Page 66 of Torn Souls

My panic morphed into something else entirely. “Calm down?” I seethed the question and Huck’s grip relaxed a little bit. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Baker was shot. I don’t care if it was a graze or a through and through, or whatever else could have happened. Shot,” I shouted.

Huck lifted me up and I started to kick my legs, but it didn’t deter him. He held me in his lap, his hands moving over my body soothingly, until I calmed down.

But then I needed to move. While I might not be ready to run out of the house and track down my men, I’m still on edge.

I don’t think I’ll be okay until I can set eyes on my men and make sure that Baker really is okay. I’m also curious about what happened inside the warehouse.

I have a feeling that my father is dead. I should probably feel something, but I don’t. I grieved my father, the man he shouldhave been, a long time ago. It was probably around the time when my mom died.

He was never a real father to me. I was always a means to an end to him. A burden. A problem. A shiny object to dangle in front of someone.

When I glance at the television, the breaking news coverage is still covering the explosion. The rubble of the warehouse has my gut clenching.

That explosion is a message for my men.

We’re going to have face so much more than my father, I just know it. Hopefully, we’ll be strong enough to weather whatever is coming our way.

I have faith in my men. But whoever is targeting them is dangerous and they will do anything to win. If they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have blown up a fucking warehouse in the middle of the industrial area of a major city.

The door opens and I’m spinning around and rushing toward it before I can even think about it. The moment I see Kirill, Maxim, and Baker, I freeze.

Kirill and Maxim don’t really look any different than they did when they left the house this morning. But Baker.

Baker.

The bandage on his arm would be bad enough, but it’s the dried blood on his arm that has me letting out a choked sob. When his hazel eyes meet mine, there is no hope of me holding back my tears. I don’t even try.

Baker sucks in a sharp breath before closing the distance between us. His large hands cup my face, his thumbs wiping away the tears on my cheeks.

“I’m okay,” he murmurs soothingly.

It’s not nearly enough for me. I reach up, my hand hovering over the bandage, but scared to touch him. Hurting him is the last thing I want to do.

“You were shot,” I state, it’s not a question. The evidence is right in front of me.

“It was just a graze,” he corrects me as if it makes any fucking difference. It does not.

“A graze?” My voice hits a note that is not at all natural.

My men wince when they hear me as I start breathing heavy, unable to wrap my head around how casually he’s acting. His blood was spilled. Graze or not; his blood was spilled.

When my men surround me, their bodies pressing against me from all sides, it’s like I can take a breath for the first time since I heard the pops on the monitor in Huck’s office.

They’re here.

They’re okay.

I close my eyes and try to get my shit together. Now is not the time to fall apart. Not with the explosion.

Not with what I know they’re about to tell me.

Without opening my eyes I ask, “Was my father there?”

“He was,” Kirill’s voice has me snapping my eyes open. I can see the sympathy in the depths of his dark gaze. Sympathy but not an apology. Not that I need one. “Lev, the man who waswith your father when they spoke to you during your date with Maxim, shot first. That is what grazed Baker the moment we walked inside. Your father was inside the warehouse, and I shot him.”

There’s an apology in his eyes with his confession, but he has nothing to apologize for. My father was not a good man. He would have kept trying to belittle and use me. Death is the only thing that was ever going to stop him.

“Good,” I breathe out. Kirill’s eyes flare pride and he lets out a breath as if he was holding it while waiting for my reaction. “I wish he would have suffered more.”

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