Page 59 of Soul

“Not my babies.” I hold a hand protectively over my stomach. My body goes frosty cold, and I pray. Pray to God to get me out of this, to save my children, to not take Chase away from this world.

“Babies? You mean there’s two of those fucking, disgusting things inside of you. Mother fucker!” He roars. He looks at my face, presses me harder into the wall and his eyes gaze down my body, his lips a fierce scowl. “You’re infested. And it’s my job to clean you up. Make you pure again. Put my baby in you.”

That’s when the fire lights under my ass. He’s going to kidnap me, use me for his personal fuck toy, and kill my children. Not going to happen. I look at his face, grind my teeth down and snarl. “Over my dead body,” I pull back a knee and slam it as hard as I can into his dick.

He lets out a pained cry, crouches as I push him back and start to run. If I can get outside, I can get help. He catches me right before I reach the stairs, swings me around and punches me in the face so hard I see stars. Blood oozes out of my broken lip and he wraps a hand around my neck cutting off any air, and slamming me back against a pillar again.

Just as I’m about to black out, I hear the click of a safety being removed from a gun. “Back away from her.” Hearing Tommy’s voice has never been more welcome.

Danny loosens the hold he has around my neck allowing me to take in some blessed air. I suck in huge lungfuls before he locks the grip down again. I struggle and try to kick out missing my target uselessly.

“Let her fucking go, McBride,” Thomas screams.

“Okay, man, I will.” But before I can warn Thomas, Danny crouches low and issues a leg sweep knocking him off his feet. I slide down the wall to the ground. Thomas’s gun goes clattering, but his hands are fast and he pulls Danny down. They wrestle for Danny’s gun and a shot goes off.

Blood instantly starts to spread from a wound in Danny‘s body. Thomas stands up, turns around and is almost to me when I see his body fly forward. He slams into the wall where the large open window is. The force in which he was moving and how hard Danny pushes him has his body going over the window ledge and out into the night sky. While in mid-air Thomas turns his arm. I scream, and a shot rings out, but I don’t see it. All I can see is Thomas, his body floating in mid-air then barreling twenty-one stories to the ground. I scramble for the window and see his mangled body on the ground and then hear the gurgle. I spin around and crouch down protecting my stomach.

Danny is standing there swaying, a river of blood flowing down the front of his neck where the gunshot ripped open the tissue making his head hang at an odd angle. His eyes roll back into his head, and his entire body falls face first onto the concrete floor in front of me.

The world around me is black. All I can feel is everything within me shaking, my teeth chattering so hard I can hear the noise like a woodpecker pounding on a tree only the tree is my head. Then, a familiar warmth surrounds me. My body is being moved, adjusted, floating and then I feel love. Completely encompassed by a cocoon of light and love. Arms around me, large chest plastered against me until I’m in a seated position in someone’s arms.

Citrus and sandalwood fills my nostrils and I open my eyes. The blackness shrinks, the fuzzy edges sharpening until I see his face. The most beloved face I’ve ever known. The one I watched cry out in agony as two bullets pierced his back.

“I’m dreaming; you’re dead,” I let the words escape out my lips and into the wind.

My love shakes his head, holds my cheeks. “I’m here, baby.”

I shake my head, tears trailing down my cheeks, drying as they fall, sticking against my skin. “I watched you die.”

Chase leans back, rips open his shirt and puts my hand on the hard material. “Kevlar.”

“But, but, he shot you in the back, I saw you go down.” I hiccup and sob unbelievingly.

“Knocked me out. There’s pain, but not enough to keep me from you.”

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I chant into his neck over and over. He holds me close, filling me with life once again.

That’s when things get crazy loud. Sirens blare, voices yell, the sound of feet hitting concrete at a run slamming into me. I hold Chase close and cower into him. If I’m in his arms, it will all go away.

“It’s over, baby. He’s dead.”

I nod against his neck but then remember why he’s dead. Thomas. “He pushed Tommy out the window.”

Chase’s entire body tenses and he holds me close. “Fuck.”

“He’s dead.”

“Baby…” He whispers into my hair. “H-he died a hero,” he offers in a raspy whisper, the emotion clogging his words.

Again, I breathe in his scent trying to let it bring me back to the here and now. Just knowing that someone else I love is about to be destroyed again…breaks me half. Danny took one more person with him on his way out.

“Yeah, but now I have to tell my best friend that the man she loves is dead,” my tears are coming so fast I don’t even have the time to wipe them away, instead they soak Chase’s shirt. He doesn’t care, just wraps me in his embrace and gives me everything he is, everything I need.

The nightmare is over but not without heavy losses.

The men and women who died at the gym. Charity, the young twenty-year-old yogi look-a-like to Bree, Phillip with his hospitalization, coma and months of physical therapy. Dana being used like a pawn to the point where it’s doubtful that she’ll ever trust a man again. Austin, my southern bodyguard, who’s still suffering the effects of being poisoned by Etorphine. Colleen, Chase’s mother, who was a mean bitch, but she loved her son and wanted nothing but to protect him, was brutally murdered on our wedding day. Kat, who’s being treated in a special burn unit, will never sew again, and the beautiful light in her eyes is currently gone. Jack, who’s in the hospital being treated for shattered hips, a broken clavicle and a severe head injury. And last, our hero Thomas Redding, the young. hot shot detective who had a woman who loved him and a whole life to live, gone, after falling twenty-one stories to his death while protecting me. Now my soul sister Maria is left to pick up the pieces of her life after losing the one man she gave her heart to.

No, I’d say the nightmare is not over, but we’re strong. Together we’ll find a way to deal with the past, the present, and the future.

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