Ruthless People (39 page)

He nodded and I left her in his care before running down the hall. This had to be
a distraction. They wanted something. The east wing was nothing but bedrooms, and
if they were smart, they had gotten blueprints of the house, which meant they knew
what was in the west wing. Some of our most important documents, cash, and codes were
kept in west wing.

Running up broken stairs, the heat of a bullet seared me as it pierced my shoulder
with so much force, I landed on my back and rolled down the stairs.

It was the woman I remembered seeing at Amory and Saige’s wedding smiled as she looked
down at me. “Oops, did I hurt you?”

I tried reaching for my gun, but she stomped on my hand.

“Do you even know who I am?” she hissed down at me, her gun pointed in my face. “Your
people killed my brother.”

“Sweetheart, we’ve killed a lot of people. I don’t give a fuck about your brother,
lady.” I said into the barrel of the gun.

“You bitch!” she screamed, but I would give her something to scream about. Grabbing
on to a nearby electrical wire, I pressed the exposed wires against her leg, turning
away as they sparked and shook her as though she was having a seizure.

Crawling away from her, I held my shoulder and tried to keep calm. I felt the urge
to grab my stomach, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t allow myself to
panic. But even knowing all that, I still found myself rubbing circles over my stomach
for a moment before I got back up and headed up the stairs.

When I entered the secret room, I found no one there. Pulling up our files, I began
to send them to other computers before deleting everything. I heard what sounded like
glass cracking and turned around, pointing my gun at the face of the devil’s mistress.
But the gun slipped from my hand as I glanced down at the blade in my stomach.

“I warned you,” Saige Valero said, laughing. It was the last thing I remembered before
everything went dark.

LIAM

“Hold him still,” I told Declan and Neal as they brought Amory to his knees in front
of me. The fucker thought he could out run me. The moment I had my hands on him, he
knew his life was over and the prick ran. I caught up to him in what was left of my
half-a-million-dollar garage.

Placing my brass knuckles on, I pounded his face.

“You thought you could come into my house,” I yelled as I broke his jaw. “You thought
you could destroy me?” I loved the sound of the bones in his face breaking with only
his skin to hold it together. “You thought you could burn my fucking house down!”
I couldn’t even see his face through all the blood.

“You thought you could hurt my family? You reckless”—his teeth burst out of his mouth
like popped corn—“idiotic”—
punch
—“motherfucking cunt!”
Punch.

The moment I stopped, the flesh of his nose was kissing his lips and one eye was out
of its socket.

“You? The great big piece of shit who no mother could love and no father could even
respect. But worst of all, the man-whore who just had to fuck up my motherfucking
day,” I sighed, wiping my nose before grabbing the chains.

“I saw this on a movie once,” I told him as Neal and Declan bound his feet and hands
to the ends of two different cars. “I always wanted to know if the human body would
actually rip apart.”

Amory coughed up more teeth as they bound him. “How’s your wife, Liam?”

It was only then did something click in my mind, and I felt my heart drop into my
stomach. However, I couldn’t let it play on my face. Instead, I nodded to the two
drivers and they begin to drive away from each other as Amory’s body rose from the
ground and his screams increased.

“I’ll be sure to mail this to your father,” I told him, nodding once more at the drivers,
and pushing it to full speed. I reveled in the sound of his cries as his body ripped
open. But looking up, his words still haunted me.

“Where the fuck is my wife?” I yelled over the roars of the engines, and as I did,
Olivia rushed in covered in blood. Neal didn’t even waste a moment, rushing to her
side, but she just pushed out of his arm and ran to me.

“Melody—she saved me, but . . .” She stammered, and stopped speaking the moment she
saw the two halves of Amory’s body.

“Olivia!” I yelled, grabbing her arms. “Where is my wife?”

Shaking, her eyes went wide. “She left me with Fedel, and he put me in one of the
safe rooms. But I saw on the camera, Saige . . . some room full of computers . . .
everything was . . . Melody didn’t see her . . . she . . . Saige . . .”

I never thought I would have to raise a hand to any woman in my family but in that
moment, I slapped her so hard she fell on the ground. Neal stepped forward, but Declan
held him back.

“Olivia, one last time . . .
Where. Is. My. Wife
?”

“Saige stabbed her in the stomach. Then Patrick came and helped Saige escape with
some documents. Sedric is with Melody now,” she sobbed.

I never ran so fast in my life. I felt as though I was possessed. I couldn’t see anything.
I couldn’t hear. And by God, I didn’t want to feel anything. The only room Melody
would go to would be in the west wing. She would have tried to protect our files.
Files they could have gotten with Patrick. I trusted him. I brought him into this
family. And he fucked me over. He had balls, but not for long. I stopped when my feet
could take me no further, and stared at the river of blood that led to my wife’s body.
My father hovered above her, his shirt off and wrapped around her body.

“Your mother has called an ambulance. I’ve stopped the bleeding for now, but . . .”
Falling to my knees, I wasn’t sure what to do. She looked so pale, so sick, and so
different from the woman I saw only a few hours ago.

“Liam,” my father snapped at me, trying to pull me from my despair. “Your wife will
live. Right now, you need to stay calm. Do you understand me?”

I nodded. All I could do was nod as though I was a fucking bobble head. “Patrick Darragh.
Patrick betrayed us. I—”

“Son, you have done your duty. The house is secure. Take care of your wife,” he said,
and I felt the pressure building up in the back of my throat. I wanted to hold her,
but I couldn’t, not without possibly causing any more damage. Kissing her forehead,
nose, and lips, it took all my willpower to back away as the paramedics came in.

MELODY

Everything hurt. Everything was darkness. But in that darkness, one voice rang out
louder and stronger than all the rest.

