Page 96 of Unveiled

“Ainsley, stay awake,” I hear him say just as I fall to my knees next to her, pulling her from his arms and into my lap.

“Open your eyes, baby. Fucking open them,” I beg her, screaming as my heart freezes over, refusing to feel the pain of this moment. My entire body is numb.

Ainsley’s eyes crack open and try to focus on me, but they quickly fall shut as sleep tries to claim her. “You should’ve tortured him,” she whispers.

A small smile spreads on her face before dropping. As her eyes close and her body grows heavier, blood trickles from her parted lips.

Chapter 40

The Monster

Rain soaks through my jacket as lightning strikes across the sky. Ainsley would have hated this. Thunderstorms always terrified her, even if she would never admit it.

Shivers rack my body as I stand here, looking at the pile of dirt that disrupts the perfectly green grass. I watched as they filled the hole in the ground with dirt, forever sealing the casket buried within, and still felt nothing but numbness.

“Boss,” I hear Jonah say from behind me. He’s stayed behind me the whole time, the only person remaining with me after everyone else decided it was time to leave.

He doesn’t say the words, but I know he’s telling me it’s time to leave. We’re both soaked and frozen to our cores; despite that, neither of us moves to walk away from the grave.

Somewhere in the distance, I hear a phone ringing. It’s not until I hear footsteps walking away from me that I realize it’s Jonah’s phone. As he walks away, leaving me alone for the first time today, I lean over the grave and close my eyes.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” I whisper to the dirt. “You were supposed to come back with me. You were supposed to stay by my side. How am I supposed to do this without you? You’ve been there for me through it all. You deserved so much better than the hand that fate dealt you. I’m so sorry we never fixed things between us.”

Jonah clears his throat as he approaches again, standing at my back and waiting for me to acknowledge him. As I stand up, he speaks.

“Boss, she’s awake,” he tells me. “She’s asking for you.”

With one last look at the mound of dirt, I say a last goodbye to the man buried in the Earth. My best friend since childhood, my right-hand man, the only person in the world that knows everything about me.

“Rest easy, John. I’ll see you on the other side.”

My suit drips as I walk through the halls of the hospital until I reach her room. I pause at the door, not ready to face her after everything that happened. This is where she’s going to tell me she never wants to see me again. She’ll tell me to walk out of her life and never come back, and I won’t be able to fight her.

Jonah stays behind as I grit my teeth and enter the room. The sound of machines fill the room, from the one monitoring her heartbeat to the one pumping oxygen into the tube around her nose. Her eyes open just a crack as I enter the room, but when she recognizes me, she opens them wider.

“Cain,” she breathes, sounding almost relieved to see me. I don’t read too much into it, not wanting to give myself false hope. She’s probably just relieved to get this over with and know that she won’t have to see me again.

“How are you feeling, little one?” I ask as I sit on the edge of her bed, wanting to be as close to her as possible while I can.

She chuckles and winces in pain as she realizes how much it hurts to laugh after being shot in the abdomen. “Like shit. What happened?”

A sigh escapes me. I can’t keep this from her, but I wish I could.

“You were shot, Ainsley. You did such a good job getting out of his hold, just like I taught you, but he shot you as you were running to Jonah.”

Her eyes glaze over as the memory comes back to her, and she’s forced to relive it. Pain is etched into her face and quickly replaced with panic.

“Where’s Jonah?”

I look toward the door just as Jonah pokes his head in, giving her a small smile. “Right here, little bird.”

She smiles at him, and he pulls his head back out, giving us some semblance of privacy again.

“There were three shots,” she remembers.

My head hangs low between my shoulders as my elbows rest on my knees, reliving the sounds of the shots bouncing off the walls. When the gun went off, I never imagined it would have hit a mark.

“When the gun went off the first time, the bullet hit John,” I tell her with my head still hanging, not wanting her to see how ashamed I am of myself for how that night turned out. “My father recovered quickly and shot you before I could stop him, and the third bullet came from me. I didn’t miss.”

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