Page 191 of Hexed
His body stiffens, but he steps on the gas.
I move the weapon back and pat his shoulder. “Good man.”
Anger leaches from my bones and into my bloodstream when I think about why I’m here, and I swear to God, if they touched one hair on Venesa’s head, I will make them all wish for death.
I need her to be alive, but even beyond that, I need her to be unharmed. There are so many things we left unsaid, so much we have to do to heal, and if there’s anything the past couple of days taught me, it’s that life can be taken from you in the blink of an eye. Things can mold, and maneuver, and change, and we either learn to adapt, or we go down without a fight.
I don’t want to go down without fighting for her. For us.
The cabbie pulls into the Lair’s parking lot, and I’m out the door before he even slows to a stop, bursting through the back entrance and racing down the stairs, then pulling my gun out when I hit the bottom.
I walk to the room where I know she’ll be and swing it open.
My heart’s pounding in my ears, the ever-steady whoosh of blood pumping through veins, and my adrenaline is sending me on a high that has my vision turning red before I can even think logically about what I’m seeing.
That motherfucker Fisher is hovering over her, and everything blanks.
I don’t think. I react, pulling the trigger as fast as possible, panic spreading through me at the thought of what he could be doing, what he could have already done.
Tortured her, hurt her, cut her, injected her with her own poisons.
He drops to the floor like a bag of potatoes, and Venesa shoots to an upright position, rubbing at her raw wrists and looking back and forth from me to Fisher with wide eyes and an open mouth.
I rush over to her, my gun hanging limp in my hand and my eyes traversing every single inch of her body to look for marks.
But other than a stream of blood down her arm and raw wrists, she looks fine.
Sighing, she looks at me. “Like usual, I had it handled.”
She swings her legs off the side of the table but continues to sit, her gaze going to the pool of red seeping from Fisher’s body and then flicking away like she can’t stand to look.
“Yeah, really seemed like it,” I reply, my hands coming up to cup her face. The gun makes a clicking sound when it touches her cheek, but we both ignore it, my eyes locking on hers, relief swimming through me. She’s okay.
She’s here.
I’m holding her, and she’s trembling, her jaw clenched and her thumb working hard at the cuticle on her ring finger. I slip the hand not holding my 9mm over her cheek and behind her until I’m grasping the nape of her neck. “Fuck, it’s good to see you. Are you hurt?”
She sucks in a breath, her eyes coming up to meet mine, confusion lingering in their depths. “Would you care if I were?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
Venesa swallows and bobs her head before glancing again at Fisher’s body, a frown marring her face. “He didn’t have to die.”
“I beg to differ.”
“He was letting me go.”
“After putting you down here in the first place?” I raise a brow.
I’m not 100 percent sure that’s what happened, but the fact Bastien said not to trust him and then him being down here with her all alone is enough for me to make logical deductions.
She lifts a shoulder. “We all make mistakes, and Fisher was…troubled. He did what he thought he needed to do.”
“No offense, baby, but I don’t give a fuck about him. I only care about you.”
Her bottom lip quivers, but she bites down on it in the next second. “He was still my best friend.”
My chest aches when I see her obvious sorrow. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t have done the same in my position?”
