Page 59 of Sinful Empire (Mount Trilogy 3)
My eyelids are so heavy. I draw in a breath, but a weight sits on my chest. “Uhhh.”
“Keira! Honey! Come back to us. Please.”
A hand grips mine and squeezes. My vision blurs around the edges as I force my eyes open.
I want to ask, What happened? But it comes out more like “Whaaarrrppp?”
“You’re okay. You’re going to be fine, Keira. Just fine.”
My throat hurts. My shoulder hurts. My head hurts. Everything hurts. I feel like I never want to move again.
I swear I’ve felt like this before.
White walls. Antiseptic. Beeping.
Am I dreaming?
A voice in my head yells at me to wake the hell up, and I blink twice before my sight clears.
But the face in front of mine isn’t the one I expected to see.
I jerk up in the hospital bed, my head swiveling from side to side. There’s no empty bed beside mine this time.
I groan, trying to force another sound from my throat, but it comes out as a scratchy moan.
Where is he? That’s the first thought that enters my brain. Where is Lachlan?
But it’s not the question that leaves my lips.
“Mom?”
“Thank God. Don’t you ever scare us like that again.” Her green eyes, a shade darker than my own, fill with tears, and her face looks years older than it did in the last picture I saw of her.
“Sweet Jesus. Thank you, Lord.” My dad’s deep voice overpowers hers as he steps into my field of vision.
“Dad?” It doesn’t make sense. How did my parents get here? And where is Lachlan? “How—”
“Shhh, honey. Don’t talk. They had you under for hours in surgery. They said your throat would hurt from the breathing tube. Jesus Christ, when we got the call from the alarm company and then you didn’t answer, and then Millie called a few hours later saying you’d come in alone in an ambulance—” Alone? My mom’s voice breaks. “We broke every law to get here as fast as we could. She didn’t know if you were going to make it.”
Millie? My brain is slow to start chugging along as I search the room again, looking beyond them for the one face I need to see but know I won’t find.
Millie. My mom’s cousin, and an ER nurse. That explains how my parents found out . . . but alone?
“What happened?” I ask again, my brain fuzzy from whatever drugs they’ve pumped through me. “Where—”
“You were shot,” my dad says. “EMTs and the ambulance that brought you in are missing. What the fuck happened to you, girl?” My dad’s tone is layered with anger and fear, and more emotion that I’ve heard from him in a long time.
When I swallow and my lips crack, my mom springs into action.
“Water. You need water.” She has the bendy straw to my mouth before I can reply.
I take a sip, and it trickles down my throat with cool relief. “Shot?”
“Shhh, honey. It’s okay. You don’t need to worry right now. Just . . . rest. We’re just so happy to see your pretty eyes. Let me call for the nurse.”
“I need to know who the hell hurt my little girl, so I can get my shotgun and shovel and take care of business.” My dad’s gruff words pull me further out of the haze.
“I don’t know,” I murmur, and close my eyes. They’re still so freaking heavy.
