Page 100 of Unwillingly His

“No, not until we find her and make sure she’s okay.” I started digging again.

Luc tried arguing that I should let the professionals do this, but they weren’t as motivated as I was.

They didn’t have the woman they loved under the rubble, and they weren’t the ones to blame for all of this.

This was my fault.

I had lost my temper and fired Ronan’s fucking douchebag of a cousin. I had said things that he would be forced to respond to, and I had taken another stream of revenue from him.

I had turned my back on the O’Murphys and then underestimated how quickly they would respond.

This was a personal attack on me.

He was sending a message that he’d helped me build all of this and could just as easily tear it down.

Stella wasn’t even a target, but an innocent caught in the crossfire of a war she had no part in.

“Fuck!” I yelled as I hit the wood floor with nothing to show for it again.

I tried to calm down and think logically.

The blast had happened by the door. She was most likely by the bar. That had been the last of the bombs to go off. She may have been smart enough to get behind the heavy oak.

I looked over at where the door would have been, tried to estimate where the bar had been before the explosion to judge where to dig.

Luc was still right next to me, lifting with me, pulling away the debris, and looking for any sign.

We found a man I didn’t recognize. He was badly bruised, judging by the gut-wrenching angles some of his limbs were in. He had broken several bones. But he was alive and barely conscious.

Luc yelled for the paramedics while I looked at the man. “Where is Stella?”

His eyes looked glazed. I knew he was hurt, but I was desperate.

For the first time in my life, I begged, “Please, try and think. Please, I need to find her.”

“The blast sent her that way,” he said, pointing in the vague direction we’d found the other girl. The other woman was much taller than Stella. Maybe if she was blown back by the blast, Stella had gone farther.

I handed the man over to the paramedics surrounding me and moved out of the way, heading over to where we’d found the other girl and scrambled to move the bricks and debris.

I gave everything I had, every ounce of determination and strength to find her. The sun began to set, and most of the rescue teams had already departed, having no hope of any more survivors.

But I was not giving up.

Then I saw it: one of her bright pink shoes that matched her hair.

She was so excited when she found them and insisted on showing them off the second she came home from shopping with Olivia.

I remembered the way the sharp stilettos dug into my back as I made her scream my name, wearing nothing but those shoes.

“Over here,” I called as I dug faster.

The dull aches disappeared into a second wind as I pushed to find her.

Finally, I pulled off a large piece of drywall to see her lying crushed in a pile of broken wood.

A small trail of blood was coming from her lips, and her skin was so pale.

I lunged for her, pulling her into my arms and holding her cold body to my chest.

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