Royally Chosen Christmas (Royal Sons MC #7) - Elle Boon Page 0,9

the life they wouldn’t get to have.

The distance to where they had Angela’s body felt like he was walking through waist-high mud. He’d known either he or her dad would have to identify her. The fact it was him, had guilt slicing through him worse than the knife he’d taken in the thigh a year ago in Cambodia. If only he’d done or said something differently, made her stay and talk to him. Anything instead of letting her get on the elevator and leave.

“You can look through the window if you’d prefer?” the doctor offered.

They stopped outside the door, but if there was one thing he wasn’t, that was a pussy. He gave respect in the field when he took a life; Angela deserved better. She deserves someone to identify her properly, someone to do the right thing. He was her someone. With his strength wrapped around him, he motioned for the doctor to lead the way. In all his years, through deserts and jungles, shitholes he’d thought he’d seen the worst he could’ve seen when he’d had to pull the trigger and watch a child’s life leave their body. Yet nothing could’ve prepared him for the feeling of loss assaulting him when he looked down, seeing the once beautiful woman who’d come into his life like a whirlwind lifeless.

“Dammit, Angela, you look so damn broken,” he choked out. He thought of the sassy vixen she’d always been, the one who’d looked up at him, begging him to help her only hours before.

“Oh, Angel,” he whispered, smoothing his hand over her forehead, shocked at how badly his entire arm shook and was afraid he’d damage—fuck, how goddamn stupid to think he could hurt her more. “What happened to you?” Tears burning his eyes.

A sheet covered her from shoulder to feet. From what he could see they’d tried to make her look...better. He would pay the best make-up artist to come in and see that he or she worked magic so that Angela would look beautiful one last time. A choked sob shook him at the thought of never seeing her vivacious personality again. He may not have been in love with her, but he loved her. One day he had imagined seeing her settle down with a husband and kids and getting to be a doting uncle. Some might think that was fucked up since he and she had hooked up, but he and Angela had understood each other. They were friends, or so he thought.

Three months. She was three months pregnant. He had no clue who she’d been seeing or if it was a casual hookup. Her words before she’d left his apartment about the other man killing her sprang forward.

After saying all the right things to the doctor, or at least he hoped he had, he walked out of the hospital. His phone gripped in his right hand remained silent, no word from Gary or his mom. Taking a deep breath, Scott made his way to his car, the sleek silver Ferrari sat where he’d left it. Most people would’ve been afraid to leave a vehicle that cost over two hundred grand in a crowded lot like he’d done. His only thought had been to get to Angela. Their last conversation played through his mind, making him wish he could go back and change things. No, he wouldn’t have agreed to claim the baby, but fuck all if he’d have allowed her to leave like she had. “Damn you, Angel,” he whispered, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands; the feel of his phone digging into his forehead was a welcome bite of pain.

Settling into the driver’s seat, he drove back to his mom’s house, trying to figure out a way to break the news to her and his sister. Shit, how the fuck did he go from having a stepsister and a half-sister, to what he was facing to this? He just learned he and T weren’t truly related either.

This time outside the large gates he hesitated. His Lieutenant Colonel needed to know what was going on since he didn’t think he’d be flying out on schedule. Instead of punching in the code on the pad to get in, he hit the number programmed into his phone.

“Yo, Hollywood, what’s going on?”

“Sir, I have a problem.”

His team called him Hollywood, saying since he grew up in California and because he looked like he stepped off the set of a movie, it was appropriate. He’d always laughed