dose of their standard pain meds I came awake puking.
Fun times.
I’d made it almost all the way back to Toledo, but I had lost a lot of blood and I was having a really hard time staying on the road. That’s why I’ll always be grateful to Gabe for answering the phone on the first ring like he did. He and Angel did me a real solid. My hands had been shaking and covered with the blood that had run down my arm from the bullet wound. I had to wipe them on my jeans three times just so my touchscreen would let me push the fucking button for Gabe’s number.
“Gabe, I need help.”
“Where is Jeanette?” Bonus points to him for thinking about her first.
“She’s at the apartment, but David’s on his way. Gabe – everyone’s dead. He blew away Chaz Malone, Eddie, Gordon, he’s crazy – get her out of there. I won’t make it in time, he shot me too, and I’m living but I’m not one hundred percent. Call the cops, call everyone, and make a lot of fucking noise, man.”
The wooziness was a real problem, and I swerved hard on the highway to miss going off the side of the road. The sound of my tires grinding over the rumble strip permeated the vehicle and I heard Gabe throw his phone to Angel.
“Give me your phone, Angel, talk to Dino.” I heard him in the background of the call and then he was gone. He was a good guy, Gabe was. I would have never told him that to his face before, but after how he came through for Jeanette, no questions asked, I might have to rethink that policy.
Angel too. She proved herself to be a “ride or die” kind of woman yesterday for sure.
“Is the phone on speaker, Dino?” she asked, and her breath came out in puffs, like she was running. I heard a car door slam a few seconds later and the rumble of what I assumed was her Jeep starting.
“Yeah, I only have one good arm right now and I am trying to use it to drive.”
“Pull off the highway the first chance you get and tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”
And she did. Pulled right up to the gross hotel parking lot on Buck Road. It was as far as I could go, and I barely made it. That place was such a dump I was surprised it was still standing, but I guess I could only be grateful it was, because the lot was mostly empty and it didn’t take Angel as long as it could have to find me, slumped over the wheel in the Lincoln with the tinted windows.
I thought it would take her longer to figure out, considering she was looking for my BMW, but she probably also recognized the Town Car, having already been in it once.
She had a hard time wrestling me into the Jeep. I was conscious, and I tried to help her, but the blood loss was making me weak and I stumbled a few times. We probably should have called an ambulance but fuck me if either of us thought about it. Getting to a hospital was the first thing on both of our minds. I bled all over the inside of that Jeep. Poor Angel, she never said a word about it, just drove like a bat out of hell until the Jeep came careening up to the front of the emergency department and she got out of the car at a run. The double doors opened automatically, and I heard her screaming, “I need help! He’s been shot!” There were a lot of footsteps after that, but I didn’t hear much after as I was passing out completely.
Then I woke up to my body violently rejecting the pain meds, and an anxious looking Gabe standing over my bed.
“You look like shit, how are you feeling?”
“Awful, your face is killing me,” I could barely croak out the words, my throat was so dry and raw. That earned me a grin and a middle finger in response, so I assumed that it wasn’t just my pain that was putting him in such a good mood.
“Jeannette,” that was all I could get out, all I could say and I swallowed thickly, hoping for his response but afraid of it at the same time.
“Oh she’s here, Dino. Angel dragged her downstairs to the cafeteria for food.” Gabe’s face turned serious for a moment. “Hey man, I didn’t know what I was going to find but I sent the cops up to that warehouse in Detroit. Four bodies for fuck’s sake. What the hell happened up there?” He held his hands out and shook his head, “Wait, never mind. Don’t tell me right now, tell the police. They have been chomping at the bit to get to you. They put Jeanette through the ringer, and she was a champion, but there is just shit that cannot get answered without your testimony.”
“I want to see her.” The cops could wait. If they came in here it would be hours, maybe days before they let me loose. I didn’t want to wait for another second to see her face, to know she was alive and unharmed.
“Sorry, Dino,” Gabe said sadly as he waved his hand to the doorway, where two suits and a uniformed deputy stood waiting. One had a recording device and two had big fat briefcases and they pulled a Red Sea, like Moses had waved them apart to let Gabe slide back out of the room.
Fuck me.
