Page 131 of Diamond In The Rough

“Wake up.” I shake her limp body and choke when she simply hangs. When blood streams over her chest and dribbles to the concrete ground at my feet. “Mo chroí! Wake up!”

“Medical required!” Jazzy sprints my way, a phone pressed to her ear and blood flowing from a wound on the side of her neck. “Agent has been hit!” she cries out, pressing bloodied fingers to Tiia’s neck. “Drive-by shooting out front of CeCe’s club. Wall Street, Manhattan. You need to put her down.” Her eyes shoot up to mine and burn. “Put her down!”

“Tiia?” I lower her to the sidewalk and press my ear to her lips. Searching. Begging for the sound of her breath. “Baby, you gotta wake up.”

“Inside!” Felix skids to my side and grabs my arm, trying, but failing, to jerk me to my feet. “Micah! You gotta get inside in case they swing back around.”

“Mo chroí.” I shake my brother’s hands away and press my palms to Tiia’s chest. “You gotta keep your heart moving, Tiia.”

“Entry wound...” Jazzy tears Tiia’s shirt away and reveals a belly smeared with fresh blood. Torn skin. “GSW to the abdomen!” she shouts into her phone. Then she wipes, viciously and rough, to clear the smudges of blood. “Only one, I think.” She grabs Tiia’s hip and yanks her up, searching her back. “No exit wound.”

Sirens wail in the night, and my brother guards my back, though we both know he’s the one who needs to be protected. Stovic and Michaels and a dozen other soldiers fan out and secure our portion of the street. And yet, my heart lies dead on the pavement, bleeding, unconscious, and in someone else’s hands.

“Wake up, Tiia.” My eyes burn. “You have to wake up. I can’t make you hate me if you’re not even awake for it.”

29

MICAH

THE WORST PLACE ON THE PLANET

Hospitals fucking suck.

The sounds, the smells, the constant intrusions from the nurses and doctors doing their rounds and disturbing a patient who needs rest most of all.

The stench of antiseptic is like acid in my nostrils, and the hushed whispers of orderlies in the halls gossiping about the FBI agent who was shot on the job and the mobster who brought her in, grates at my nerves.

We were private before this. Me and Tiia and, evidently, a dozen other agents who had observed our interactions as she did her job. But now it’s all up for public fodder, footage from outside the club, somehow already loaded to the news stations, played and replayed on the hour, every hour, so Wilkes is rewarded with a high definition rerun of the crimes that will soon be the reason he dies.

Soon.

Once I can extricate myself from this room and bear to leave Tiia, even if only for a minute.

“You broke her heart, you know that?” Roscoe sits on the other side of the bed, slumped forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin on his joined hands. While I sit on Tiia’s left, clasping her fingers in mine. “She tossed her job in the trash for you. Told her boss to fuck himself. Took confidential information and delivered it to you at her own personal risk. She walked into the lion’s den, knowing you may be the hand holding the gun that killed her. And she did all that, even after you broke her heart.”

I drag my eyes from her pale skin, my focus from the beep-beep-beep of her machines promising she’s alive and okay, and bringing it all up, I meet the familiar stare of a man I don’t know.

Not really.

“She told me you found out she was undercover. She doesn’t know how you knew, but she knew you wouldn’t hurt her, even when you really wanted to.”

“I did hurt her.” I bring our joined hands to my lips. “I hurt her really bad.”

“You destroyed her heart,” he concludes. “Shattered it beyond repair. In twenty-nine years, I’ve never seen my sister so fucking broken.”

“Your sister…” Nodding, I exhale warm breath over Tiia’s knuckles and acknowledge, finally, what was so clearly laid out in front of me. “Her twin,” I sigh, closing my eyes and allowing my head to droop. My only defense against a world that wants so desperately to destroy me. “She told me she was a twin. But I couldn’t move past assuming you were her lover.”

He scoffs, the sound soft and barely audible. “Not my lover. But my love, yes. She knew what she was doing when she fell for you, Malone. She knew the risks, not only to her life, but to her job. To her relationships. She knew being with you was…” He shakes his head, the rustle of his shirt enough to draw my eyes open again. “Stupid. So fucking stupid. But she did it anyway.”

“Because the heart wants what the heart wants,” I grudgingly admit. “She deserves better than this.”

“Yeah.” He chews on his tongue for a moment, staring deep into my eyes. “She does.”

“And if I keep her, I’d be willingly putting her in danger.”

He nods. One sharp movement of his head. “Uh huh.”

“But I don’t want to give her up,” I groan, dropping my head and resting my lips on her scuffed knuckles. “I’m not ready to live my life without her in it. Not now that I know what it’s like to have her.”

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