I swallowed hard. “And Linnie?”
The doctor smiled then, and I realized it was good news.
“Linnie has a concussion, bruising on her face and chest here,” he indicated where the seatbelt was. “And also a few minor cuts and scrapes on her face. The biggest concern right now is her arm, which was broken. We’re going to need your permission to take her to surgery to fix that.”
I nodded my head. “Yes, of course. Whatever you need from me.”
“There’s some paperwork that you’ll need to sign,” he said. “If you’re ready, I’ll take you to Linnie.”
I didn’t even hesitate. Nor did I look back. I just walked away, knowing the men at my back would take care of anything else I’d need taken care of.
I was glad that they were here.
Especially when, the moment that I walked into Linnie’s hospital room and saw her tiny body, deathly pale and bruised, it made me want to kill Thurgood all over again.
How could a man do that to another human being? Especially with how freakin’ innocent they both were?
He was supposed to be their protector, yet he’d treated them like dirt. Like they were nothing more than lint on his sweater.
Right then and there, had Thurgood still been alive, I would’ve walked straight up to him and shot him straight in the heart.
That was how very upset I was right then.
Damn the consequences.
“It’s all bluster other than the arm,” the doc assured me. “We have her comfortable for now. But the meds she’s on for that comfort is making her very sleepy. Feel free to talk to her, though. Let her know that you’re here.”
I sat down next to the bed and hesitated. I didn’t know where to touch her.
God, I just wanted to lift her into my arms and cradle her to my chest.
This was all so fucking wrong.
“She’s okay, go ahead and touch her,” the doctor urged.
I did, picking her small hand up into mine.
“I’ll send the nurse in with the paperwork,” he said softly, then left me alone with one tiny corner of my soul.
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when Castiel and Rome appeared in the doorway.
An hour at most. The doctor had already come in and told me that they would be bringing her down to surgery soon and that if I wanted, I could move to the second floor and wait in the waiting room for news.
Speaking of news, there was still nothing on Theo. I asked every single nurse that came in if they’d heard news.
Apparently, she was still in surgery and there was none to be had.
“You want me to stay here so you can go see Theo?”
I stiffened. “She’s out of surgery?”
Castiel nodded. “She is and she is still listed as critical. They have her in the ICU—intensive care unit—and aren’t allowing any visitors until they have her stabilized. Still unconscious, though.”
“I can’t go,” I said softly, looking down at the sleeping child that looked so damn small in the bed. “Theo would want me to stay here with Linnie, but you’ll keep me updated?”
Castiel’s eyes were fierce as they connected with mine. “Oh, yeah.”
I nodded my head once, then brought my gaze back to the small figure in the bed.
“She’s doing better than her mother,” I said softly.
Rome’s face softened, and Castiel’s arm went to my back as he squeezed my shoulder.
“She’ll make it, man,” he falsely promised.
But he didn’t see her like I did.
He didn’t see the crumpled, broken bodies as they lay on the cold asphalt road, bleeding out before my eyes.
Theo was so hurt.
There was every possibility that she wouldn’t make it.
“What about your arm?” he asked.
I nodded once.
“Broken radius,” I said. “I’ll be in this for the next two months.”
Wade, who’d just arrived in the doorway only moments before, looked like he could relate.
“How did that happen?” I asked, looking at his almost identical cast.
Wade held the cast up and grinned. “Used my forearm to break the glass. Apparently ulnas don’t like that.”
I vaguely remembered seeing Wade slamming his forearm against the glass of the car as he tried to find a way in to get to Linnie and Theo.
“Not sure what I would’ve done without you guys there,” I admitted.
“Motherfucker, we led him straight to her.”
I was already shaking my head.
“Maybe. Maybe not. But Theo wanted it to be over…I guess now it is,” I admitted.
Wade’s grin was suddenly ferocious. “Guy would’ve lived, but he was smoking a goddamn pipe when he hit her.”
My brows went up.
“The impact shoved that pipe straight down his throat and he choked on it.” Castiel grinned just as manically.
I found myself grinning, too.
“Yeah.” I sighed then. “I’m fucking terrified right now.”
Wade slammed his hand down onto my shoulder. “We know you are, and we’re here until they’re both able to come home.”
With that they each left, going to see the other half of my heart.
The one that damn well better live, or I’d lose it.
***
“Can I call you daddy?” Linnie asked weakly.
I felt my heart squeeze and my breath stall in my lungs.
I had a second to think, ‘What would Theo think about this?’ before I blurted out the first thought that came to mind.
“Yeah, baby. You can call me daddy,” I said, voice cracking on the ‘D’ word. “If you want.”
She started to nod her head. “I want to. I also want you to marry my mommy.”
I laughed softly and gathered her two small hands into only one of mine. “Baby, I was going to do that without you saying a word, but since you want that, I’ll be sure to ask her as soon as she wakes up.”
