Hero(120)

My knees buckled and Caine turned, shock in his eyes at the revelation, just in time to watch me hit the floor.

“Lex!” He scrambled off the hit man and over to me as I braced over on all fours, trying to catch my breath. His hand slipped through my hair to curl around my nape. “Baby …”

My half brother? Someone I’d never even met had hired someone to kill me?

Nausea rose inside me.

I pushed Caine away in time as I vomited bile on my mother’s lacquered hardwood floors.

My hair was pulled back from my face and Caine’s heat enveloped me.

I jerked my head up at the realization his attention was not on our attacker.

We looked back at the bloodied criminal to see he had struggled up to a sitting position, but he was looking through his one eye that wasn’t completely swelling shut toward the kitchen doorway. In unison Caine and I swung our heads around to follow his gaze.

My father stood in the doorway, blood trickling down his forehead, and he had a shotgun pointed at our attacker. “Don’t worry,” he said gruffly. “This bastard isn’t going anywhere.”

Assured my father had things well in hand, Caine tentatively touched my arm. “Lex, you’re bleeding. You need an ambulance.” He curled his arm around me protectively and I leaned my head on his shoulder.

“I’m okay. Let’s just call the police to come and arrest this piece of shit. But they might want to send an ambulance for him.” I stared over at him to see his eyes were still trained on my father. I sneered at the fear I saw in him. Just a bully with a shiny knife. “I bet you’re rethinking that gun now, huh?”





CHAPTER 31


They stitched my arm up at Valley, the local hospital, with Caine and my father hovering over me. My dad had a minor concussion, but other than that, and being a little shaken up, he was okay.

Both he and Caine were ignoring the giant elephant in the room and using me as the excuse to do so.

“I’m fine,” I assured them for the hundredth time. I had a cut on my arm, a swollen nose and eye, and my stomach was burning, but none of that mattered compared to my emotional state.

The police had taken our statements. Caine stood there in his blood-speckled shirt and told us that he’d jumped on a plane to Chester as soon as he got my note and that was why he’d arrived so shortly after me. We told them everything about my previous attack, and the officers contacted Boston PD to check out our story. We were informed we’d have to wait around a little longer, and a little longer had turned into more than a few hours. I was desperate to get home to Boston. I’d never felt such bone-weary tiredness, and I wanted somewhere quiet so I could process the violence and the terrifying absurdity of what had just happened to me.

And although there had been times I’d thought about getting Caine in a room with my father and my father apologizing and somehow everything magically working out, the reality was much different. A surge of protectiveness rose inside me for Caine. I didn’t want him to have to be in the same room with the man who had destroyed his family. It was difficult, though, because I also was grateful to my father for being there today and for being in charge in a way I’d never seen before. In that moment he’d reminded me so much of Grandpa.

“Miss Holland?” The policemen who had questioned us, Sergeant Garry and Sergeant Tailor, filed into the private room just off the ER ward.

“Hey.” I nodded wearily in greeting.

“You doing okay?” Garry asked. He was a big bruiser of a guy with hard, rugged features and kind eyes. His partner, in contrast, was only an inch or so taller than me, wiry, and wore a perpetual look of suspicion.

“Yes.” I tried to rein in the impatience I was feeling. “He talked, didn’t he?”

“Oh, he was desperate to talk,” Tailor replied. “Wants to make a deal.”

“So?”

Garry took another step toward me, compassion written all over his face. “The perpetrator’s name is Vernon Holts. He’s got a record a mile long from petty theft to assault. During a search of his house on one occasion, they found a massive weapons collection.” He gave me a pointed look. “Knives, swords … anything with a blade.”

“There’s a surprise,” I muttered.

Caine’s hand slipped into mine.

“He said he was hired to kill you by a Matthew Holland. Holts claims this man is your half brother.”