“But he still has that information.” I blurted out. My mind reeled around all the information he was giving me. It did make sense. He could cash in on Damon’s file in a variety of ways and he had obviously thought of that.
“Oh, I know. I figured he had gotten slow, but I didn’t factor in his friend. He was a surprise and the thug I hired was rather...unprofessional.” Diego grinned. “But Damon still has the file on him...he’s still driving madly towards you, but he is going to be too late and I will be waiting in the house for him. I won’t let him know I’m here until the shot is fired.”
My stomach twisted painfully as he laid out his plan for me and I realized that he was close...much too close. “Now I have to get to work or I won’t have the job done in time,” he said cheerfully as he lunged towards me.
I jumped towards the pillow, my hand sliding under it and wrapping around the pistol. His hand snaked through my hair and with an awful wrenching, I was flying through the air behind me. I crashed into the wall and the pistol slipped from my grip—landing a few feet away from me. “You stupid bitch,” he snarled as he spotted the gun. “You were going to shoot me.”
He lunged at me and grabbed my hair again. He lifted me up as my scalp screamed from his mistreatment. His hand came up and slapped across my cheek before he threw me against the wall again. My back was filled with pain as I landed and my head crashed against the wall. I felt new pain blossom into my scalp, and I screamed as I realized that this was it. He was going to beat me to death before he ever used the axe.
As though he was reading my mind, he stopped and turned towards the axe where he had dropped it beside the bed. He moved to the bed and bent down. In the distance, I could hear a car speeding down our street and I realized that Damon was on his way, but he would be too late. “Oh, I think your fiancé is home,” Diego said as he crossed to the bedroom door and closed it. He snapped the lock into place and then turned towards me. “I don’t have much time, but I think I want him to hear your dying screams.”
I cried out in horror as he started to walk towards me, his pace slow as he took each step. I rolled onto my stomach and screamed again as pain lanced through my back and head. I pulled myself towards the Glock, but I didn’t know if I could make it before he reached me. As I crawled, I heard the door to the house slam open and Damon scream, “Mia?”
Jake’s voice filled the house with him, calling my name as they crashed through the house, opening doors as they went. Diego lifted up the axe and I rolled over onto my back, my hand reaching out for that cold weight that I had become familiar with. “Please,” I screamed. “Don’t do this...I’m pregnant!”
His smile grew wider. “A two for one, how wonderful,” he said and then he swung his axe.
My hand closed around the pistol, and I switched the safety off as I swung it around. The world moved in slow motion as I watched the door burst inward and Damon and Jake enter it, a look of horror on their faces as they spotted me and the madman standing over me, axe arching towards me. I squeezed the trigger as I took a steadying breath and then the world exploded around me as another flash of lightning lit up the sky.
I watched in horror as Diego’s swing stopped short and the axe tumbled to the ground in slow motion. His hands reached for the blossoms of blood that sprayed out from his chest as my bullets hit their target and then he was falling towards me. I screamed as his body fell against my legs, his dead black eyes staring up at me.
“Mia,” Damon screamed, crossing the room. Scooping me up, he checked me over and as he carried me from the room. I watched as Jake checked Diego’s pulse and then I saw nothing else as I passed out from shock.
Chapter Ten
“Did you get rid of the body?” The voice filled my head, but I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to hear this anymore. Life was too hard—it shouldn’t be like this.
“Yeah, they won’t find him.” I knew that was Damon. He was always good at cleaning things up. After all, didn’t he have someone who could do just that. He always took charge and took care of things that needed to be done. I squeezed my eyes tighter. “I have a friend who is fixing up the house right now. There will be no sign that he was at our house.”
“That’s good.” That must have been Jake, but I could hear that dark edge to his voice. The one that hinted at so much turmoil.
A hand touched my hair and smoothed it down. “How is she?”
“She hasn’t woken up yet.” Jake was silent for a second before he added, “It isn’t a concussion. I think it is just the shock of what happened. Actually, she isn’t too beat up. She has a few bruises on her back and a lump on the back of her head, but that is it. I can’t say how beat up her spirit is. I think this may be the breaking point.”
I listened as Damon paced the room. I knew it was Damon from the sounds of his movement. “I can’t keep doing this to her,” he said. “As long as she is with me, her life is in danger and she has no one to rely on but me. Her own mother won’t have anything to do with her.”
“But she’s here and I don’t think she will leave,” Jake said, closer to me than Damon was. “Besides, Mia is a big girl and she made her choice...she chose you.”
Damon scoffed, “Yeah, but she shouldn’t have. She should have some guy that doesn’t complicate her life. A guy who doesn’t put her into danger. I know I fucked up with the path I chose early on, but I have changed, I don’t want that life any longer. I want a life with Mia.”
Jake sighed. “Then you are going to have to figure something out.”
Before he could reply, Damon’s cell phone rang and he said, “Just a second,” before he answered it. I listened as he walked down the hall away from us.
“You can open your eyes, Mia,” Jake said and I opened my eyes slowly as I felt myself blush.
“How’d you know that I was awake?”
He chuckled, “You were a little too still to be sleeping. Besides, I spent enough years in the Marines to know when a guy was faking it to get out of something.”
