Chapter 514:

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“The bullet went through his upper arm,” Kip said, choosing his words carefully. “It grazed the brachial artery. He lost a lot of blood, but it missed the bone, missed the nerve. The surgeon said he was lucky. They’ve repaired the vessel.”

Lucky. Artery. Bullet. The words spun in her head, and the room tilted violently. She gripped the bed rail to keep from falling.

She took a series of deep, shuddering breaths, forcing the blackness at the edge of her vision to recede. When she could focus again, she looked at Adam, her eyes filled with a terrifying combination of rage and fear.

“Who did this? Baker?”

𝗧h𝘦 𝗆oѕt 𝗽o𝘱u𝗹𝖺r 𝘯o𝘃𝘦𝗹𝘴 𝗼n 𝗀а𝗅ո𝗈𝘷𝘦𝗅s.соm

A cold, dangerous light entered Adam’s eyes. He shook his head. “No. He doesn’t have the courage. Or the resources.”

The certainty in his voice chilled her. If not Baker, then who?

“Then who was it?” she demanded.

Adam’s face became a closed, guarded mask. He wasn’t going to tell her. He wasn’t going to pull her deeper into his dark, violent world.

Kip answered for him. “We don’t know yet. They were ghosts. No license plates, no witnesses who saw their faces.”

She knew they were hiding something, but her mind couldn’t process it right now. All she could see was Adam, pale and wounded in the hospital bed. The man who was supposed to be invincible.

All the anger, all the fear, all the questions melted away, leaving only a single, overwhelming emotion: a deep, aching, unbearable tenderness.

She reached out, her hand trembling, and this time, she didn’t pull back. She gently took his uninjured hand, her fingers lacing through his. His skin was cold.

The dam of Allison’s control, which had been cracking since Kip’s phone call, finally broke. Now that she knew he wasn’t dying, the terror she had been holding at bay for the past hour came rushing in, a tidal wave of delayed shock and gut-wrenching fear.

Her shoulders began to shake. A choked sob escaped her lips. She collapsed forward, her head resting on the edge of the mattress, still clutching his hand. She wept.

It was not a quiet, dignified crying. It was a storm of raw, ragged sobs, the sound of a heart that had been stretched to its absolute breaking point. She cried for the blood on his bandages, for the coldness of his skin, for the terrifying image of him lying unconscious in a parking garage. She cried with the sheer, overwhelming relief that he was still breathing, still here.

Adam watched her, his stoic mask crumbling. A look of profound guilt and pain crossed his face. He hated that he was the cause of these tears. With his good hand, he reached out and awkwardly stroked her hair, his fingers clumsy but gentle.

“Shh. I’m okay, Allison. Don’t cry,” he murmured, his voice softer than she had ever heard it.

Kip, standing by the door, took in the scene. He recognized it for what it was: a moment of sacred, painful intimacy. He backed out of the room without a sound, pulling the heavy door closed behind him, granting them privacy.

The only sounds in the room were Allison’s weeping and the soft, rhythmic beep of the heart monitor.

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