Page 53 of Vengeful Lies

“Okay,” Essie reluctantly agreed.

“I’ll talk to you soon, sweetie. I love you.”

“Love you, Gabby.”

After hanging up she wriggled in her seat, desperate to get to Cade. The drive didn't take more than fifteen minutes, but it felt like a lifetime.

As soon as they parked and went through the emergency room doors, they were met by Cole who led them through to the small room where Cade was lying on a bed.

The first thing that hit her when she finally laid eyes on him was that he looked uncharacteristically vulnerable. His big body was so still and there were bruises on his pale skin. With his eyes closed he looked like he was sleeping but not peacefully. Even unconscious, he couldn’t seem to fully relax.

“We’ll be right outside,” Cole told her gently, and she was vaguely aware of the others moving outside the little curtained-off room, but most of her attention remained fixated on the man lying in bed.

Slowly, she moved toward him. When she reached the bed, Gabriella moved a hand to cover one of his but stopped before making contact. Things had always been weird between them because she liked him as more than a boss and yet knew her feelings would never be reciprocated.

But now they were even weirder.

She was at least partially responsible for his daughter being kidnapped, but he’d saved them both, been using her old ragdoll as a security item, and given her custody of his daughter. She didn't know what that meant but she did know that her love for this man had only grown over these last several hellish days.

A surge of pent-up emotion had all the feelings she’d been keeping bottled up exploding out in a flood of tears, and she snatched up Cade’s limp hand and brought it to her face, rubbing her wet cheek on it, feeling like her whole world was hanging in the balance. Only she didn't know if she was going to find everything she’d ever wanted or once again be left alone out in the cold.

Chapter

Fourteen

September 8th

11:32 A.M.

He couldn’t take his eyes off them.

Either of them.

They were both so beautiful, so precious, so important to him.

It meant he had some hard decisions to make over the coming hours, but for now, Cade couldn’t allow himself to think about that.

All he could focus on was how grateful he was that his plan had gotten Essie and Gabriella out of that hell alive.

Although not unscathed.

Essie was particularly clingy, totally to be expected, but still hard to watch as his usually confident and outgoing little girl made sure she was always within touching distance of him or Gabriella. More Gabriella than him, and while he wanted his daughter to seek comfort in his arms, he knew how lucky he’d been when he decided to hire Gabby.

No one else outside himself and his family would have protected her the way she had.

Which brought him to the nanny.

While she had a permanent smile on her face, there was something haunted in her eyes that he hated and wanted to get rid of. Maybe no one else was picking up on it, although he couldn’t imagine how since it seemed so blatantly obvious, but he was, and it killed him.

Like his daughter, Gabriella was confident and outgoing, she loved hard and wasn't shy about sharing how much she cared for the people in her life. She was always thinking of others, wanting them to be included and never feel left out, but who was there for her making sure she knew that she was a vital piece of this family?

“All right you ready to get out of here?” Jax asked, appearing at his hospital room door with a wheelchair.

Cade growled at it. So his leg was a little messed up, so what? It didn't mean he had to be taken through the hospital halls in a wheelchair.

When his brothers had shown up and saved his life, he’d passed out. He had no memory of being brought to the hospital or being examined. His memories started up again after he woke up from surgery to clean and stitch his leg to find Gabriella sitting in a chair beside his bed, holding his hand. The relief in her green eyes when she saw him wake up would stay with him forever. If he had ever had any doubt about how deep her feelings for him ran that had eliminated them.

“More than ready,” he said, shoving off the bed and ignoring the crutches Gabriella held out to him.

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