The smile I gave him was timid and he looked at me in concern. “Are you okay?” he asked.
I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to wander over my body. I felt sore, but I didn’t feel damaged. My hand touched my stomach and fear filled me. I wouldn’t know what happened to my baby until I could get to the doctor’s office, but I had faith that my little secret was safe inside of me. I opened my eyes and saw Jake looking at my hand. “Don’t tell him,” I hissed. “I don’t want him to worry about me even more than he has.”
He shook his head. “Is the baby hurt?” he asked.
Tears slid down my cheeks and I cursed myself for crying again. “I don’t know,” I said. “I have a doctor’s appointment already and he’ll be able to tell me for sure. I was supposed to go next week.”
Jake nodded. “When will you tell him?”
“As soon as I know if I’m still pregnant. I’m really early, about five or six weeks along.” I guessed, “Give or take a few days. I just found out I was pregnant yesterday.”
Jake nodded, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, his hands slid up and down my body in a clinical manner as if he was checking me over for an injury. “I already did this, but I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Tell me if something hurts.”
I gasped as he touched my back and said, “My entire back is on fire and so is my head.”
He looked in my eyes and then covered them with his hand. When he uncovered them, he watched my eyes zoom into focus. “If you have a concussion, it is only slight. He just tossed you around some...thankfully.”
I nodded, “Where is Diego?” Finally, I asked the question that I needed to know. All I remembered was that spray of blood and Diego tumbling to my feet. I didn’t remember anything else.
“He’s dead and taken care of.” Damon answered for Jake as he walked back into the room.
I moved as quickly as my bruised body would let me and launched myself into Damon’s arms as he scooped me up. I laid a
kiss to his cheek and then to his mouth where we lingered until Jake cleared his throat. “I hate to be a party pooper, but we need to have a serious talk,” he said.
Damon nodded and carried me over to the bed I had been laying on. For the first time since I’d woken up, I realized that we were in a hotel and not in the house. I wasn’t sure how they managed to smuggle me in unconscious, but I didn’t bother asking. “What happened?”
Jake sat back on the other queen-sized bed and explained, “We burst through the door just in time to see you shoot Diego.”
I gasped, “I thought I missed. I thought that it was one of you who shot him.” My hands started shaking, and I realized that a part of me needed to know that it was someone else who had shot him. Damon captured my hand and kissed the knuckles in an effort to calm me. I smiled meekly at him.
“Nope, at that range,” Jake said, “you were the one who fired. Damon and I couldn’t fire because he was too close to you. We could have hit you by accident if the bullet went through him or we missed.”
Tears slid down my cheeks and Damon pulled me against him. I cried into his shirt and it was a long time before I managed to stop. Jake was silent as I cried and Damon rubbed my back, soothing me with words like, “It wasn’t your fault,” “It was self defense,” and “You did what you had to do.”
When I finally got my tears under control, Damon told me, “I’m proud of you for protecting yourself. If you hadn’t tried, you would have been dead.”
“I know,” I said quietly, and I did know. I had no other choice, but it still hurt to know that I had taken someone’s life. In the past, Damon had saved me and in this instant, I was the one to save us both. I should have felt proud, but I felt a lot of shame, as well. “What did you do with him?” I asked—I couldn’t bring myself to call him a body.
“I had my friend take care of it.” I nodded again and felt like I was a bobble head. I couldn’t stop nodding and shaking.
“Now that we have that discussed, you two need to decide what you are going to do,” Jake interrupted my thoughts and I stared at him, unsure of what he meant. “Do you still want to get married?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course I want to get married. Nothing has changed. I still love Damon, and I want to marry him. I want to grow old together.”
Jake’s eyes grew sad, “Well, that isn’t going to happen. Mia and Damon are not going to grow old together.”
I stiffened and looked at him in confusion. Was he going to attack us, too? I glanced at Damon and realized that his eyes were just as sad as Jake’s and I wondered why. “What is happening?” I asked as a new type of dread filled me. “Please say that you aren’t leaving me, Damon.”
He shook his head and then pulled me tightly against him. “I would never leave you, Mia. I love you and want to spend my life with you, but Jake is right, Damon and Mia are not meant to grow old together.”
He sighed and stood up to take up pacing in the room again. “I realized something as we raced back to house—this is never going to stop. I am always going to have that past catching up with us. There will always be another hit man sent out to attack us and we will constantly look over our shoulder. This is never going to end and we are never going to have that happy ending.”
I knew that he was saying the truth, but it hurt. I was willing to live that life so that we could be together. It wasn’t too much to ask of me because I loved him. “That doesn’t matter. I love you and I will go through hell with you. I mean, I have gone through hell for you.”
Jake frowned and cut off Damon before he could say anything. “Will you? It may not matter now, but how are you going to protect a baby if you guys have one.” He looked at me pointedly, and I instinctively touched my stomach.
“Exactly” Damon said. “And then I realized that we will never have peace until we are dead...and I don’t think it will be old age. They know that I am still at the top of my game. Everything that they have sent at us, I have dealt with, but...”