They hounded me through four damn hours of questioning, until the nurse came in to give me more meds and had to shoo them from the room. They weren’t done though, they were coming back tomorrow. It was all kinds of a messed-up investigation, but considering all the bodies and evidence that was pretty much everywhere, it wasn’t like they didn’t believe me. It was just so complex – hell if I hadn’t lived it I wouldn’t believe it myself, but since my story matched up with Gabe and Jeanette’s in all the places it needed to, there really weren’t any criminal charges being pressed against myself or Jeanette. As a matter of fact, the officers I talked to were more pissed than anything. Good cops hate dirty cops, and after they heard about what happened to Jeanette – well, let’s just say David Ashley was lucky he was dead.
My mind couldn’t even really process the previous events either. I’d been working Chaz Malone for months, and it took a completely unrelated psycho to crack the mystery behind why he was dicking my family over. It was going to break Nonna’s heart, hearing there was another grandchild out there that she never knew about, that she could have brought into her home and loved. I don’t know that he would have turned out any differently though, breaking the news to her was going to be difficult. But at least I could see my Nonna again. Could sit at the family table on a Sunday and eat her homemade gnocchi and not have to worry about another fucking thing. Maybe Jeanette would want to go with me…
Jeanette. My eyes were getting so heavy from whatever new pain reliever they decided to give me that wouldn’t make me sick. I’d waited so long to see her but now I was fighting to stay awake. The bed was swallowing me up and the blankets were weighing me down and I couldn’t keep my eyelids open for another second. I vaguely heard the nurses in the hallway, saying, “He’s exhausted. We just gave him another dose of pain medication and he’s just now getting some rest. I’ll need you to go sit with the rest of the family in the waiting room, or you could come back tomorrow.”
The rest of the family?
Yawn.
Who was that nurse talking to?
Slow blink.
Who else was here in the waiting room?
Fuck I’m tired.
I really just want…to see…Jeanette…
17
Jeanette
The nurse tried to keep me out of the room, she really did. But I had had enough of people trying to boss me around for a lifetime, so I told her she could let me in there now or she could deal with two pissed off people when he woke up. Because I guarantee my face was going to be the first one he wanted to see when he opened his eyes next. I mean, it was possible that maybe that wasn’t the case but I must have talked a good game because she let me in there and brought me a pillow and a blanket so I could curl in one of the “Dad beds” that doubled as a chair next to the hospital bed. Those beds that are usually in the maternity rooms, that unfold into the most uncomfortable flat surfaces known to man? Yeah, I curled up into that sucke
r and made it my bitch while I stared at his handsome sleeping face and tried not to reach out and touch him, just to make sure he was really there.
I was trying to let him sleep, like the nurses said I had to, but it was hard to deny the impulse. He’d been shot. By David. He’d almost died, because of an association with me, and he’d still managed to drag himself, broken and bleeding to drive almost forty-five minutes to get to me.
All those times I’d wished I was dead because of David, and I had never before now been so glad to have survived. It was the most uncomfortable night sleep I had suffered through in a while, but I must have nodded off for a bit at least, because I opened my eyes and met his caramel brown ones, silently watching me for God knows how long. I feel asleep on guard duty, how pathetic.
“Hi, beautiful,” he whispered.
“Liar,” I whispered back. I looked like hot garbage and I knew it. Surprisingly enough, I had suffered nothing broken in the fight with David, just a lot of contusions and bruising. I’d apparently toughened up in the last six years. My face was a swollen mess and I knew there were scrape marks all over from being dragged through the apartment and the parking lot, not even counting the shiner I got when I kissed the wall in the hallway. It was sweet of him to lie about it though.
“Beautiful to me.”
He was awake, I could touch him now without getting into trouble, couldn’t I?
Sitting up in the Dad bed, I leaned over and reached my hand through the bedrails, brushing the bare skin of his uninjured arm. Oh, it wasn’t a dream, he was really there. I was really there, and David Ashley was really dead and never coming back. Dino blinked sleepily at me and gave me a lopsided smile, I was pretty sure his pain meds were still in control as his eyes were slightly unfocused.
Dino (Glass City Hearts Book 2) Page 18