in half.
It’s a very quick and bloody way to go, I’m merciful like that.
I get out of the back alleyway I called the buyer to meet me in, lurching and stumbling all over the place, dry heaving as my body goes into shock. I have a very small amount of time to get out of here before my limbs and unnecessary organs begin to shut down.
I bleed everywhere.
There’ll be DNA to clean up for days. I’m not usually this sloppy, more than aware of how easy it is to blackmail and manipulate people with the right evidence, but my only focus right now is getting to my car. I need to get the hell out of here before one of the Jackal’s men spots me and takes me out. It’s no secret he has a bounty on my head and a long list of men desperate enough to do the job. The Butcher has proved there is a chance of survival if you kill a member, it’s just not great odds.
That glimmer of hope does crazy things though.
Part of his business plan is to keep his people poor, addicted, and miserable so they follow his every command, begging and hopeful that he’ll throw them some scraps like some archaic overlord. The Bay is a desolate place but only the most desperate wear the Jackal’s mark.
There’s the scrape of boots on the sidewalk and I clench my teeth as I stumble a little faster, my own feet dragging along like two lumps of concrete at the end of my legs. I can’t feel anything from the knee down.
My hands are numb too.
There’s a voice calling out to me, but all of my focus is on my Bentley and closing the gap to it. Ten feet, nine, eight—I’m getting there. The closest hospital is the worst in the country, but it’ll have to do, because the three minute drive there might already be too much for my current state, but I have no choice here.
Get there or die.
“What the hell did you do now, Crawford? Fucking hell, stop moving before you bleed out all over the fucking sidewalk.”
I stop and turn to find Luca stalking over to me, still wearing the Mounty standard uniform of dirty jeans, a tight tee, and a leather jacket.
“You can’t be seen with me.”
He scoffs and ducks under my arm, pressing his own hand to the wound like he’s trying to hold my guts in single-handedly.
Well.
I guess he is.
He growls at me, frustration radiating through every line of him. “Yeah and none of it means a fucking thing if you’re dead, boss.”
I shrug because I just don’t fucking care anymore. The moments that I let myself feel despair and self-loathing are rare, but the blood loss means I’m not coherent enough to stop it. “Dying for her has always been the plan. Who am I to complain about having my greatest wish fulfilled?”
He groans at me and shoves me into the passenger seat of my car, racing around to go in the driver's seat and then we’re flying down the backstreets and back onto the highway, “Oh yeah? And who’s taking care of her when you’re gone? Who’s going to go toe-to-toe with her fucking psychotic father if you’re not around?”
I hit the recline on the seat to lessen the pressure on my wound and press a hand back over the mess of my stomach, blood smearing over every part of the car I’m touching. “You do. You’ll take care of her for me.”
He looks over to me in the darkness of the car and gives me a curt nod. “To the end.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You own my soul, Atticus Crawford. I love you. I love you.”
I say those three words, over and over again, even after they finally get him out of the building and airlifted away in the helicopter. Even after they give me a headset of my own because I refuse to leave his side.
Even after they take him into the operating room and I know it’s the last I’ll ever see of him, in my mind I say it because somewhere in the back of my mind I’m sure he can hear it.
He’ll die knowing I love him the same now as I always have.
I sit, covered in blood, in the waiting room staring at the wall blankly. I don’t know how long I’ve been there or anything about what’s happening around me. When I’d climbed into the helicopter with Atticus, Luca had sent a