He turned towards me and knelt at the bed in front of me. His eyes were filled with emotion. “I’m getting older. Happiness is dulling my senses. I would never have fallen for such a weak plan in my prime and Diego was counting on it. His mistake was underestimating you.
“And the gang knows that I am weakening. They may give us a year...maybe two of happiness but then, when I have lost that edge, they will strike and I won’t be at the top of my game. I could lose you or end up getting us both killed.”
I stared at him in disbelief as I processed his words. He was right. The longer he stayed out of the gang, the more relaxed he would become. It wouldn’t be easy for him to stay on full alert all the time. “Are you ending things with me?”
He sighed. “No, sweetheart. I love you.”
“Then what are you saying?” I asked, my heart felt like it was breaking and I had a hard time breathing.
“What the dumbass is saying is that you and him have to die...or rather, you have to fake your own deaths,” Jake said and then it all hit me. Everything that Damon said was right. As Mia and Damon, we couldn’t grow old together, but if everyone thought Mia and Damon were dead, no one would be looking for us anymore.
“Could we do that?” I asked in awe.
Damon nodded. “Yes, it would be fairly easy. I did it for Angelique, and I know that I could do it for us. I just need a few days to get all the paperwork in order.”
“But how...would anyone believe it was us?”
Jake interrupted, “If it is done right. We could stage it on your honeymoon. Maybe the plane that Damon is flying goes down over the water and no bodies are found. Or maybe the car you were driving goes over a cliff.”
I winced at the possibilities of my death and it was hard to shake the fear that was pulsing through me. How could I talk about my future when it started with me dying? Shrugging off the worry, I asked, “What about bodies? Won’t they know it was fake if they don’t recover the bodies?”
Jake shook his head as Damon said, “With some accidents like a plane crash or a drowning death while we are snorkeling, we won’t need a body. They will think the bodies were washed away with the tide. If we have a car accident or something along those lines, then we will have to secure a body and make sure they match our records. We also have to make sure there is no DNA for them to make sure it is us. That is much harder. Not impossible, but very difficult. I think the best would be for us to die in a manner where our bodies are not found.”
I shuddered again and looked at Jake. “What do you think?”
“I think that Damon is right. The best way is for no body and no DNA evidence.”
“And do you think it is necessary?” I asked and a part of me prayed that he would disagree.
He nodded. “Yes, I do. In fact, I’m the one who suggested this.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Why? You’ll never get to see us again.”
“Not never. I am sure I will find a way to connect with you. His gang has no idea who I am, and I doubt that they will spend any time looking at me. Once they find out that you and Damon are dead, they will forget about the two of you.”
“But if I do this,” I started to cry again, “I will have to give up everything. You, my job...my mom.” That thought hit me like a brick to the chest.
Damon nodded, “Yes, sadly. Dad and your mom can never know that we survived. They need to believe that we are dead, just like the rest of the world.”
“I’m not sure if I can do that,” I wailed as I leaned against Damon. “I know that she hates what is going on between us, but there is always the chance that she will come around. If she thinks I’m dead...she’ll never have that opportunity. She will always hate herself for never making things right between us.”
Damon’s hand slid up and down mine as he comforted me. “I know that it doesn’t make it easier, but your mom may never come around about us. Even if she did, I don’t think it would be completely and we would end up spending most of our time awa
y from them. I am going to lose my dad, as well, Mia, but if we are going to be together, we have to do this.”
I nodded. I knew he was right, but I didn’t know how I was going to be able to say goodbye. “You are right,” I said. “I want to be with you and there is no other way. At least none that I can see. We can’t keep killing everyone that they send after us.”
He patted my back. “No, we can’t, and I don’t want to. I left that life behind for a reason.”
“So if we do it on our honeymoon, that gives us a little over a week to get everything ready. Will that be enough time?”
Jake and Damon nodded. “More than enough. I could have everything ready for tomorrow if we wanted to. It is important that you act natural,” Damon said. “Let’s keep planning the wedding like everything is normal. Pick up Mackenzie in a few days and then do all the wedding stuff. When we go on our honeymoon, the accident will happen and we will disappear.”
“Okay,” I agreed, but I felt miserable. “Is there anything that I need to do?”
“No, just plan the wedding,” Jake said.
I curled up on the bed and placed my head on Damon’s legs. There was nothing else for me to do. It was decided. I had only a week left in my life and I needed to get some rest so I could struggle through it. My eyes felt heavy, so I closed them and fell asleep as Damon and Jake planned out my death and my rebirth into the life of another me.
****
“Mia.” Damon’s voice drifted through my dreams and I reached out for him. I pulled him towards me and captured his mouth with mine. I licked inside of his mouth and ours tongue sparred as I tried to get closer to him.
“Wake up, sweetheart,” my dream Damon said, and I shook my head. I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to fall into oblivion in his arms. His fingers caressed my cheek and I slowly opened my eyes. A tired Damon came into focus and I realized that we were still in the hotel.
Sitting up, I looked towards where Jake had been sitting, but now he was gone. “Where’s Jake?” I asked.
“He went to his room. He’s staying in the hotel, but not in the room with us.” Damon chuckled at my confused expression. “Sorry, honey, I don’t share you.”
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