Broken Empire A Reverse Harem High School Bully Romance - Callie Rose Page 0,91
bit of sunshine snuffed out of his expression.
People had arrived. Men in uniform and paramedics. Several of them gathered around Cole, and I scooted back to let them work, my gaze landing on the two medics who’d squatted down beside his dad’s body.
I heard one of them mutter, “DOA,” and then two more paramedics converged on me, shining a light into my eyes, wiping away the blood on my lips, and running probing fingers over my ankle.
Cole was lifted onto a stretcher and carried away, and I wanted to cry with relief and fear. He was getting help, and I knew that was good, but they were taking him away from me, and a part of me couldn’t help but feel like I’d never see him again.
As he disappeared from sight, officers pulled Alice to her feet, and it was only when they hauled her hands behind her back that I realized she’d still been holding the gun.
But she couldn’t be in trouble, right?
She’d saved us.
She’d killed her husband to save us.
“Ma’am, what happened here?”
When the officer started to question her, she looked down to me as she answered, and I didn’t think her words were meant for him at all.
“It was Adam,” she whispered softly, her voice broken and dull. “It was always about Adam. When we started Element Investments, they let him in on it because of your mother. But they never liked him. Kept him on the outside.”
Squaring her shoulders, she seemed to gather herself. Then she looked back up at the police officer in front of her, jerking her chin toward her husband, whose body was now covered with a sheet. “That man, Richard Mercer, killed two people—Adam Pierce and Charlotte Hildebrand.”
The officer’s eyes widened as his brows rose. “When was this?”
“Years ago.” She shook her head as she said it, as if realizing as she spoke just how long she’d kept that secret. “We… all of us except for Adam and Charlotte… stole from the company. Adam found out, and they killed him. But Charlotte saw it happen. She loved Adam. And she saw…”
Cole’s mother looked like she was going into shock. Her face was ashen, and her whole body had started to shake. The officer questioning her must’ve realized it too, because he gestured to two of his compatriots, and they started to lead her away.
But she dug her heels in, putting up as much resistance as her tiny body would allow, and turned back to me one more time, her face contorted with pain.
“They made her promise to keep quiet. And she said she would. But she hated us—hated us so much. And in the end…” Her gaze shot back to her husband, fear flickering in her eyes, like he might rise from the dead and terrorize her again. “In the end… it didn’t matter. He never believed her anyway.”
“Ma’am, you need to come with us.”
She stopped resisting the men who held her arms, shifting her focus back to me as she resumed walking. “I’m sorry. I tried. I sent Erin to help you—I just wanted to help. I never thought you’d come back.”
The large uniformed officers pulled her away, and even as she moved out of my line of sight, the emotions she’d been projecting seemed to linger, seeping into my bones until I was shaking too. I couldn’t process everything that’d happened to me, everything I had just learned. I hurt everywhere, from the inside to the outside, and the world around me seemed too bright and chaotic.
Finn squeezed my hand hard as I was lifted onto a stretcher, and a moment later, Mason and Elijah were at my side too. None of them looked too badly beat up, although Mason had a purple bruise on the side of his face and Elijah had a smear of blood across his cheek. Hands held onto me, keeping me from flying apart, and when one of the paramedics seemed to suggest I might need space, Mason actually growled at him.
I clung to them harder, begging them in slurred words not to leave me.
Because I didn’t need space.
I needed their hands.
Their warmth.
Their presence.
They held me together as I slipped under a black wave.
When I woke again, I was in a hospital bed.
Mason, Elijah, and Finn were all gathered on one side of the large bed, and as I blinked myself awake, glancing around the room, I saw two empty chairs on my other side, and a bed next to them.