Page 85 of The Captive
The third was overkill—but I wanted to be sure. Needed to be sure. The bullet caught her dead centre in the forehead, and for a split second, her wild eyes went wide with shock before the back of her skull erupted like a fucking melon against the wall. Chunks of bone and grey matter splattered across the stone, painting it all with the contents of her diseased mind.
She toppled backward, arms windmilling uselessly as gravity claimed her. Her body hit the floor with a wet thud that echoed through the lodge—designer dress riding up around her thighs, blonde hair fanned out in a crimson halo, three neat holes pumping blood onto the floor.
Dead. Finally fucking dead.
I stared at her corpse, waiting for something—regret, satisfaction, anything. But there was nothing. Just cold clarity. The rabid dog had been put down. The threat to what was mine had been eliminated.
My chest rose and fell steadily as I watched her blood pool around expensive fabric. No remorse. No second thoughts. Only the primitive satisfaction of having defending my territory, my mate, my everything.
She'd made her choice when she pulled that trigger. Made it when she decided Aoife had to die for the crime of being wanted, chosen … loved.
Now she could rot in hell.
But the pleasure of dispatching her lasted only seconds before reality crashed back. Aoife. Christ,Aoife.
"No, no, no," I whispered, dropping the gun and falling to my knees beside her. Her breathing was shallow, laboured, each exhale weaker than the last. "Aoife!"
I pressed both hands against the wound in her abdomen, feeling her life pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat. The bullet had torn through soft tissue, possibly nicking organs. Internal bleeding. Shock. All the clinical terms I'd learned during field medical training couldn't prepare me for this—for watching the woman I loved dying in my arms.
"Stay with me, beautiful," I commanded, my voice breaking despite my efforts to remain controlled. "That's a fucking order."
Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused but finding mine. "Alexander..." she whispered, voice barely audible over the sound of my thundering heart.
"Don't you dare," I growled, one hand maintaining pressure on her wound while the other fumbled for my phone. Blood—her blood—made my fingers slip on the screen. "Don't you fucking dare leave me now."
This couldn't be happening. Not after everything we'd survived. Not when I'd finally found something worth more than the carefully constructed life I'd built from nothing.
"Boss?" Coyne's voice was alert despite the late hour.
"Shooting at the hunting lodge!" I barked, my voice raw with desperation I couldn't hide. "Aoife's hit in the abdomen. I need a medevac helicopter NOW. Call ahead to City Hospital—gunshot wound to the torso, possible organ damage, massive blood loss."
"On it. ETA?—"
"Five minutes or less, Coyne. Or I'll find someone who can."
I ended the call, dropping the phone to cradle Aoife's face in my bloodstained hand. Her skin was growing pale, taking on that waxy pallor I'd seen on dying men in combat zones. The sight of it on her face—her beautiful, defiant, aristocratic face—nearly broke something fundamental inside me.
"Look at me," I commanded, my thumb tracing her cheek, leaving streaks of crimson on porcelain skin. "Keep your eyes open, Aoife. You don't get to leave me. Not now. Not ever."
She managed a weak smile that tore at my chest. "Still giving orders ... even now."
"Always," I said, pressing harder against the wound, feeling her blood pulse between my fingers with each heartbeat. Each beat seemed weaker than the last, and the knowledge that I was losing her second by the second made me want to howl like a wounded animal. "You don't get to die on me, O'Malley. We have too much unfinished business."
"What kind of ... business?" she whispered, and I could hear the effort it took to form the words.
"The kind where you marry me," I said without thinking, the words torn from some desperate place I didn't know existed. "The kind where we build something together. The kind where I get to wake up next to you every morning for the next fifty years."
Her fingers found mine, cold and trembling but real. "The things... you said... before..."
"I meant every goddamn word." I leaned closer, my forehead touching hers, breathing in her scent beneath the copper smell of blood. "I love you, Aoife. I love you more than anything in this fucked-up world, and you're going to live because I refuse to lose the only good thing that's ever been mine."
Tears I didn't know I was capable of tracked down my cheeks, mixing with her blood on my hands. When had I last cried? When my mother died? Never since then. But watching Aoife fade in my arms stripped away twenty years of careful control, reduced me to the terrified boy who'd lost everything once before.
"You hear me?" I whispered fiercely. "You're mine now. You don't get to leave. I won't let you."
Minutes crawled by like hours. Each second stretched into an eternity as I watched Aoife's breathing grow shallower, her skin taking on that waxy pallor that made my chest constrictwith panic. I'd faced down armies, survived torture, killed more men than I could count—but nothing had ever terrified me like watching her slip away.
I could hear vehicles in the distance—the growl of engines pushing hard through country roads, racing against time and death.
