Chapter 28
I was coughing blood from extreme beating and torture when the walls started shaking with
bullets.
Gunfire cracked through the estate like thunder, and I thought for a second I was hallucinating. My hands were still chained, my body limp, and every nerve in me screamed, but I forced my head to lift. Screams echoed down the corridor. Not mine this time. Theirs.
Then I heard a voice. A shout. And it wasn’t Elodie’s.
It was war.
One of the guards tried to run, but the wall behind him exploded before he reached the door. He dropped with a hole in his chest, and another figure pushed through the smoke. Black tactical gear. One of Harvick’s soldiers. He looked right at me, eyes wide.
“Boss!” he called. “She’s here!”
He rushed over, keys in hand, and unclasped the chains from my wrists. My body fell forward and he caught me just before my head hit the stone.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he muttered, slipping his arm under me, “we got you.”
The metal hit the floor and I gasped. My lungs were wrecked, my arms trembling, but I didn’t black out. Then I saw him.
Harvick.
He stormed through the blood and smoke, his gun dripping, his eyes locking on mine like nothing else in the world existed. His face dropped. The monster broke.
He ran to me, fell to his knees, and cupped my jaw in both hands. I tried to pull away, but I was too weak, and he held my face gently… almost afraid he would crush what was left of me.
“Danica,” he breathed. “Jesus Christ…”
I could barely speak. “Why… are you here…”
”
He didn’t answer. He was shaking. Angry. Broken. His thumb smeared blood from my cheek and his lips parted like he wanted to apologize but didn’t know where to start.
Footsteps. Another scream. Gunshot.
He turned fast.
Elodie.
She was running down the hall with her don lover beside her, gun raised. She saw Harvick and didn’t hesitate. She shot first. Missed. Harvick didn’t miss. One bullet between the eyes and her lover dropped dead beside her.
“No!” she screamed, pulling the trigger again.
The second bullet grazed Harvick’s head. I watched him jerk back and hit the ground, blood soaking the side of his temple as his body slid limp beside mine.
Everything went still.
I screamed. Crawled to him.
“No, no, no! Harvick, don’t you fucking dare-” I pressed my palms to his wound and his blood
- 5.
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2/3 89.2%
4:55 pm
coated my fingers.
He coughed, eyes barely open. “I- it’s not bad,” he whispered. “It’s nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
His mouth twitched. “H–habit.”
I felt the warmth in his blood, too much of it. He reached into his jacket with a shaky hand and pressed keys into mine.
“There’s a car out back. Glovebox… Burner phone. Money. IDs. Leave, Danica. Get out of here before they regroup.”
I shook my head and grabbed his collar. “I’m not leaving you.”
He smiled, and it broke something in me. His eyes weren’t angry. They were soft. Honest. Like the man I used to know before he turned into everything I hated.
“If I die,” he said, “remember I only ever loved you wrong.”
My throat clenched. He squeezed my hand and pulled me close, whispering against my ear. ” never stopped watching your shadow.”
My chest cracked.
Tears spilled from my eyes and I gritted my teeth as his grip weakened.
“I forgave you,” I said.
He smiled again. A soft, small thing. Then he stopped breathing. And I screamed. Screamed until my voice gave out. Until the room faded into silence. Until all I could hear was the echo of Elodie’s laughter somewhere beyond the smoke and fire.
And I swore If she lived to see another sunrise,
would become the storm that blinded her forever.
–
drove with blood crusting down my neck and silence choking my throat.
Harvick’s blood was on my hands. My wrists still burned from the chains. My throat ached from screaming for a man who once destroyed me and still died trying to put me back together.
The engine purred, steady and cold, as I sped through the backroads with nothing but ghosts in he rearview. My eyes stung and the wheel slipped under my grip once from the blood, but I ightened my fingers until my knuckles went white and I kept driving.
Then I saw it.
The burner phone.
Sitting quietly in the passenger seat like it had been waiting all along. I stared at it for a long second before reaching over. My hands shook, not from fear, but from that sickening ache of hope clawing at my ribs.
I didn’t think. I just dialed.
Jeremiah’s number.
The line rang. I pressed the phone harder to my ear. One ring. Two. My breath hitched on the third.
4:55 pm
