Page 73 of Mountain Refuge

Fuck.

The realization that I had been shot, despite the last fifteen months of my life, was so heady that I felt dizzy.

However, I couldn’t let it stop me. I had shot the one man, but I didn’t know if he was dead or hurt or had only been knocked off balance by the bullet hitting his bulletproof vest. The one who had shot me wasn’t injured.

A glance down at my shoulder showed a large red blotch but nothing to indicate how serious the injury was. Regardless, I had to keep fighting. I had to protect my kids.

With a show of force this large, was Gunther even trying to get his children back alive or had he sentenced all of us to death? Was Gunther even here? Or had he sent these men—paid mercenaries no doubt—to slaughter us all while he sat safe in a penthouse hotel room halfway around the world?

A glint of silver caught my eye and I noticed a kitchen knife on the floor of the pantry. I wondered if Brooke had been using it before the helicopter had alerted her to the mercenaries’ inbound attack.

I knew I couldn’t throw it with any sense of accuracy, but it might provide me with a distraction. I was still able to use my left arm—it just hurt like a bitch.

Hearing footsteps on the hardwood floor, I grabbed the knife, stood, and slammed it forward.

I honestly have no idea which one of us was more surprised when the blade pierced—me or the guy I had just stabbed in the throat. He garbled and spluttered blood out of his mouth before falling to his knees with the knife still embedded in his neck.

Movement out of the corner of my eye showed the man Ihad shot in the back was trying to stand. I raised my gun and shot three more times at his back.

My heart was pounding, my entire arm was throbbing, but silence fell in the kitchen as I stared down at the two dead bodies. Brooke’s table was completely ruined and her meticulously kept pantry was in ruins.

A child’s scream broke through my haze.Belle!

I leapt over the kitchen table, sliding on the blood beneath my boots. I didn’t know whose it was and I didn’t care. I jumped over the two dead bodies of the men I had just killed and into the hallway.

The front door was littered with bullet holes and lay flat on the floor like it had been kicked inward.

Corbin was in a fist fight that looked far too choreographed to be real, and yet it was. My giant best friend was battling three mercenaries who had been stripped of their guns. The living room furniture was in disarray and various pieces. A body, presumably dead, was lying face down in the fireplace. Another was dangling halfway through the living room window. Based on the blood, he had been disemboweled by the jagged glass.

Corbin fought like a rabid berserker. As he spun around to grab hold of one man by the throat, I saw the hilt of a knife sticking out of his back. My eyes widened, but I couldn’t stop to help him. I had to get to my kids!

I heard the continuouspow, pow!from the loft and at least had an auditory confirmation that Brooke was still alive.

Blood trailed down my left arm, dropping to the floor. I clutched my gun tightly in my right hand.

I skittered to a halt just inside the bedroom door.

The past and the present blurred in my mind’s eye as I saw the man who fathered my daughter jump at my sudden presence. He slammed her up against his chest and put her gun to her head.

Belle’s throat was held so tightly in his fist that she struggled to breathe. Tears streaked down her cheeks and filled her eyes. She was trying to stand as tall as she could on her tippy toes to get herself a little more oxygen.

Belle was tall for her age, lean, but she was still a child in a grown man’s grip. Gunther’s head, chest, and shoulders were completely exposed. I had a gun too. But I wasn’t so good a shot that I could risk firing in my daughter’s direction.

“Drop the gun, Adam.”

I flinched at my former name. I didn’t know why. It was just a name. It shouldn’t affect me so badly. But I knew deep in my soul that I was no longer Adam Greene.

Adam Greene was a teacher, a plain man. Though he was not a coward, he was not strong.

Iwas strong now. I had muscles from working hard in my new mountain life. I had a son and a daughter who were my entire world. I hadBrooke.

I wasnotAdam Greene. Adam Greene had run from a fight. I was no longer running.

As I tossed the gun onto the hardwood floor of what was supposed to be my kids’ new bedroom, I saw Trenton curled in the corner of the room. He was balled into a fetal position with his back to me, wrapped entirely around something.

Then I realized… It wasn’t something, but someone. Trenton was not moving and I could not see signs of life from him or my son in his arms.

Something shattered within me. A rage unlike anything I had ever felt before. My nose burned with unshed tears as my eyes lifted to the man who had fathered my three children. Because it didn’t matter if Trenton was an adult. He was mine,had beenmine, from the time I walked into his life when he was fifteen years old. I just hadn’t known it until this moment.

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