Page 89 of Amore
“Hands up!” an officer bellowed.
I rose and lifted my arms. “I’m LAPD.” I rattled off my badge number. “I also have a permit for my gun. I can get that for you, but I need to check on my fiancée in our safe room.”
The alarm started to go off, so I went to the keypad and turned it off. The alarm being set made me realize Candace had already been in the house when we’d gotten home, and I wondered how that could be.
While they arrested Candace, who argued she was LAPD too, I went to the safe room. Amore, who appeared to be groggy, stayed by my side. I knocked on the door. “Baby, it’s me.”
The latch slid, and the door opened. Frankie jumped into my arms. “I heard gunshots, and I didn’t know what happened.”
“I shot Candace,” I informed her.
Frankie gasped, her hands going to her mouth. “Oh, my god. Is she …?
“No.” I shook my head and noticed she had blood on her hands. I grabbed one and inspected it.
“That’s not mine.” We looked her over, and then she sucked in a breath. “You’re bleeding!”
I looked down at my arm, where Candace’s bullet had grazed me. I shrugged out of my jacket. It was a light scratch. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You need stitches.”
“I’ll have a paramedic check it out. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Except I need to pee really bad.”
I hugged her for a quick second. “Go pee, baby.”
While Frankie went to our room to use the bathroom, I bent down and rubbed Amore’s head. “What happened to you, buddy?”
He whined and laid down, not acting like himself, and I was almost certain Candace had given him something. I grabbed my phone to search for what we should do when Frankie came into the hall.
“Luke,” she whispered. I looked up from my phone. “I’m … bleeding.” She looked down between her legs, and my stomach dropped.
* * *
I didn’t wantto leave Amore, but hearing Frankie was bleeding scared the shit out of me. I dialed Emily, told her we needed her at our house, and briefly told her why. I wanted her to stay with Amore to monitor him while the ambulance took Frankie and me to the hospital. A police officer came with us to get our statements. The paramedic tended to my arm, confirming I needed stitches once we arrived at the hospital, and took Frankie’s vitals.
“Your blood pressure is a little high, but that could be from the attack,” she stated. “And while I can’t be certain because I’m not a doctor, I don’t think you’re having a miscarriage. There is usually a lot of blood.”
“I wiped blood,” Frankie advised.
“The hospital will let you know for sure.”
It put me a little more at ease hearing there wasn’t a lot of blood, and therefore, it probably wasn’t a miscarriage.
When we arrived at the hospital, we were taken to the same section of the emergency room because I refused to go anywhere except with Frankie. While a doctor checked her out, another one stitched up my arm. The doctor put gel on Frankie’s small belly and used the wand thingy to look for our baby. It didn’t take long before a whooshing sound came from the monitor.
I sighed in relief.
“The heartbeat is strong,” the doctor advised. “Let’s get a urine test because the slight bleeding might be a bladder infection, which is common.”
“I haven’t had any symptoms of a bladder infection,” Frankie stated.
“That’s not unheard of. Your body is going through a lot of changes and is creating a human, and you’ve been under a lot of stress, especially tonight.”
Frankie nodded, and I grabbed her hand, kissing the back of it. Things could have turned out a lot worse than they had. If I had stayed inside the house, it was possible Candace would have gotten the drop on me. She could have shot me without me knowing she was in the house. I was grateful she didn’t immediately shoot Frankie but spat words at her first.
“Do you want to know the sex of the baby?” the doctor asked.
