Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165476 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 827(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
But as the doctor stepped back to clean his hands yet again, Ned spotted Clara standing on a wooden chair by the wall. Dressed in a white nightshirt and with her hair curled on pieces of paper, she squeezed her small fists on the starched fabric and stared at the bloody mess with spots of red coloring her cheeks.
“Clara, what are you doing here? You’re not allowed in the office,” her mother said, but ran up to the washstand, because she couldn’t touch her daughter with bloodstained hands.
“That’s the man from the bounty poster in town,” the girl said and pointed her tiny finger at Cole, who blinked, wheezing into the wooden block in his mouth as he met Ned’s gaze.
The world came to a standstill, and in that moment of doubt, when her revelation forced Ned onto the crossroads between decency and crime, he pulled out his revolver. Its click echoed in the silence of the office as he trained the muzzle on the little girl’s innocent heart.
Mrs. Dawson screamed, leaving red stains on her cheeks when she dragged her fingers down her face in terror. “Please, no!”
“I don’t mean no harm to anyone here. Get it done, and I’ll be out of your hair. We’ll both be. But hurt him or intentionally botch this, and I’ll come for you all.”
Clara might not have been familiar with the workings of the world of adults, but even she went pale, stiffening under the watchful eye of the revolver. “Mr. Ned?”
The doctor kept back as Ned walked around the table and went straight for the girl. “Mend him. Now, or I’m not gonna have any mercy for you and your family. She’ll die first,” Ned roared and grabbed Clara’s frail shoulder, pressing the gun to her head.
Mrs. Dawson looked as though she might faint, but the doctor remained still despite the pallor on his features. The smell of urine was sharp in the air, and Ned felt nausea rising when he spotted a growing puddle where Clara’s bare feet rested on the wooden seat.
That was when he knew there would be no way back from this.
Ned had followed the call of revenge to punish Butcher Tom for what that damned man had done to his parents and him. That path had led him on a journey of bastardization and had pushed him to do things his old self would have called monstrous, but the moment that truly turned him into a beast had only come now.
He wasn’t doing this for the higher purpose of protecting potential victims from the Gotham Boys, nor working with the law toward an end that would justify the means. This act of terror was self-serving. He chose to save his own skin and that of his lover at all cost, and if the little girl and her family would have to pay the price, then so be it.
And if he was a monster, it was fitting that he’d act like one.
“Go on. Save him. Save my friend, doctor” he roared, shaking Clara by the arm until she sobbed, because nothing would be more persuasive for a parent than the weeping of their only child.
Doctor Dawson swallowed, and then picked out a needle.
Chapter 29
Ned’s flesh was itching under skin, creating little tremors that kept him wary, attentive to every sound. Cole had fallen asleep after the procedure, and since Dr. Dawson had advised him to stay until the body settled after the shock of injury and pain, Ned didn’t press the issue and waited. They were now in the modest parlor at the back of the house. Cole lay on the only sofa, with his lower legs hanging off on one end and his head in Ned’s lap, while the doctor’s wife and daughter sat on the other side of the coffee table, huddled together under the watchful eye of Ned’s gun.
The girl didn’t have any tears left and remained quiet under her mother’s arm, refusing to even look at Ned. It didn’t move him anymore, as if the man he once was, the man who would have put himself between a child and a gun had left for good. The stranger who sat in the parlor might have the O’Leary nose and the same auburn hair, but he was someone else. Someone who would stop at nothing to protect the man he loved.
Still, guilt was eating him from the inside. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. But if it’s between a man’s family and strangers, the choice is obvious,” he said in a dull voice.
“You tell yourself that,” Mrs. Dawson said, rocking her daughter gently. “It won’t be you who has to comfort a child when it wakes screaming at night.”
Ned’s mouth dried, but what was he to say? Perhaps there had been another option. Perhaps the Dawsons would have helped them in exchange for a healthy sum of money, but he couldn’t have taken that risk. Not when Cole’s life was at stake.