“Melody. My beautiful Melody. I’m right here.” He sounded so sad.

“Liam . . .” was all I could say before I drifted back into the darkness.

LIAM

“Mr. Callahan, don’t worry. We have the best doctors operating on your wife. If there
is anything—and I mean
anything
—” Grabbing her by the neck, I slammed her body against the wall.

“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Lewis?” Her eyes widened in fear, as she tried her
best to pull my hand away from her very narrow throat. I only squeezed tighter. “Are
you flirting with me while some idiot is sewing my wife back together? Tell me you
aren’t so I don’t have to rip your head from your shoulders, you classless, low-life,
idiotic bitch!”

“Please,” she cried, kicking her feet wildly.

“Liam, we are in public,” my mother whispered behind me.

“So? Who are you going to call?” I turned to the rest of the hospital staff. “I own
this motherfucking hospital, and I own this fucking city. If you didn’t know it before,
you know it now!”

Turning to the bitch as she turned blue, I glared into her eyes. “Never come near
me again or I swear on the head of your mother and father, I will kill you.”

Dropping her on the ground, I took my seat again, pulling out a cigarette as my father
handed me a lighter while mother frowned. It was the only thing that could calm me
down now. Neal held on to Olivia for dear life. Declan kept staring at Coraline as
if she could disappear at any moment. I knew they were still fighting or whatever
the fuck they were doing, but they would be fine. Despite the fact that she wasn’t
looking at him, she did allow him to hold her hand. The only ones who truly seemed
calm were my parents, but I knew it was simply due to the fact that they had done
this before. It wasn’t the first time we had lost a child because of the Valero, but
it would be the last. I would make sure of it. I did my best not to think about it.
But it left a burn in my chest and made my blood boil.

The moment the surgeon came out, we were all on our feet.

“Don’t waste words. How is she?”

“Mr. Callahan, your wife is fine and is now in her room. We did everything we could
for the child, but . . .”

Turning away from him, I nodded at Declan and Neal who already knew no one but family
and her doctors were to enter that room.

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Blake, sir, Dr. Nickolas Blake,” he said quickly, shaking my hand. I tried to leave
but my mother held on to me.

“Everyone go. We need a moment.” She said it in such a way that none of us could even
bring ourselves to argue. I had never heard so much anger roll off her tongue. She
and my father shared a quick glance before she pulled me off to the side.

“Mother, whatever it—”

“Right now, this very moment, will define you and your marriage forever,” she said.
In her eyes, all I saw was pain. “The wife you once knew is not going to be the same
woman you see when you walk into the room. Imagine that Melody ‘the Boss’ is simply
asleep and how you react will define how long she remains so. She needs to mourn.”

She doesn’t know my wife.
She didn’t even shed a tear after her father died.

“Mel isn’t the crying type.”

My mother slapped the back of my head, something only she could do. “You’re not listening
to me. Your wife was attacked. Her child was stolen from her. She isn’t the same ‘type’
you remember. At least not now. You have two choices—pull away or hold on to her even
when her words and actions hurt you. Because they will, believe me they will. Do not
make the same mistakes your father and I made.”

“You came through it,” I whispered. Here they were, so many years later, as in love
as ever.

She smiled, but it didn’t make her eyes shine like usual. “I asked for a divorce.
I had the papers drawn up and even called my cousin in Canada. Your father agreed.
Had you not gone to the hospital, we wouldn’t have made it. He couldn’t handle my
mood swings or all the names I called him. I couldn’t stop myself from blaming him.
We made it. But we made it through the hard way. So this, son, is your defining hour,
and how you react now will either break or make your future. Whatever pain and anger
you are holding on to let it go before you see her or you may just lose her.”

She kissed me on the cheek before leaving me standing there, unable to even speak.
I couldn’t even breathe. Walking into a nearby supply room, I let the tears fall for
the child I would never get to meet—who I would never get to know—and I tried to not
let myself grow angry with her. What was fucked up was the fact that my anger at Mel
overshadowed my anger at Saige. I told her not go. I told her to get in the fucking
safe room, but she didn’t listen. She never listened.

Slapping my cheeks, I took a deep breath before walking back out again. No one made
eye contact with me until I stood right outside her door. Neal and Declan were smart
enough to look away.

It felt like hours before I found the will to walk in, and to my surprise, Mel was
sitting up. She looked so dazed, like she had gone to war and come back, but nothing
was the same as it once was. Evelyn kissed her forehead, while Coraline gave her a
small hug. Olivia stayed back. She stood next to Sedric with her head hung low as
if she were some servant, and the sight of it pissed me off.

“Out,” was all I had to say before they left, and it was in that same moment that
I knew my mother was right. Never in all our months together had I ever see Mel jump
at my voice.

Taking a seat beside her, she shook her head at me as she fought the tears building
in her eyes.

“Say it,” she whispered.

“Say what?” Anything she wanted me to say I would say.

“Say it was my fault. Say I killed our child. Say it was for the greater good, because
I would have been a horrible mother anyway.”

Anything but that.
Taking off my jacket, I laid next her, pulling her into my arms.

“This was not your fault, and you did not kill our child. You would, and will, be
a great mother,” I whispered, kissing for forehead.

“Then why do I feel this way?” She held on to my shirt as she fought back her sobs.

I couldn’t answer, mostly because I couldn’t think of what to say. I felt so guilty
for thinking that this was her fault just moments ago. This was Saige. This was the
Valero, and they would pay dearly.

After Mel had gone to sleep, I let go of her and stepped out into the hallway.

Neal, Declan, Monte, Fedel, and my father all stood waiting. I didn’t trust any of
them. That’s what Patrick had done. He had broken the band of trust that we kept in
our innermost circles.