Page 72 of Her Protector Daddies

“No he fucking isn’t,” I snapped, stalking forward. “On whose orders?”

“The Chief?” The Officer held up release papers and my pounding heart sank. “Chief signed the release order, said there’s nothing to hold Andrés on so he’s free to go.”

“Nothing to—!” Anger consumed me so savagely that I couldn’t speak.

“I usually have a lack of faith in the justice system,” Andrés sneered, pressing his hands together like a prayer. “But today? Today is good.”

My fist raised but before I could launch into the attack I craved on this bastard, Jay breathlessly dove between us and blocked me, then he turned to the Officer.

“Put him back in his cell,” he panted.

“What?” Andrés and the Officer spoke in unison.

Jay’s eyes locked onto mine, his gaze misty.

“Selena’s awake,” he gasped, breathless from his run down here. “She ID’d Andrés as her shooter. She’s awake. She’s alive.”

“Oh my god.” Weakness swept through my entire body and I clutched at Jay’s arm.

Chief or no Chief, Andrés wasn’t going anywhere.

27

SELENA

Being shot sucked.

At first, the painkillers were so high that I couldn’t feel a thing, and that was bliss when it came to making sure someone took my statement. The best thing about being numb was that the painkillers also numbed my emotional pain so I could talk about what happened as easily as reciting a grocery list.

It was after that when things started to get painful.

The strongest painkillers wore off, and I turned to distracting myself by counting the squint ceiling tiles above my bed. It helped keep the flashbacks at bay.

Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in Andrés arms fighting for my life as he and his bodyguards wrestled me down the alley and away from the party. The phantom press of the bulky guard’s hand over my mouth lingered across my face no matter how often I reached up to check that he wasn’t still there. Then, the cold, hard press of metal against my stomach as they forced me into the car at gunpoint. I don’t know how long we drove before they tipped me out into an alley and my body exploded with white-hot pain.

Then, there was nothing but darkness.

It played on a loop in my mind as nurses and doctors came in to check on me and left with promising smiles. I was missing part of my liver from one bullet while the other had thankfully avoided everything vital. Then they dropped a bombshell that left nausea churning in my gut. During the surgery, they discovered I was two months pregnant and had altered my medication to align with that fact. Those words didn’t feel real, not in the grand scheme of everything that happened, and I made the doctor repeat the news several times before I was convinced I wasn’t hallucinating.

Pregnant.

Me?

I’d lost track of my period with how insane these past few months had been but given the implant in my arm, pregnancy had never crossed my mind. My doctor was kind enough to inform me of how fluctuations in stress and hormones, especially to the degree I suffered, could render the implant ineffective.

Clearly.

They told me how lucky I was that I was found when I was; otherwise, I certainly would have died in that alley from blood loss.

I didn’t feel lucky.

I felt raw all over. Every breath was tight and my limbs ached in ways that didn’t make sense in my mind since I had only been shot in my body. And I was pregnant. It was impossible to think back to who the father could be, but given my dry spell before I met Tyler, I was certain the father had to be one of the three men I’d come to love.

It was too much to process all at once.

Still, I was alive and as the hours ticked by with me becoming more and more awake, I found myself staring at the door every time I heard even the slightest sound, desperate for a familiar face or three to help keep the flashbacks at bay.

They arrived a little after 8pm, just after I’d finished having a very small meal of soup that was basically flavored water.

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