Page 181 of The Billionaire Boss and the Barista

He picked her up and carried her to the bedroom, setting her on the edge of the bed and holding her close.

Emma didn’t know how long she cried, but it felt like a long time. Her body ached everywhere too, even in places that hadn’t hit the floor.

“I—I d-don’t know w-what’s wrong w-with me,” she whispered, forcing the words past her swollen throat.

Garrett tightened his hold. “Adrenaline. But you don’t have to worry. Whatever the hell Fletcher was up to is never going to happen again—because I’m going to kill him.”

This would have normally been the part where a normal upstanding citizen protested but Emma didn’t. Shuddering, she fisted her hands in his shirt.

“He came for the phone,” she said, grateful that her voice sounded normal. But holy shit it hurt to talk.

Garrett frowned. “What?”

“The phone Sheriff Warner sent. The FedEx box was in his briefcase.”

Garrett’s hands tightened on her as she told him the rest.

“I found him going through your desk. He hid it but I saw. He tried to play it off, saying you sent him for it, but I guess I didn’t look convinced because he threw his briefcase at me and… and…”

Emma stopped because the expression on Garrett’s face now was going to haunt her in her dreams.

Yeah, she didn’t care that Elias was an experienced killer. That’s what black ops meant and although her husband alwaystacked on ‘former’ in front of it, Emma didn’t think there was anything former about it.

But when came to her, none of that mattered. Garrett would always be the more dangerous one.

The atmosphere darkened, the universe warning her that Elias was back. He stomped into the room a minute later. “I lost the fucker!”

“What?” Garrett seemed more shocked by that than the fact that his business partner of almost a decade had attacked her without warning. “How the fuck did that happen?”

Elias glowered, flinging a hand up. He pressed his phone to his ear and began barking orders, starting with bringing him Fletcher Sweeney’s head on a pike.

Every Auric employee on the West Coast was being mobilized for the search.

Drained and hurting all over, Emma stumbled to the bathroom. She hadn’t looked at herself in the mirror since it happened.

The bright bathroom lights revealed the rapidly darkening ring around her neck. It was going to be black and blue for weeks.

Garrett appeared in the reflection behind her. Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into the steel of his embrace.

Elias entered with two glasses of whiskey in one hand as he continued to bark orders into his cell phone. He stopped to press the glass into her hand.

“Drink,” Garrett ordered when she stared at it.

“It’s not for you?” she asked, her brain sluggish.

“No, it’s not. Drink.”

His hands took the glass from her unresisting fingers. Garrett crouched, putting the lip of the crystal to her lips. He urged her to drink it all, and she did, despite the burn in her throat.

When she was done, her fingers had stopped shaking, though the occasional shudder still racked her body.

Elias put his phone down, shaking his head. “He won’t leave the city. I promise you that.”

Emma raised her brows. Considering the international border withMexico was less than twenty miles away, that was going to be impossible. It had to be a white lie to placate her furious husband.

Or at least she thought it was until she took in their expressions and read murder there.

“The team doctor is on his way.” Elias downed the whiskey in the other glass. “What the fuck happened? Why the hell did that asshole attack her?”

---