Page 148 of Captive Audience
“Sorry, gangster. Guess you’re carrying me out of here after all.”
55
ROOK
“Help her!” I bellowed as I charged through the ER doors.
Asha’s limp body hung in my arms. Aidan was at my side, applying pressure to her wound. Asha’s blood soaked through my clothes and dripped to the floor in a scarlet trail. Her face was pale. Breaths, weak. She’d bleed out if she didn’t get help fast.
A voice over the PA summoned a trauma team. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Nurses moved in with a gurney. Aidan backed away, and I laid Asha down, hands shaking. “Gunshot wound” was all I managed before they wheeled her away. Red smeared the white sheets.
I tried to follow but was blocked by a nurse with too many questions.
No, I’m not hurt.
It’s not my blood on my clothes. It’s Asha’s.
She’s my wife. Stop bothering me andhelp her.
Two security guards closed in, took one look at me and Aidan, and went on high alert.
Fuck.
I’d have taken Asha to the Beasts’ doctor, but the hospital was closer and better equipped for trauma.
Aidan gripped my shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was for reassuranceor to stop me from doing something stupid, because if I tried to push through to Asha, this place would explode with security.
“Let them help her,” he said. “There’s nothing more you can do right now.”
My useless hands curled into fists, but I made myself to stand down.
All of this was my fault. I’d forced Asha into my world. I’d made her pretend to be my wife, and it hadn’t protected her at all. The Russians had seen her as leverage. As a way to break me.
None of this would’ve happened if I’d left Asha alone. I should’ve let her continue living her life blissfully unaware of me watching her from the shadows.
I’d fucked up, and I didn’t know how to make things right.
I wanted to believe Asha would pull through, but the face of every person I’d lost flashed through my mind.
If I lost her, too, I’d sink so far into the dark I’d never crawl out again.
56
ROOK
The hours Asha had been in surgery had nearly finished me. I’d felt as helpless as I had when I’d learned of Niall’s murder. I’d been thousands of miles away in Belfast, with no way to fix things.
While I’d waited to find out if Asha would survive, her scared voice replayed in my mind.
Her telling me that she thought Baranov would kill her.
That she forgave me.
That despite everything, she bloodylovedme.
I’d done enough terrible things to deserve bad karma. I didn’t understand why the people I loved paid the price.
When the surgeon had approached, scrubs creased, expression grave, I’d thought I was about to lose the only thing worth living for.
