God, she must have tried to wake me, but I’d been too far gone.
I leaned up so she could climb onto my lap.
“Everything is okay, sweetie,” I crooned as I hugged her, savoring the comforting warmth of her body. “It isn’t your fault that you couldn’t wake me up this time.”
It was one of the worst nightmares I’d ever experienced.
Still panicked, I reached for my cell phone, and dialed Jax’s number without taking time to even think about it.
“Hello,” he answered in a sleepy voice.
“You said I could call you anytime,” I said breathlessly. “I know it’s late, but—”
“Harlow?” He sounded more awake now. “What is it? What the fuck happened?”
I quickly glanced at the clock beside my bed and realized it was almost three o’clock in the morning. “I’m sorry,” I said in a shaky voice. “I had a bad dream. I guess I just needed to talk. I just looked at the clock. It’s the middle of the night.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said adamantly, as though he was wide awake now. “Is Molly with you?”
“She’s right here,” I reassured him. “I’m sure she tried to wake me up, but this nightmare was bad. It was so real. The rebels were torturing Mark. He was in so much pain. The rebel leader ordered his men to cut Mark’s fingers off one at a time. There was so much blood, Jax, and I can still hear him screaming. I have to know what happened. I need to know the truth.”
“Don’t, Harlow,” Jax said soothingly. “I promise you, it never happened. There were no signs of any other injuries on his body except for the gunshot that killed him. He didn’t suffer. I’m always going to tell you the truth, no matter how difficult that might be.”
My body relaxed slightly. “Thank God,” I whispered.
I trusted Jax, and I knew he wouldn’t lie to me about something like this.
I heard him let out a deep breath before he continued. “We don’t know everything that happened with Mark, but we do know that according to the transport boating records, he arrived soon after you and Taylor did. Every statement that Prince Niklaos could get out of the men he arrested were all the same. The rebels only waited long enough for his transport boat to leave the dock before they surrounded him. I doubt that Mark even really understood what was happening before he was killed. I know all of this is difficult to hear, but it was quick, Harlow. He was shot at point-blank range in the head.”
I held onto Molly tightly as I processed the information. “Thank you,” I said softly into the phone. “Dr. Romero told me that I was going to have to face all the truths of this incident before I could truly heal. I think she’s right. The not knowing, and all the avoidance I’ve done is what’s really hurting me. If I don’t know the real truth, my imagination can run wild.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever really know more than what I just told you,” Jax said gently. “But it happened so fast, I don’t think there’s anything we really don’t know.”
“I was out of my mind with worry for every one of those nine days that we didn’t see him. It never really occurred to me that he might already be dead. I just assumed that he was being held somewhere else, or that he’d escaped. I also wondered if he’d already been released once my ransom was paid. Not once did I think about the fact that he could have been killed,” I explained to Jax in a shaky voice. “I don’t know why I didn’t consider that option.”
“Why would you?” Jax questioned. “The rebels didn’t shoot you or Taylor. It was natural to assume he was still alive, Harlow. You needed some kind of hope at that point, so blocking out the worst possible outcome was normal. Once Marshall told you that Mark’s body had been found, it’s also human nature to go into denial when the truth is more than you can handle.”
Raw, relentless pain clawed at my body as I finally processed the fact that Mark was gone, and I was never going to see him again. Maybe I’d acknowledged that on a superficial level before, but I’d never felt the soul-deep loss I was feeling right now. “I couldn’t even attend his funeral, Jax,” I said on a choked sob. “I never got to