Page 74 of Stolen Vows
What if that’s why the elevator collapsed?
Dread swirls in my chest, aching worse than the physical pain in my bones. Breathing deeply, I start to peel myself off the floor, wincing when a stinging sensation rips through my shoulder, shimmying down my elbow to my hand.
My mouth falls open in a silent scream as I manage to force myself up the wall, getting back to my feet. With trembling fingers, I undo my heels and kick them off, ignoring how my ankle spasms in protest.
Opening my hand, I let the severed strands of hair drift to the ground. It’s the first time I’ve cut it in years, and there’s a twinge of sadness as I watch the hair fall, but there’s no time to soak in it.
I don’t know where Leo is, and I don’t know how much time Frankie has. Or if he has any left at all. I can’t allow myself to linger here.
Dizziness floods my body, throwing me off-kilter as I move toward the doors. Twisted, puckered metal creates a massive gap in the seam and an exit for me.
Slowly, I haul my body up, hissing when I try to use my right arm as leverage. Moving it at all is a massive feat that makes me break out into a cold sweat. I glance down, one leg out of the shaft, and note the sagging and swelling of my shoulder.
“Fuck,” I whisper, clenching my jaw.Dislocated.
I guess I should be grateful to be standing at all right now.
Somewhere down the hall, what sounds like a gunshot rings out into the damp wasteland that is the bottom of this tower, and I shake myself out of the idea to put my shoulder back into its socket. That will have to wait.
Bruised and battered, and likely unaware of more injuries due to shock, I climb out of the broken car. Each staggered breath I pull in feels like inhaling a bag of thumbtacks, but I push through anyway, worry striking my heart.
I don’t know what to do, really. Textbooks and lab work haven’t prepared me for any kind of altercations, and if it’s someone Leo knows, the odds of me coming out of this unscathed are low. My only weapon is the short utility knife I used to saw through my hair with, which I fish out from where I stuffed it into my bra.
Curling my hand around the folded object, I start down the hall as the noise cracks out a second time. The alcove where the entrance is opens into a slightly wider area, curving so that the front doors to the tower are obscured once you go a certain distance.
When I spot a set of wooden stairs, I stop in my tracks. My stomach hollows out, fear racing through my veins.
Less than a hundred feet away, Leo crouches on the bottom steps before a tall man in a brown suit who’s using a baseball bat as a prop. Leo’s handsome face, which I was riding less than two hours ago, is coated in bright red blood. His dark hair is matted to his forehead, which is split open in multiple places.
He’s holding a gun, pointing it directly at the man in front of him, but his eyes aren’t even open. My body tenses. When he pulls the trigger, an odd clicking sound puffs out of the device, but nothing else happens.
The stranger, who has slicked-back gray hair and a dimpled chin, yanks the gun from him and whips it across Leo’s jaw; his head juts back suddenly, his neck hitting a terrible angle, and then he slumps silently onto the ground.
Without looking, the other man discards the gun by tossing it behind him. It slides across the floor, skidding to a halt a few feet from me.
I take a step in its direction, my pulse roaring between my ears.
I’ve never held a gun in my entire life. Never had the desire to. It felt like all Papà and his men were good at was wielding weapons to intimidate or eliminate one another, and I wanted something more than that.
Standing here now, staring at the weapon, my moral argument feels like bullshit.
Sometimes, a gun is all you’ve got.
Quickly, I dive for it and aim with my uninjured arm, not caring about anything other than getting that man away from Leo.
I don’t think about the auction outside or how I could have probably gone out and found help if I’d been thinking straight. I don’t consider the trouble this will likely get us into or even that I should focus and devise some sort of actual game plan.
Instead, my body launches into action, impulse weighing heavier than my usual desire for rational thought—just like it did seven years ago with that razor blade and then when I let Leo go down on me the first time in his kitchen.
Because when it comes to my husband, I’ve never had to put much thought into anything. It’s all been gut feelings and internal knowledge pushing me, driving me into his arms and life. Even the seven years we spent apart, I spent so much of my time keeping busy to avoid thinking about him and running back to where I knew he’d take care of me.
He came for me. After all this time, after waiting seven years for me to figure out my life, he came. And he was willing to step back and continue letting me live, so despite all his selfishness and ridiculous antics, I can’t help focusing on the growth. The effort.
I don’t know if it’s wrong or if it even matters. Maybe love is less of a concrete consideration and more of a sensation—one you feel in your toes first and your heart second.
But itdoesn’t matter, because I feel it regardless.
I’m unsteady on my feet as I wave the gun at the stranger’s back. “Getawayfrom him.”