Her eyes slowly closed. “I think you should get her a big, pink ring. I think I should also go with you to make sure you get the right one. We can’t be too sure about rings. Ring shopping is important business.”
Smiling despite the ache in my chest, I continued to talk to Linnie even though my heart was breaking.
The fact that I wasn’t sure whether or not her mommy was going to pull through was making it hard to breathe.
I’d been sitting in the hospital now for three days. Three long, scary days and not once had she responded to any of the treatment to try to get the pressure on her brain under control.
According to the doctor, head injuries were tricky. And I believed him.
What I couldn’t believe was that I was sitting here, wondering if she’d make it.
I’d had to make a terrible decision when I decided to spend my time with Linnie. Linnie who was scared to fucking death of the hospital for some reason.
The one and only time I’d left her in the last three days she’d freaked out so spectacularly that they were in the process of sedating her when I’d walked—sprinted—back in the door.
She’d seen me and her freak out had instantly turned into a crying fit, and from then on, I’d stayed with her.
The other old ladies that belonged to the men from the club were taking turns staying with Theo in her room, and they were sending me hourly updates on her and how she was doing.
That didn’t make it any easier, though.
In fact, the pictures and the updates on how she wasn’t doing any better were really putting a damper on my spirits.
But when Linnie finally fell asleep, her hand still clenched on my fingers, I was comforted in the knowledge that this was what Theo had wanted. Me to be with her girl. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gone to the lengths that she had.
A knock at the door had me turning to see my PI standing there.
“
Hey,” I smiled at him. “You got anything for me?”
“More than,” he said as he took a seat. “Did you know that you had a glitch in the system that keeps you from auto-paying your bill at Ampere Electric?”
I blinked, then nodded. “Yes.”
The PI nodded his head once. “Well, so did Thurgood. He found it when he was digging into your files…then found Theo’s. Did you know it only happens with the owner’s company credit cards that were paying for the bills?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it, as I realized that it was my own stupidity that had gotten me into this mess.
I hadn’t thought that he’d find her since she was so far away. And I thought I’d been outsmarted by paying for an Ampere Electric account with an Ampere Electric credit card.
What the fuck had I been thinking?
I’d done this!
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “And you’re not responsible for this. There are over two hundred accounts paid by the company credit cards. All employees. In fact, in that office, there were four paid accounts before you added Theo’s.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m not sure how he found it. Likely it was sheer blind luck. But I’m telling you this…had you not been there with the entirety of your club? She’d have been dead, and so would her daughter.”
“How do you mean?” I asked softly.
“He had enough bomb-making materials in that truck to blow up a city block, a sniper rifle in case he couldn’t get close enough to do that, and enough ammo that he could’ve continued to do that for hours if need be. He’d been scouting the house for at least two hours. Watched and waited for the perfect opportunity to do the most destruction he could possibly do. Drove ahead of everyone on the interstate, then when he saw all the motorcycles, he took his chance.”
I let my head fall back on my shoulders and then rolled it, trying to work out the kinks.
Goddammit.
God. Fucking. Dammit.
Theo had the worst family ever.
Speaking of family.
“Have you been able to find Tyson?” I asked, straightening my head to stare at him.
“Dead.”
I closed my eyes. “How?”
“Gunshot wound to the forehead. We’re assuming by the dad, but without him here to confirm it? We’ll never know,” he answered sadly.
I swallowed hard.
“I hate him.”
Before he could say a word, the door to Linnie’s room was pushed open, and an excited Castiel poked his head in. “She’s awake!”
I felt my stomach somersault.
“She is?”
Castiel nodded. “And she wants to see you. We had to explain about Linnie.”
I looked at Linnie, who was supposed to be discharged in the next hour and decided, to hell with it.
Scooping her sleeping form up into my arms, I made a beeline for Theo’s room that was two floors up from Linnie’s.
The nurses on Linnie’s floor didn’t once stop me.
And when I laid Linnie down in bed next to Theo, who was indeed awake, I got one of the best presents I’d ever been given.
A smile lighting up my fiancée’s face.
“Hey,” she breathed.
I pressed a soft kiss to her temple.
“Hey.”
She smiled as her eyes drifted shut. “It’s over?”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “He’s dead. Andy’s being indicted as we speak, and from what I understand, Tara will be buried by the state.”
She snorted. “Thank God.”
I pressed another kiss to her temple. “Yeah. Thank God.”
Epilogue
Some of y’all don’t know what Billy Bob wrote for Charlene…and it really shows.
-Meme
Theo
I watched from the shadows as Liner dropped down and started to do push-ups.
I snickered when Linnie dropped down and started to do push-ups right beside him.
Liner looked over at Linnie, sweat dripping down his face, and grinned like a fool at her.
Liner loved Linnie so much. There wasn’t a single day that passed by that I didn’t see that love showing like a beacon of light for Linnie to see with her own eyes.
