Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106541 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 533(@200wpm)___ 426(@250wpm)___ 355(@300wpm)
“I saw her a couple of hours ago. She was fine then.” I am a lying prick. She was surrounded by glass and had a bruise on her neck. A bruised I placed there.
I stop curling an invisible noose around my neck when the doctor lifts Katie’s nightie. I marked her neck and nicked her feet with glass, but my boot got nowhere near her stomach, and there’s no denying the imprint stretched from one side of her stomach to the next.
For the first time in the years I’ve known him, the doctor sounds sincere while saying, “If she is retaining product from a miscarriage, she could go into sepsis.” Every threat I’ve ever given feels weak when he murmurs, “She could die.”
“Then fucking fix her.”
The equipment on his trolley of torture litter the floor when I lose my temper. I’m not solely angry about the tiny whimpers still escaping Katie’s mouth as her eyes roll into the back of her head. I’m fucking furious about the doctor’s whispered reply, “I don’t know if I have the equipment needed to do an emergency D&C.”
“You kill my nieces every couple of months, but now you have the hide to tell me you don’t have the equipment to save Katie’s life.” My gun is removed before I know what I’m thinking, and a bullet rips through his temple even quicker than that.
Katie doesn’t flinch or scream. She does nothing but writhe in pain, and it fucking kills me to witness. It thrusts me back to when Lera was cut out of Sofia’s stomach two months too early, and the wailing screams she omitted when I found her in the dumpster outside the compound I was dumped in three decades earlier. She was naked and tossed away like trash.
I almost killed Kirill that day. The only thing that stopped me was that I couldn’t get to him without killing Sofia as well. She guarded him with her body.
Things haven’t been the same for us since that day.
I’ve killed hundreds of men, possibly thousands, but they’ve never been slow and torturous deaths like Katie is currently enduring. I put them out of their misery as fast as possible. I don’t stomp on them and wait for the internal bleeding to take hold.
This is a cruel fucking death to a woman not deserving of the pain.
Just as my desperation reaches an all-time high, Sofia enters the room. “You need to get her temperature down.” She races for the detached bathroom. “Sepsis won’t be a problem unless the fetus doesn’t break down properly.” She switches on the faucet over the bathtub before checking the temperature. “Her fever has more chance of killing her now.” When she returns to the bedroom, she gathers towels and washcloths the maids left this morning before dumping them on a shelf next to the tub. “If she starts shivering, you need to increase the water temp or remove her from it entirely.” After swirling her fingers through the full tub, she slings her eyes to me. “Now, Ghost. You don’t have a minute to spare.”
The confidence in her tone has me jumping into action. After lifting a flopped and lifeless Katie into my arms, I enter the bathroom and walk us toward the tub. It is far too big for her tiny frame, so instead of gently lowering her into the lukewarm water, I toe off my shoes and slip in with her held in close to my chest.
“Gh-Ghost,” Katie whimpers again when the tempered water graces her burning skin.
“Shh… маленький ягненок. I am here.” I unbutton the top few buttons on my dress shirt then rest her head on my pec before removing the strands of red hair sticking to her sweat-dotted face. “I’m not going anywhere.”
It only takes three swipes of the drenched cloth over her temple for the pained movements of her eyes to lessen, but it will take a lifetime for my guilt to end—if it ever does.
She’s on the cusp of death, but instead of seeking solace during her final hours from a deserving man, her mouth only mutters one name on repeat.
Mine.
32
KATIE
It takes everything I have to lift my head.
I’m weak, thirsty, and my temples are throbbing.
Is this what it would have felt like to be hungover?
“It is an IV line.”
When Ghost’s acknowledgment of the object I’m grabbing offers little assurance, I shoot up to a half-seated position.
Wrong move.
I’m too dizzy not to vomit. Mercifully, this time around, Ghost is prepared for the deluge. He catches the slop spilling from my mouth with a bucket before wiping away the frothy dribble dangling off my chin with a washcloth.
“Where am I?”
It is a preposterous question but give me some leeway. I’m having a hard time remembering anything, much less that I’m a captive of a Russian mafia entity.