Jace: You’re 35.
Axel: And apparently still young enough to get his ass kicked by a doctor. *crying-laughing emoji*
Ryker: [Ryker has left the chat]
Axel: COWARDS.
Axel: Hey, Jace, what’s the over/under on them killing me in my sleep?
Jace: I’m not taking that bet.
Jace: But I’d clean up your will, just in case.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket and resumed rounds.
“Room eight needs an attending,” a resident called out, handing me a tablet.
The screen nearly shattered in my grip as I stared at the name of the patient—thename—at the top.
Eric Voss.
My vision tunneled, the rest of the ER falling away as those letters burned into my retinas. After days of searching, of hitting dead ends, of watching Tessa jump at shadows, of imagining every horror he’d unleashed upon her that night, and every letter he’d sent since, here he was, delivered right into my web.
A savage sort of joy unfurled in my chest. Fate, it seemed, finally gave me a break.
Each step down the hallway felt charged with electricity. The antiseptic hospital smell faded beneath something darker, the metallic taste of vengeance coating my tongue. Every tear I’d wiped from Tessa’s cheeks, that time she’d woken screaming, that flinch when Chuck had moved too fast … it all crystallized into this moment.
Stepping into the room and shutting the door, I drew the privacy curtain closed with deliberate slowness, savoring the screech of metal rings against the rail. Like a shark circling its prey.
“Mr. Voss.” I stepped forward, letting my lips curl into the kind of smile that made grown men uncomfortable. The smile of a predator who’d finally cornered its prey. “I can’t tell you how very happy I am to see you here.”
58
BLAKE
Eric Voss.
I forced myself to breathe, to maintain some semblance of professional calm, but images started flashing through my mind like a horror show I couldn’t stop.
Tessa’s nightmare-twisted sheets. That scar on her collarbone—jagged, angry—where the bottle had cut her as she fought. How she’d curl into herself whenever she talked about that night.
After I set the tablet down, my fingers curled into fists, uncurled, curled again. In my mind, I could see it all: his weight crushing her small frame into the mattress, her desperate gasps for air, the sound of glass shattering. Her blood pooling across her chest.
He laid hands on her. He hurt her. He violated her.
I’d sworn an oath. First, do no harm. But other oaths stirred in my blood. The ones I’d made to Faith all those years ago, watching her bruises heal. The silent promise I’d made to Tessa, holding her through her nightmare. The darkness that lived in me, which had been waiting since that night with the baseball bat, recognized this moment for what it was.
A reckoning.
Inside, that familiar rage was building. The kind that had painted walls with blood. Only this time, it wasn’t for Faith.
It was for Tessa.
For every time she’d woken up terrified.
For every flinch.
For every tear she’d shed.
