Page 78 of Captivated By Him

I wince as he twists my torso. “Everything,” I say and pull away from his groping. He grabs my face, tilting it.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Nicole!” A shrill voice screams from inside the building.

“Henry. I hit him,” I say. “Fire.”

Another car has pulled up while Jakub is looking me over. I can’t breathe, so I bend over, grab my knees.

“We’ll get you to a hospital,” Jakub says, crouching down in front of me, wiping the wisps of hair from my face. “Breathe slow, Nicole. Easy breaths.”

I shake my head. Nothing is easy right now. It hurts. So much.

“Nicole! No!” Henry’s voice is closer, but I’m too tired trying to breathe to care. Jakub’s here. He’ll keep me safe. He won’t let Henry near me. He’ll be here now with me.

I sink to my knees, sucking in a clean breath but it hitches and I’m coughing again. Searing pain spreads up my arm, but it’s the lack of air that drowns me.

Sirens blare off in the distance.

Henry screams my name again.

There’s a gunshot.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper and close my eyes. I never should have left the apartment. “I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say, but it’s not enough and I don’t feel Jakub’s hands on me anymore.

My eyelids are too heavy to open, so I let my mind take me away. We’re safe now. Just a little nap.

I’m safe now.

Chapter 24

Jakub

The smells of the hospital makes my skin crawl. Lena says it’s because of the cleaners they used to sterilize the rooms, but it’s not chemical. It’s death.

And this place reeks of it.

“Jakub.” Lena steps into the private room they’ve put Nicole in and places her hand on my shoulder. In the bed, Nicole sleeps deeply. There’s a tube tucked into her nostrils to help give her oxygen. Bandages cover her left arm where the flames of the fire licked at her while she struggled to get my father out of the storage building.

An annex building. That’s where the fucking prick took my father, my wife to do God knows what he had planned. We’ll never truly know; my aim was spot on. He took a bullet right to his head, dead before he hit the ground.

“Have you eaten?” Lena’s gentleness hurts. I don’t deserve any comforts. Not while my wife sleeps so deeply, so far from me, because of the smoke inhalation, the bruised ribs she suffered, the burn on her arm. All these injuries are my fault.

“I’m fine,” I say and squirm in my seat beside Nicole’s bed. She’s facing away from me; the light from the single window lights up her cheek. Another bruise has formed, one I didn’t see before. My teeth clench.

“You need to rest.” My sister pulls a chair from the wall to sit beside me. Leaning forward, she slips her hand through the bedrail and lightly grabs Nicole’s still hand. “She looks better today. More color in her cheeks.”

I nod. She looks like she’s been in a car accident and through a fire. That’s how she looks, but my sister is trying to make me feel better.

I don’t deserve it.

“Has she woken up yet?” Lena asks.

I wipe my hand over my mouth. Exhaustion has sunk into my bones. “Yeah. She was awake this morning for a bit, but the pain meds make her so sleepy,” I explain, looking up at the IV hanging beside her bed.

“How long do they want to keep her in here?” She knows I’d rather have Nicole at home to recover. Hospitals aren’t something we use, but the fire had been reported before we were able to secure the area. Once they were on scene, it would have raised more eyebrows to not have her attended to. We left men behind to clean up the story and mess with the cops, keeping the truth of the matter private.

“I don’t know.” I blink a few times and stretch out my back. “First she needs to be able to stay awake long enough to eat, I guess.” I gesture at the tray of untouched Jell-O and oatmeal they brought her this morning.

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