Page 110 of Broken Warrior
He shakes his head. “He has everything to do with this. Thisboyis the only reason Bella never ran, the only reason I could make her stay with me.” Valetti smirks. “And he’s the reason I’m going to get her back, then make her pay for betraying me.”
I am on a razor thin wire right now.
Everything inside of me is screaming to let loose and open fire, to kill these three bastards and run out of here with my son, but I can’t. If I do anything other than stand here long enough to keep him talking, my entire plan will go right down the drain and James could get hurt because of it.
And that can’t happen.
“You want to know how she’ll pay, Mr. MacAllister?” Valetti smiles like the devil incarnate. “I’m going to make her watch as I punish the boy. I’ll punish him the way I punish her, all while she’s tied to a bed, naked and spread wide, my men running through her one by one until she’s a bloody mess. And she will watch me beat her boy within inches of his life while she’s used over and over again, praying for me to end both of their suffering, but I won’t. No, I’ll—”
“Why don’t you go f—”
“Fin, no!”
Everything that happens next feels like it’s in slow motion.
Tate bursting through the front doors of the church.
Valetti jumping to his feet, aiming his gun in our direction.
Even when I spin toward Tate to shove her out of the way, using the distraction to pull my gun, and when I face Gino again, it’s like time stands still.
He’s moving down the stairs, yelling at Nick and Bruno to get her, to take James, all while I stare down the barrel of his gun.
And when the few remaining windows explode, as my brothers come storming into the church ready to fight, I lift my gun and grin at Valetti’s hard stare.
“Go fuck yourself, Gino.” I pull the trigger on my SIG seconds before Valetti does the same, but as I watch him fall back into the pulpit, I know I fucked up.
I look down at my chest and watch as my white t-shirt blooms red, two or three wet spots growing, consuming the entire expanse of my tattoo. My vision blurs and all sound disappears as I drop to my knees, lifting a hand to where my dangerously slow heartbeat barely thumps. Bloody fingers, a bloody palm. I know they’re in front of me but I can hardly see with the way darkness creeps in around the edges of my mind, and as I feel my body fall to the cracked and dirty floor, I can’t help but think that this is a touch poetic.
My father died protecting the people he loved, taken by a couple bullets to the chest, and I’m about to do the same.
I’m finally the man I always wanted to be, finally a man like Tavish MacAllister, and I can finally be proud of who I am.
And those are the thoughts that play on a loop as the icy claws of death dig deep into my flesh, wrapping around my bones and pulling me under until there is nothing but that.
There is nothing at all.
CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO
TATE
I stareout the window and watch the sun start to rise though blurry eyes.
I hate the sun.
Hate sunrises and what they now represent.
I hate moving through my days like a zombie, the only bit of real joy I feel when I spend time with James, but even that has a heavy black cloud hanging over it now.
My baby boy is a fighter, stronger than any four-year-old should have to be, but he’s struggling.
The nightmares are back and they are worse than before, my sweet little boy jolting awake and screaming at all hours of the night. His accidents are back as well and they’ve started to happen during the day when James is so tired, so exhausted from barely sleeping that he can’t quite make it in time. He’s withdrawn and quiet like he was before we came to Colorado, only rarely talking to Dori’s pregnant belly and no one else. James is in counseling but he doesn’t even talk to her.
My sweet little boy is heartbroken and I can’t help but feel like it’s all my fault.
It is my fault.
If I hadn’t gone racing into that church, if I hadn’t done what I did then…
