Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
She lets out a shaky breath, and I can’t help but notice the way she tries to mask her pain. “Just help me nail this bastard first,” she says. “And then we can work on the rest after.”
I nod, more than down with that plan, but there’s no denying that I will spend the rest of my life making it up to her.
The medical team pours in to stabilize Harper, and I have no choice but to clear out. Making my way into the hall, I stand with Ace and Diesel, barely able to keep myself in check.
“How is she?” Diesel asks.
I shake my head. “Not good,” I tell him. “She’s pretty banged up and in a lot of pain. I don’t think anything’s broken, but until we get scans done, I can’t be sure.”
Ace nods. “I spoke with some of the security team. They said there was a man in a mask, and he fled once they arrived. But the description they gave, it sounds a lot like that stalker Harper had in her hallucinations, but that can’t be right. There can’t be some kind of connection to that. It was a hallucination.”
My jaw clenches, and I ball my hands into fists, unease pulsing through my veins. “It’s connected,” I confirm. “The bastard stole her hospital records and is re-creating her hallucinations. That’s who stabbed her in the parking garage and broke into my house to assault her.”
“The fuck?” Diesel demands, gaping at me in horror. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
The rage takes over, and I whip around, my fist slamming straight through the drywall. “Because I didn’t fucking believe her,” I grit, my whole body trembling with uncontrollable rage. “Every time she brought it up, every time she came to me, needing me to be her fucking rock, I told her the meds must have been wrong. I thought it was all in her head, that she was still sick, all while she was being fucking assaulted in our goddamn home!”
I start pacing up and down the hallway, shaking my head as I try to come to terms with this, when I recall the conversation we’d had in my truck after leaving Elias’s place. I was so wound up that I was barely even listening as she drank and ranted, but she said Elias was the man behind the mask. His eyes and tone were the same, and she should have seen it sooner. I shrugged it off, thinking she was trying to make connections between this man in her head and someone real. But if this is true, if it’s my brother who’s been threatening her life . . . shit. It’s already personal, but this just makes it that much worse.
If Elias thinks he’s going to touch what’s mine, he’s got another think coming.
“We’re gonna find this fucker,” Ace tells me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Whatever it takes. We’ll get him. She won’t like it, but we’ll put a twenty-four-hour protection detail on Harper until this is over. Between you, me, Diesel, and the rest of the team, no one will touch her.”
“Okay,” I tell him as the medical team makes their way out of the bathroom with Harper on a gurney. “Reach out to the team. Put a schedule in place, and we’ll get it done.”
The boys nod and take off as I fall in line with Harper, taking her hand as the medical team pushes her toward the elevator. “I’m going to make this right,” I tell her. “He won’t hurt you anymore. I’ve got you now. I was wrong to tell you that it was in your head. I swear, doll, I’m going to be the man you deserve.”
Harper nods, her left eye already swelling. “It’s Elias,” she tells me, gripping onto me as though she’s terrified I won’t believe her, and that’s on me. I’m going to have to put the effort in to ensure I have her whole trust again.
I’ve never fucked up more than I have with her, but that ends now.
20
KNIGHT
Sitting in the darkness, I swirl the whiskey in the bottom of my glass, my thoughts lost on Harper. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since she was attacked in the morgue, dragged into the women’s bathroom, and almost raped. There’s not been a single one of the 1,440 minutes that have passed where I haven’t been filled with the most enraging fury.
How dare somebody put their hands on my girl and manipulate her into silence.
She bled out on the cold concrete in a parking garage believing she couldn’t tell me. She passed out in her car, filled with fear, believing he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to her. She hid the rose from our front doorstep because he conditioned her into silence. She sat and cried in her car after being sexually assaulted, not prepared to tell me because she already knew that I would let her down. And fuck, she was right to doubt me.