Page 99 of Cruel Hearts

I grip his shoulder. “He really shot her.”

Behind his glasses, his eyes widen. “Your chauffeur’s here. Drive her to the hospital. Mel will take care of it,” he reminds me.

But there’s nothing Mel can do about this.

Blood drips down her side and pools on the sidewalk. So carefully, I wiggle my hand under her back and my arm beneath her knees and pick her up. She’s dead weight, and her head lolls, her hair sticking in the blood saturating the scarf tied around her shoulders.

Douglas opens the door for us, his face ashen and his eyes wet. I didn’t notice him park in front of the restaurant and I don’t know how much he saw. I sit with her in my lap in back of the town car, and the scream of sirens slashes at me like a knife. The cops can follow us to the hospital. There’s no way I’m waiting for an ambulance, even though she truly needs one now.

Holding Stella tightly against my chest, I press my face against the top of her head. Max sits across from me, and I hide my grief.

She’s not breathing, and I pray.

The last words she heard were me telling her to fuck off. The last thing she saw was me raising my hand to hit her.

My Stella.

I keen into her hair.

Douglas runs through every red light that attempts to stop us and reaches the hospital in under fifteen minutes. It doesn’t matter. Mel taped Stella’s fake blood pouch near her left breast. Paulo shot her straight through the heart.

Her blood saturates my suit, and it smells sickly sweet.

Like death.

I gag.

Douglas parks under the canopy and opens the door. Tears run down his ruddy cheeks, and he tries to help me out of the car. He holds his hands out, but I jerk away. I won’t let him touch her, and I carry her into the ER by myself. The place is familiarafter Quinn’s and my tour, and it’s just as busy. Two rival gangs chose tonight to fight a territory war, and there’s not an available doctor anywhere.

A curvy woman wearing mint green scrubs who has pitch black hair and dark purple circles under her eyes wheels a stretcher to me. “Lay her on here. Mel’s waiting.”

“She’s dead.”

She gives me an odd look. “She’s supposed to be.”

Gently, I lay Stella onto the pristine white sheet, her body limp and lifeless.

The nurse pushes the stretcher down the crowded hallway. No one gives her a second glance.

Max and I stand in the middle of the ER, Stella’s blood on my hands.

There’s nothing more I can do.

“You need to go outside and talk to the reporters. Stick to the plan,” Max says. “Are you going to be okay? She’ll be fine, Zane. You two practiced this all day.”

He doesn’t understand. He was right there, and he doesn’t understand what happened.

My mouth doesn’t move and I can’t speak. He nudges me toward the automatic doors. The paparazzi have gotten wind of Stella’s death just like we knew they would. I step outside and they holler at me, taking my picture to profit from my loss.

I had a speech planned, and some of the words wisp through the sorrow fogging my brain. Gold digger, tramp. I was supposed to renounce her. Call her a fraud, a whore. Anything to put distance between us. To lead Ash to believe I hate her and wouldn’t have done anything to help her, in any way. Toconvince him that she and I were done for good. But all I can think of is how she felt in my arms. How soft her lips were under mine.

How sweet the words were when she told me she loved me. Even after everything I’ve done to her.

How big her heart was.

How compassionate.

How much she gave up.

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