Page 51 of Angel's Share

“But what if we knew what you were going to do?” Aidan asked the mobster in the room with them. “If we’d already figured out who William and Maryanne were to you and Arty?” Jamie recognized Aidan’s even tone as a poke, not a boast. He was trying to assess exactly what Martino was after, exactly how far he’d go.

Not a flinch.

Jamie’s heart raced faster, and when he caught Aidan’s gaze, the same concern shone in his eyes. They were dealing with a loose cannon driven solely by revenge.

Without an exit plan.

Fuck.

“Guess that makes you smarter than me,” Martino said with a shrug.

“What was the plan?” Aidan asked as he maneuvered next to Jamie again, Izzy behind them, and shifting so they were a step closer to the patio door. “This can only end one way: with you caught.”

“I have a better idea.” Michael pushed off the door and withdrew a lighter from his pocket. “All of you pay the price for taking Arty from us.”

Confirming Aidan was also one of those other targets, as they’d suspected.

And he and Izzy were in the blast radius.

Because if Jamie figured right, this house was about the same age as Aidan’s old one in Redwood City. Meaning it likely ran on natural gas—the pilot light, water heater, and heating unit in the attached garage that Maryanne had just gone out of. If she’d released gas into the house or there’d been carbon monoxide already, they wouldn’t smell it. But that lighter in Martino’s hand, when flicked, would ignite it.

Fuck. Fuck!

Aidan must have made the same calculation when he’d started moving them toward the patio door.

They made another step in that direction, and Jamie asked a different question, buying them more time to reach the exit. “So was it ever about Angel? Other than to lure Aidan into this?”

“Oh, I planned to make you feel the loss of the kids too, including the girl you two have gotten so attached to. But Russo sent his pet rock star and said they were off-limits. Under his protection. Fine, they can feel the loss of all of you. Means I don’t have to drag this out any longer.”

“Including your own life?” Aidan said. “Because if you flick that lighter and there’s gas in this house, it all goes boom, with you in it too.”

“I’m a dead man anyway. Rock star told me that too. So I made the arrangements I needed to. William and Maryanne will be taken care of. Nothing left to do now but avenge my brother.”

There’d be no talking Martino out of this, no negotiating, no bringing him in. He was determined to die and take Aidan and Izzy with him. And Jamie promised to do anything to protect his family.

So when Martino flipped open the top of the lighter and moved his thumb over the spark wheel, Jamie didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the closest wine bottle, he chucked it as hard as he could in Martino’s direction, distracting him the precious few seconds Aidan needed to wrench the patio door open, before the blast hurtled them the rest of the way out of it.

THIRTY-ONE

Jamie hated to think how much money Danny had thrown around to get the nurses to allow this many people at this time of night into Aidan’s hospital room. Granted, it was closer to dawn than dusk, closer to visiting hours than from them, but they were still outside the designated hours, and Jamie was fairly certain the four of them inside the room and the even larger group of people waiting in the hall were far outside the maximum number of visitors.

Especially when the patient was still unconscious.

Jamie glanced again at the heart monitor beside Aidan’s bed. Strong and steady. Same as Aidan’s breaths, unassisted by any machines. And his hand in Jamie’s was warm, evidence of the life and blood that still coursed through his husband’s body.

Immediately after the blast, once Jamie and Izzy had dug themselves out from the blast rubble around them, Jamie had suffered a panic-inducing, heart-sickening few minutes during which he first couldn’t find Aidan, and then when he had, thinking he had lost him for good. With Aidan’s limp and seemingly lifeless body in his arms, Jamie could’ve sworn his own heart stopped. That with the center of his world gone, there would be no going on for him either. But then Izzy had appeared beside him, had grabbed his chin, and forced him to focus. Aidan was alive and needed their help. He’d followed her orders as she’d checked Aidan’s vitals and administered the first aid she’d been taught as a flight attendant, taking care of him until the paramedics had arrived. Once at the hospital, they’d been briefly separated, he and Izzy checked for concussions and any injuries other than the obvious scrapes and bruises, while Aidan had been wheeled back for X-rays and scans.

According to the doctors, he’d taken a hit, from the roof and the ground, and his brain wasn’t happy about it. No bleeds but some swelling that should recede. And he should wake up, they’d assured him.

Should. Not a definitive would.

“Aidan told me about a time you got injured,” Angel said from the chair beside him, cutting off the spiral Jamie’s mind was about to go down again. “That he wouldn’t leave your bedside.”

“That’s right.” A fire and blast that had been multitudes bigger than the one last night had knocked Jamie unconscious, and after being trapped under a ceiling beam and suffering smoke inhalation prior to that, he’d been severely compromised, his body and mind taking a while to come back online. When he woke, it had been to Aidan’s lovely red hair. And then to his hurt and anger. “He stayed until I woke, even after I’d spent months lying to him.”

“He forgave you?”

Jamie wriggled his left hand, the emeralds in the titanium band around his left ring finger catching the lights overhead. “Eventually. But he was angry at first, justifiably so. We took some time apart. But we still loved each other too much to let go.”

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