Page 113 of Release Me

The second thing I notice is the shopping bags on the dining table and the stroller parked beside it. It’s enough to distract me from the silence, to pull me over to the table, where I look through several of the bags and see baby clothes as well as a wide range of items meant to announce a pregnancy to family members. My favorite thing is the onesie Nadia left sitting on the table because I know she bought it with my parents in mind. I clutch it between my fingers as I move toward the bedrooms to find her and ask if this means that we can finally tell people.

Our room is empty, but the bathroom door is cracked and there’s water running, which means she’s probably about to take a bath. I push the door open with a smile on my face that dies a quick and painful death when I see her on the floor, curled into a ball with her arms around her stomach. The onesie falls from my hand, and I watch in horror as the white cotton flutters to the ground, landing in a puddle of water tinged red with Nadia’s blood.

“Oh, baby,” I sink to my knees and crawl over to her, afraid to touch her because she’s so still and I’m scared she might be cold to the touch, because I don’t know where the blood is coming from and I don’t want to make it worse.

God, could it get any worse?

Her lip is swollen and bleeding, her face is bruised. Everything is bruised. I ghost fingers over her side, noting the angry flares of blue and purple under her skin, and I don’t even realize that I’m crying until I taste the salt of my tears on my lips. I don’t even realize I’m screaming for help until the bathroom is filled with the voices of my two security guards—Bruce and Kendall—coming from behind me. I throw myself over Nadia’s bloody and broken form, shielding her from their eyes.

“What the fuck happened?” Bruce asks, holstering his gun.

I can’t answer him even though I know exactly what happened: I failed her. I told Nadia she would be safe, I told her I would protect her, and I failed her because Beau got to her. He came into our home, and he hurt her again because I wasn’t here.

Kendall drops to his haunches beside me and reaches for Nadia, presumably to check for her pulse because she’s so still, but I shove him way. “Get the fuck away from her!”

His eyes go wide as he hits the side of the tub. “We need to know if she’s alive.”

“Don’t fucking touch her,” I growl through clenched teeth.

“Sebastian.” Bruce runs a hand over his head, everything about his tone and posture indicating that he’s about to try to reason with a mad man. “We won’t touch her, but we need to know if she’s alive. We need to get her some help, okay?”

Kendall pulls out his phone. “I’m going to call 911.”

The mention of the police, in even the vaguest of terms, brings me back to myself, back to the part of me that looks at situations like these and thinks several steps ahead. My priority is getting Nadia help, but I won’t take her back to the same hospitals that failed her over and over again. I won’t let this attempt on her life, on our baby’s life, be written off by cops that might still owe the perpetrator a favor or two.

Nadia’s health and well being is a private matter that will be handled with care and discretion by a team I trust. And the justice that needs to be exacted on her behalf won’t be found in a courtroom, or handed out by some judge who’ll take one look at Beau’s pale skin and blonde hair and say he’s a good boy who made a mistake. It’ll be doled out by me, and I won’t be fair, diplomatic or judicial.

“No.” I shake my head, digging my phone out and unlocking it before tossing it to him. “Chantel McCarthy. You call her and only her, tell her to get here now.”

The firmness in my tone sets Kendall in motion because he pushes to his feet and starts dialing, walking out of the room to handle the call and tracking water everywhere. Bruce is still behind me, waiting for an order.

“Bruce, grab the robe on the door and hand it to me.” He does what I say, averting his eyes from Nadia’s body when I sit up to take it from his hand. “And please turn that fucking water off.”

“You can’t move her,” he says, leaning over the tub to shut off the faucet. “Not even to put that robe on her. She could have a spinal injury and moving her will make it worse.”

He’s right. God, I fucking hate that he’s right. I fucking hate that the love of my life is lying here like this, hurt and vulnerable and there’s nothing I can do to fix it except drape a fucking robe over her and pray Chantel and her team—a group of doctors with varying areas of expertise that all specialize in concierge care people like me pay an arm and a leg for—get here soon.

A moan that’s all pain and sorrow pulls me out of my head and back to Nadia. To her bruised face, to her swollen lips and her rasp of a voice that says my name over and over again.

“I’m here, precious.” My hands cradle her head gingerly, and she looks at me with eyes that struggle to focus. “I’m right here.”

“Sebastian.” Her face crumples as tears skate through the dried blood under her right eye. “It hurts. Everything hurts.”

Despite the pain, she still tries to move when I lift off of her, still tries to use her hands to conduct her own examination of her stomach. “I tried to protect the baby. I tried.”

Between the tears and her shaking fingers, I’m already in the midst of unraveling. Coming apart in a way that there’s no coming back from, but when I look down and realize for the first time that the blood on the floor, the blood mixing with the water from the overflowing tub, the blood soaking into the fabric of my pants, is coming from between her legs, I’m no longer coming apart. I’m completely undone.

And still, I have to hold it together because she doesn’t know. She can’t know that the life we created is in jeopardy, she can’t know that I failed them both so fucking spectacularly.

“I know, baby. I know.” I cover her body with mine, careful not to put any of my weight on her when I press a ghost of a kiss to her forehead. “Please don’t move, help will be here soon.”

“I was so stupid. I sent everyone home, and I was alone.” More tears gather in her eyes, and her bottom lip trembles. “I didn’t even hear them come in.”

“Them?” Any answer she planned to give me is stolen by an interruption in her consciousness and panic winds itself around my ribs. “Nadia? Baby, can you hear me?”

Her eyes flutter open and then close again, but she doesn’t answer me. I don’t think she can.

“They’re in here!”

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