Fractured Freedom(84)

Love.

Hope.

Comfort.

Then he turned and stabbed the second guy.

The music mingled with the screams and whimpers.

“Damn, this is going to be bloody,” Izzy murmured.

I shrugged. “You need to report Iago’s assault on you, Izzy.”

I felt her body tense, and I didn’t ask for more information. She’d share when she was ready.

All she said now was, “There will be nothing to report on a man who's gone, Lilah.”

I chewed my cheek, not sure what to make of it all. For some reason, my body didn’t reject what was happening in front of me. I knew the man I loved planned more torture. I knew as he sucked in air nice and slow like it was feeding his soul that he was going to truly enjoy what he was about to do.

I knew it all.

And it made me love him more.

He hummed as he bent down to glare at both the men at their eye level, just inches from their faces. “Did you think the Armanellis would let you get away with drug smuggling in our territory when we cleaned this up years ago?”

He ripped off the duct tape from Iago’s mouth. The man had long since stopped talking; his groaning was all that could be heard, just louder now without the barrier of the tape.

“Now,” Dante snarled, and I found my body reacting in a way it shouldn’t have to all this.

My mind swirled at seeing my wolf take his territory back; all of my insides tingled with a newfound kink completely unlocked.

“I should ask Lilah and Izzy what part of you they want as a gift, but I can’t bring myself to let any part of you remain. So instead, Cade, call the police. I need acid for Iago.”

“Wait!” he cried. “I know where the drugs are. Only half are on this boat. Please!”

Cade stopped him. “Police already found both locations. We got it all.”

Dante chuckled.

It sounded so far away, though.

The tingling didn’t seem very pleasurable anymore, either. It was like I was losing the feeling of myself, like my mind was running away and I couldn’t catch it.

“I don’t feel right,” I murmured to Izzy.

I heard her mumble shit and something about the back of my head bleeding, but I lost that running mind.

It got away.

And everything went black.





I’d handled brain traumas in my nursing career. I knew what they were, knew they could affect speech and cause paralysis, comas, death.

I knew all that.

I just hadn’t expected to experience it myself.

Snapshots of what I thought was reality pushed through my subconscious to the all-encompassing black abyss I kept falling into.

I knew the hospital was in the United States—I heard English from the doctor, and I heard my mother crying and asking if I would be okay.

I focused long enough to tell them my age, my name, and what I thought had happened. I believe I answered all the questions. I was just too tired to answer more.

Blackness found me, and I went under again.

When I came to, I heard my sister’s voice. She was crying now too.

Everyone was always crying.

Had a week passed, a day, just an hour?

She wasn’t alone with me though.

“She’s going to be okay, Izzy,” Dante said. His voice was the one I needed to hear.

My muscles relaxed, my body stopped tensing, the pain in my head seemed to vanish.

But then I heard the strain in his voice, the little quiver. “Izzy, don’t cry. She’ll be just fine, huh? And then we’ll be back to work. You and me, right?”

That sounded odd.

Wrong.

Him and her.

“She has to be,” Izzy whispered. Then I heard footsteps pacing back and forth. “Thank you for staying with me and her tonight. I don’t think I could be alone.”

“I wouldn’t leave.” Dante’s voice was firm, solid, like he wanted to comfort her.

Not me.

A soft breath was taken before she whispered, “I know. I’m … You always take care of me, Dante. Jesus, when no one else did, you took care of me.”

“And I always will, Izzy. You’re my girl, you know that?”

I heard rustling, and it was enough to make my eyes open to see what I needed to see.

Izzy was in Dante’s arms, her lips on the lips I thought were mine.

He didn’t fight her off.

He wasn’t even pushing her away. His hands were on her shoulders.

He’d said she was his girl.

And then the hospital did what hospitals do. It recorded my heart beat—how it picked up, how suddenly it started going a million times a minute—as I stared at them, eyes wide.

Immediately, Dante’s hands pushed her back like he could hide what I’d just seen. He rushed toward me, but my mind ran away.

I whispered, “You let her kiss you.”

And I was gone again.





27





Fight for the One You Love





Dante





There’s a moment when a person knows they’re in love because they find themselves wondering what can be done to make the other person happy, even if it causes their own pain.

They find themselves doing things that are completely against their own logic.