Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 39123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 196(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39123 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 196(@200wpm)___ 156(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
My chest was caving in, and my stomach revolted, threatening to make me spew the coffee I’d managed to get down that morning.
“What do you mean he’s in bad shape?” I asked, terrified of the answer but needing to know. “What the fuck do you mean, Trigger?” I demanded again when he remained silent.
“I had to bring him to a hospital.” I sobbed, squeezing my eyes shut. The club didn’t bother with hospitals, not when they had people at their disposal to nurse us back to health right here in this clubhouse. Chase hadn’t even taken me to a hospital when I’d been raped and beaten. For Trigger to have taken Chase to one…
“Oh, God,” I wailed.
“Sophia, I need you to be calm for this,” Trigger said, his voice hardening a bit, forcing me to rein my terror and fear in. I trembled as I sucked in a deep breath, trying to force myself to calm down. To hear Trigger out. To find out more about Chase’s condition. “He’s been cut up pretty badly, and he’s lost a lot of blood. And there’s… Fuck, Soph, there’s rectal bleeding and tearing.” No. No. No. No. No. Not him. Not my Chase. Not him, too. “The doctor confirmed he was raped… more than likely multiple times.”
“No!” I screamed, folding in on myself. “No, no, no!” I cried. I slammed my fists on the floor, a scream tearing from my throat. “Not him. Not him!”
“Sophia!” Trigger shouted, but I was crying too hard to answer. I pulled at my hair, uncontrollable sobs tearing from my throat. The door to the kitchen banged open, and then Jessica was there, wrapping me in her arms and holding me tight.
“Trigger?” Scorpion asked from above us. I couldn’t hear Trigger’s voice anymore. I clung to Jessica, sobbing my fucking heart out. Not Chase. “Yeah, brother. Jessica’s got her. We’ll take care of her. Focus on getting Chase home to her.”
He ended the call, pocketing my phone. He rested a hand on my shoulder as he crouched in front of us. I could barely make out his face through my tears. “Go on upstairs with Jessica,” he said, his voice low and soft. “I think you need some sleep. Chase is safe now. Yes, he has a long road of recovery ahead of him, but the doctors have assured Trigger numerous times that he’s going to pull through.”
“He—He…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. He’d been raped. Cut. Tortured.
Not my Chase.
Pain bled into Scorpion’s eyes. “I know,” he said quietly. His hand squeezed my shoulder just as his wife’s arms tightened around me. “I know.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, pain for Chase slicing through every fucking part of me.
Why him?
12
Chase
The first thing I was aware of was that I was definitely a bit high because the only time I felt like I was floating on a cloud was when I was on something good. I slowly peeled my eyes open, squinting against the dim lighting of the room to stare up at the generic, white ceiling. Where the fuck—
A beeping noise reached my ears, and when I shifted my arm, I could feel a needle in my elbow.
Trigger fucking didn’t.
Turning my head, I glowered at the machines next to me. He did. He brought me to a fucking hospital. Had I really been that bad off? Trigger was the last person in this world I ever expected to go against club rules. We always tried to fix our shit at home first. A hospital was a last resort and usually only in a life or death situation.
Shifting a little, I winced when stitches pulled my skin tight across numerous parts of my body, but the place that pulled the most was my chest.
My chest…
Fuck.
“Christ,” I rasped. I was a marked man. Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath, forcing myself to remain calm. Freaking out wouldn’t do me any good. I just had to figure out where to go from here. No doubt, if anyone had made it out of that place alive, the Russians knew I was marked. They’d keep coming after me.
And if Scorpion or Johnston found out… well, they had every right to put a bullet through my skull. I made the clubs an even bigger target. I was a liability.
I groaned when I tried shifting again, and then, Trigger was suddenly on his feet, his gun in his hand. I blinked in surprise when he looked down at me, his brows furrowed low over his dark eyes.
“Put the gun away,” I rasped, my throat feeling raw as fuck. “Ain’t no threat here, Trigger.”
Trigger didn’t put his gun away. He just set it beside my hip on the bed, then gripped my chin in a gentle yet firm grip and leaned down, slanting his lips across mine. A soft moan crawled up my throat, and I sank into the hard mattress behind me, my eyelids fluttering closed. Reaching up with the arm that didn’t have an IV needle in it, I wrapped my palm around the back of Trigger’s neck, holding him to me.