Page 31 of Crossed By the Stars
Chills coated my body, pain searing through my chest and making it impossible to respond, impossible to breathe.
When I didn’t reply, Cillian’s eyes turned soft, and he continued, “She’s alive. Bruised and battered. They’re taking her to Saint Francis Memorial. They lost one of their team, and the penthouse is half gone.”
I’d wanted to kill Dawson back in New London because he hadn’t kept her safe. Because he’d basically stuck her in the line of fire by asking her to turn against her father and theKyodaina. And now, while I hadn’t put her in the line of fire, I also hadn’t shielded her. We’d both done the same thing. We’d left her alone to deal with the heat on her own, and both times, she’d almost died.
My heart felt like it was being torn apart. Shredded piece by piece.
“Take me to her,” I finally breathed out.
He nodded.
I followed him out of the apartment and down into the parking garage where we had three cars waiting for us at all times: the two-seater Porsche I very rarely drove and the two Escalades we used for my security detail.
“What else do we know? How serious are her injuries?” I asked once I was seated in the back of the SUV and Cillian was pulling out of the spot.
“I don’t know any more than I already told you,” he said.
Images of her tiny frame in the hospital in New London filled my vision. Pale and small, tied to tubes and wires. Only the beeping of the machines had told me her heart rate had increased the moment I’d entered the room. I hadn’t been able to see her wounds?the damage the bullet caused had been hidden behind her hospital gown—but I’d been able to see the pain in her eyes…in the clench of her jaw. I’d seen the tears she’d swallowed back when I appeared in her doorway.
She’d been kept out of the news back then because the FBI wasn’t done with its investigation. She’d been kept out of the news because her father pulled strings up and down every media empire that existed. What would happen this time?
“Is it on the news?” I asked.
“I haven’t checked. I got the call from Rana, who's blaming herself, but she didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She obviously did something wrong if her client almost ended up dead. If she lost a team member,” I disagreed vehemently. My stomach flipped, and I fought off a wave of nausea. We’d almost lost her…again. The brilliant jewel that was Jada Mori had almost been ended a second time. My father’s words hit me.The darkness of their world doesn’t know how to end in any other way but violence.
“I checked their protocols, Dax,” Cillian said. “They were solid. Airtight. Tighter than we’ve ever had around you.”
“I don’t get notes threatening to end me,” I growled at him.
“You’ve had threats,” he said, and I grudgingly had to admit it. There had been threats against me but mostly from people who thought they could use me for ransom. I’d never been taken. I’d never felt anything but safe with the people my father had hired to protect me.
“Not from a fucking crime syndicate,” I muttered to myself as much as to him. The weight I’d been carrying since Jada had first told me what the note said grew even heavier, as if it might punch me into the ground.
I closed my eyes against thoughts of Jada bleeding and maimed. My lungs and chest couldn’t handle the twisting of my heart, and my vision went hazy. I forced air into my body, concentrated on breathing.
I had a few hours, at best, before Dawson would be calling me. I may have a few days before he and Violet showed up and demanded to know what the hell had been going on, and that was if they didn’t park the yacht at the next island and catch a flight home.
But I couldn’t call them yet. Not until I knew. Not until I saw her.
We pulled in front of the hospital, and I jumped out. Cillian waited long enough for Terrence to get out of the car behind us and join me before he left to park the vehicle. When I got inside, I realized I was screwed because there was no way her name would be on the hospital patient list—not with an attempt on her life.
“Find out from Cillian where she’s at,” I growled at Terrence.
He spoke into his earpiece and then pointed me in the direction of the elevators.
When the doors opened again, we were in a hall filled with patient rooms and a nurses’ desk. It was the two uniformed police officers near a door at the end of the corridor that told me which way to head. Rana wasn’t there, but the other female bodyguard, Nyra, was standing there, looking like hell.
“No visitors,” one of the police officers said.
“I’m her fiancé,” I told him. It just slipped out?the lie that Jada would easily and angrily refute?but I had to get into her room. I had to see with my own eyes the extent of her injuries.
Nyra’s eyes widened, and I silently dared her to contradict me.
“He’s been cleared,” Nyra told the officers, who looked doubtful.
The men eyed my bodyguard.
