Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
A man’s curse sounded beyond the rubble.
I went to fire.
A click of a weapon being loaded.
My head swam.
My vision hazed as I saw past this life to another. A fork in my path. A white bright light beckoning me to go.
Fucking finally.
The savage agony of losing Ily.
The endless loneliness.
The eternal darkness.
Over.
My fingers unlocked around the gun.
It dropped from my woozy grasp and bounced against the floor.
Spreading my arms wide, my blood-soaked cast heavy with murder, I waited for mine. I bared my teeth. “Do it.”
A crunch of shoes on broken glass.
I closed my eyes as the smoke cleared and waited for the final blow.
I shivered with nirvana.
I tumbled backward into all my grief.
And…something pummelled into me.
Something warm and solid and painful.
Staggering back, I dropped to my knees.
My heart kept labouring. My lungs kept inflating.
Not dead.
Why am I not fucking dead?!
Pure fury roared through me that these cunts couldn’t even kill me right.
But then my eyes opened.
And death paused.
The white light summoning me snuffed out. The wooziness and weakness all vanished.
“I-Ily?”
A hallucination. A mirage. A pretty convincing one but not real.
Christ, how I wish you were real.
Grabbing her in my arms, I waited for the vision to puff into nothingness. I clung to her, begging her to take me with her.
Only…she didn’t disappear. She didn’t leave me like she had before.
I froze and tore back. With shaking hands, I cupped her cheeks and stared into her golden glowing eyes. “A-Are you truly here? How—how is this possible?”
She broke into sobs and crawled into me. “It’s me. It’s me. God, Henri.”
She kissed me with a million kisses. She shuddered in my arms and touched every inch of my bloody skin.
Q stepped out of the smoke behind her.
Behind him, a mountain of corpses hinted he’d been busy before I’d arrived.
For a second, every cell in my body touched pure happiness.
But then the darkness swooped.
And claimed me.
Chapter Thirty-Three
………………………….
Ily
IT TOOK FOUR DAYS FOR HENRI to wake up.
I didn’t like to think it was karma giving me a dose of my own medicine. Teaching me how helpless and lost Henri would’ve felt seeing me in bed, unable to be reached.
I never left his bedside. Q put him in the same bedroom where I’d recovered. The silver-and-white decor was so bright and cheery compared to the melancholy worry in my heart.
Once again, I found myself housed in a great château in France—getting in the way as doctors sewed up Henri’s leg and arm, gave him intravenous antibiotics, and anything else his body needed to stay alive. They removed his bloody cast, leaving the bump from his healing bone visible, adding yet another injury to his long list.
On the fourth morning with him mumbling in his sleep but refusing to open his eyes, the door opened, and a beautiful blonde stepped in. I’d met her before. Yet we hadn’t talked much.
Tess, Q’s wife, carried a tray with a delicious-looking club sandwich and some homemade fries. Placing it on the bedside table, she gave me a soft smile. “How’re you doing?”
I smiled back, holding Henri’s hand. I squeezed his fingers so damn hard, hoping he knew I was here, waiting. “I’ll be better when he wakes.”
“Mind if I sit?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Dragging a chair from the window, she sat and studied Henri. He had more colour in his cheeks than he did in Tuscany. When he’d thrown that grenade and Franco snatched me and bolted, I didn’t know if Henri had killed himself.
When the smoke had cleared and he’d spread his arms, inviting anyone to shoot him, my heart had utterly broken.
I’d always known he carried such darkness.
I’d hoped I’d been able to heal that a little.
But until now, with him unconscious despite all the care and healing he’d received, I hadn’t understood. Not really. I’d never been truly alone. Never been hated. Never been judged or feared or mistrusted.
But he had.
And it’d changed him on a molecular level.
I was out of my mind with worry.
I paced the room and begged him to wake up. But I never once thought of ending my life because I knew the power of love.
My parents called twice a day. Krish messaged me often.
I had their support.
I knew I would be missed.
I just needed Henri to realise he had that gift too.
Q visited him often but didn’t say anything.
Suzette, the housekeeper, seemed particularly distraught and even Franco—the man who looked as mean as any Master on Victor’s island—squeezed Henri’s shoulder and told him to fight.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I’d whispered last night. “You have a family who really, really wants to love you, Hen. So please…open your eyes and live.”
Laughing a little under her breath, Tess grinned. “You know…I thought I had it rough when I first fell in love with a Mercer, but you?” She shrugged. “You win.”
I appreciated her attempt at joviality, but I couldn’t quite muster a laugh. “He’s definitely been…tricky.”