Page 109 of Seizing Control: Part Two

Picture them around Jenna’s throat.

See the gun I pressed to my head.

Feel the trigger give under my finger.

I unconsciously take a step backward. My back comes up against something solid. I glance over my shoulder. Lazarus. He’s standing behind me, on my six, offering me silent support as I face my biggest fear head on.

“He’s a good-lookin’ kid,” he remarks. His tone is all Venom as he adds. “Gets it from his seanmhair.” My mother chuckles, her mood lightening as he breaks the tension with a joke. In a move that can’t be seen by anyone else, he nudges my shoulder with his. “Let me introduce you.”

Nodding, I fold my arms awkwardly, uncertain what to do with them. After I mimic Nadia’s posture, I hold my breath while she transfers my son over to me. His weight is more than I expected. It makes me frown as my brain tries to decipher how his tiny body can create this kind of heaviness. Nothing fits. The numbers don’t work. Until it dawns on me that the mass is mental, not physical.

This is the first time I’ve held a baby since I tried to revive my dead son twelve years ago.

“He’s special.” Lazarus swipes a finger down my son’s cheek, and he chuckles when the baby wraps his first around it. “Likes to throw his weight around like his namesake, too.” There is a fierce love in my best friend’s gaze as he peers down at Garrett. Their bond is visceral, corporeal, a living and breathing connection that fills me with jealousy almost as quickly as it settles my nerves. “Slash... meet Christopher Garrett Hudson. He’s been waiting for you to show up.”

“Christ-opher Ga-rrett,” I repeat after Lazarus in a voice that cracks on each syllable. “Hudson.”

As everyone watches us, my emotions spill over. A choked sound erupts from my mouth. Lazarus’ throat works. He widens his stance as he brushes his fingertips over my son’s forehead. I spy the same memories in his eyes as the ones currently cascading through me. The four of us. The car barrelling toward us. The front end bouncing over the kerb. Topher pushing me, Zeke, and Benny out of the way. He took the full brunt of the impact. The sound, a crunch really, was brutal. Screams filled my ears—they were mine, not my big brother’s.

Topher died on impact.

Underneath the vehicle that killed him.

The suit-wearing man, once my best friend, the person who saved my life a week ago, is basically a stranger at this point. It doesn’t feel that way when Lazarus wraps his arm around my shoulders. He pulls me close. I lean on him. My son sighs as he settles into my arms. We exhale in unison, the tension that’s ratcheted around us since he greeted me with an uppercut dissipating as we find a temporary truce in the midst of our battle to share my wife’s heart.

“You’ve done good, brother,’ he murmurs.

For a moment, it feels like old times.

Good times.

And that’s the sight that greets Cherub when she’s wheeled into her private room.

She’s propped up against the slightly raised backrest of her bed.

Her hair is a mess, a blonde halo around her head.

The cannula under her nose is loud in the quiet that dawns.

Pale, eyes bloodshot, my duchess looks like she’s been to war.

In some ways, she has... for years at this point.

“Lazarus.” Her whispered acknowledgement of the man standing next to me is full of love. “You came.” He leaves my side to follow her bed when she’s wheeled to the head of the room. Reality smacks me upside the head, harder than Lazarus’ fist ever did, when she looks past me. I feel her dismissal. It’s a knife to my heart. Lost to my self-inflicted agony, I strain to hear Cherub’s next words, but they don’t make any sense. “I pressed the scalpel. I called your name. Did it work?”

“It worked, sweet thing.” Linking his fingers through hers, Lazarus brushes his mouth over her forehead. I scan the people watching us—my parents, Cherub’s brothers, Hunter, and Nadia—as they all seem to melt over the affection between my wife and her first love. “I was in the air, but I came as soon as I landed.”

“Good.” When my son makes a sound, I peer down at him. His eyes, identical to mine are scanning my face with clear curiosity. The sight captivates me, so much so that I barely hear my wife when she murmurs, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Nadia smacks me in the back.

Lifting my head, my gaze hungrily roams my duchess’ face. “Me, too, baby.”

Despite the invitation in her eyes, I can’t make my feet carry me any closer to her. Not while I’m still battling to reconcile my actions over the past months with the future I’m holding in my arms. I’ve let my son down. Hurt my wife multiple times. It feels like the height of hypocrisy to expect her to overlook my sins and take me back into her heart.

Yet, the love in her tired expression gives me hope that she will.

“Slash,” My rival for Cherub’s heart says my name in a tight voice. “Bring the little man to his imma.” The colour that floods my duchess’ cheeks when he uses the Hebrew word for mummy tells me that it is a common occurrence. “She needs him.”

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