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)
We follow the ambulance, and as Mom is taken into surgery, I’m left with Knight in the waiting room with nothing to do but wait. I hear him on the phone, giving orders to Diesel as he gets the team together to go find Elias, but I doubt he stuck around to wait for the fallout. The moment he left Mom to fend for herself, he would have taken off. Hell, he would have been miles away before she’d even found the strength to drag herself into her car and drive her ass to me.
It’s a miracle she’s alive, having gone so long with a collapsed lung, but why the fuck didn’t she call for help? Why waste her time coming to me when she could have headed straight for the hospital? Why not crawl to the neighbor’s place and ask for help? I don’t understand it.
The night ticks by painfully slowly, and when Mom is out of surgery, we’re allowed into her recovery room to sit with her until she wakes. Knight comes in and out, giving me updates on the raid at Elias’s home, and I’m not surprised when he comes in looking ashen, telling me that there was no sign of the bastard.
Had he gone home with the intention to hurt my mother? I don’t know. All that matters to me is the baby growing in her womb. Is it cruel to believe that she brought this on herself? That in not believing me and choosing wealth over her own safety, she had this coming? She stepped directly into the lion’s den, dressed as a vulnerable little lamb, and batted her eyelashes, thinking that’d be enough to save her.
I begin pacing the hallway outside her room as the sun peeks through the hospital windows. It’ll be shift change soon, and so far, her surgeon still hasn’t come to speak with us. But it’s been one of those nights, patients have been coming in by the truckload, and while I’m desperate to find out the state of the baby, I also know how it can be during night shift.
Knight watches me as I make my way up and down the hall when I hear the slight shift in Mom’s heart rate monitor and pause at the door, looking in. She lies in her bed, attached to all kinds of machines, panic in her eyes as she tries to piece together how the hell she got there.
“Mom,” I say, walking into the room and automatically checking her vitals on the screen before taking the seat at her bedside. “You’re okay. You’re in Blackstone Hospital.”
“Harper?” she croaks, fear in her eyes.
“You’re alive. You made it in time,” I tell her. “How’re you feeling?”
She shakes her head as though unable to believe the night she’s had. “I really thought he loved me,” she murmurs, tears welling in her eyes. “I thought that would be enough.”
“I’m sorry he did this to you, Mom, but I tried to warn you what he was like,” I say, realizing too late that I just gave her the extended version of an I told you so, only I can’t seem to keep the words from falling out of my mouth. “You wouldn’t listen to me. You just called me a liar instead of hearing me, and now you’re here. He’s killed two men in cold blood, almost killed me twice, and sexually assaulted me. And I just . . . I can’t understand why you would choose that over wanting to have a relationship with me. Are you that hungry for his wealth that you would willingly risk your life to wear designer labels?”
Mom glances away, unable to handle the judgment in my eyes. “I’ve worked too hard to get here,” she tells me. “I’m not about to throw it all away because a man had a tantrum. The law will catch up to him sooner or later, and I will be the one left standing.”
“So that’s your grand plan?” I ask, absolutely disgusted with her. “Hope like fuck that Knight’s men are able to take him down before he manages to kill you, and then what? You’ll live the rest of your life reaping the rewards?”
“Judge me all you like, Harper-Rayn, but at least I know what I want and am not afraid or ashamed to go after it.”
I shake my head, unable to believe this woman. “He literally beat you until your lung collapsed, by the way,” I tell her. “And your face? You’re going to have to get plastic surgery if you intend to retain membership in the rich wives’ club.”
She sucks in a breath, her fingers coming to her face, only to wince at the pain. “Scars will heal,” she says. “That’s what makeup is for.”
Knight shifts by the open door, and I have to be honest, I hadn’t realized he was here listening. I thought he was still out in the hallway. “What happened, Mae? Did he return home and attack you unprovoked?”