God, I loved the man.
“Ten!” Linnie screamed.
She’d just turned seven. It’d been a year and a half since she was hurt right along with me in that car accident. A year and a half of trying to forget the first twenty-eight years of my life with a family that wasn’t really a family. Well, everyone except for Tyson. My one saving grace. The one man that tried to make living in that hellhole worth it.
God, how I wished that Tyson and I had grown up in a different life. That we’d been able to experience what a real family was supposed to be.
In the year and a half that I’d been married to the man that I loved, he’d shown me what a real family should be like. He’d shown me what it was like to be loved in a healthy way.
He’d also given me a family.
His dad. His club. They all treated me like I was a member of their family.
I was loved.
I was…
“I don’t like burpees, Daddy,” Linnie said. “Can we do something else?”
Liner, hearing Linnie call him ‘Daddy,’ grinned at my—our—girl. Just like he always did when she started calling him that in the hospital.
Not that I’d been awake for that part, but it’d been a sweet sound through the darkness of pain and uncertainty as I’d struggled to live through the trauma that I’d sustained during my accident.
“Yes, burpees,” Liner said with a laugh in his voice. “Sorry, Charlie. It’s part of today’s workout.”
Linnie grumbled, then dropped down and started to do them faster than Liner could even dream of moving his big body.
I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures, loving the look of concentration on my two loves’ faces.
Two that would only ever be two.
We’d discussed trying to have more kids, but in the end, we decided that Linnie would be it for us.
Not only could Liner not have kids, but I’d come to the conclusion that Linnie and Liner were perfect for me. So instead of trying for alternative ways of having kids, we’d chosen to be happy with what we had—Linnie.
Though, that didn’t mean that I didn’t wish, every once in a while, that Liner was able to have kids. Having a baby with his beautiful smile? That sounded like heaven.
But since I couldn’t have that, I was happy with them.
“Why must you take pictures of me, Mommy?” Linnie demanded, catching me in the act.
I grinned down at her angry face. If there was one thing Linnie didn’t like, it was having her picture taken.
After I’d recovered enough to go home with Liner and Linnie, there’d been a lot of reporter activity.
It wasn’t every day that a woman survived her father trying to kill her so publicly.
That, and it hadn’t hurt that my father had done it with a goddamn media circus swirling around the area due to a media convention that had just let loose for lunch. There’d been seventy-two reporters on a bus headed for the biggest restaurant in the city, and that bus just so happened to be four cars back from mine.
The notoriety hadn’t done well for Linnie. She now had a major aversion to having her picture taken, and didn’t care if it was me, Liner, or the media. She didn’t like it. Not a single tiny bit.
That didn’t stop me from taking her picture, though.
It only made all of her pictures angry ones that I laughed at later.
“I wasn’t taking your picture,” I lied. “I was taking Monster’s picture.”
Linnie looked over at Monster who was sprawled out on the gym floor behind her, panting lazily directly in front of the fan that Liner had turned on for him.
Monster was spoiled.
&nbs
p; There was no doubt about it.
“Hey.” I looked up to find Liner with a phone to his ear.
My brows went up in question, and he mouthed, ‘Castiel.’
I nodded and took a seat on the closest weight bench, eyeing the large amount of weight that I’d been watching Liner bench press only minutes before.
There was so much weight on there that it was easily three times my size.
“You’re fucking kidding. When?” Liner said.
Linnie giggled and bent down to rub Monster’s ears.
“Really?” he asked. “Well, that’s just fuckin’ perfect.”
Seconds after that declaration, Liner pocketed his phone and looked at me with a grin. “Good news.”
I waited with a raised brow.
“Your money was released from the state. You’re officially a millionaire.” He paused. “You’re officially richer than I am.”
My mouth dropped open.
“You’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “Not even a little bit.”
“After yesterday’s news?” I gasped. “How does that happen?”
Yesterday’s news of Andy being charged and found guilty of the attempted murder of a police officer. There’d been, of course, other charges held against him, but the attempted murder of the police officer had been what had gotten him the next seventy-six years in a federal prison with a possibility of parole at sixty-two.
Things like that—both my sister dying and my brother finding his life ruined—didn’t happen.
Life didn’t work like that.
“It might’ve been helped along,” he admitted. “But, both of them were guilty, and they both got justice served to them although in different ways. We’ll just leave it at that.”
Suddenly, I had the urge to throw myself at him.
So I did.
“We’re free?” I asked.
His arms, sweat still dripping from them, closed around me.
I didn’t care in the least.
“Free,” he declared, grin wide.
Linnie laughed loudly at Monster, who’d rolled over and taken her with him.
We both looked down at the two on the ground, then back at each other.
“I love you, baby,” he rasped.
My eyes filled with tears. “I feel like I’m dreaming.”
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