Page 22 of Perilous Healing

But the black diamond sigil on their armbands is that of Lucian Culvers. The very man who’d captured me and killed my entire team.

My hand tightens around the handle of the blade, but I remain hidden. They may just move past us…but Bianca whimpers in her sleep, something she does rather regularly due to nightmares.

The men hear her, and they raise their weapons, then turn toward where she sleeps. I have mere seconds to react before they break through the brush that serves as our shield.

She whimpers again.

“Come on out here, sweetheart, we won’t hurt you,” one man calls out, then grins at the other. “Much,” he adds.

They take another step.

Then another.

I lunge, slamming my body into the first man and taking him to the ground. “Run!” I bellow, hoping she hears me so at least one of us gets away. Maybe that’s my purpose in all this, to get her free so she can do good in the world.

I slam my fist into the man’s face, but the second man is faster. He slams the stock of his weapon into my head and my vision goes blurry. I fall over to the side and Bianca slides to her knees beside me.

“There she is. Little princess.”

Bianca straightens. “You willnothurt him.”

“Or what?”

She raises the scalpel I hadn’t realized she’d picked up from the ground and presses the blade to her throat. “I’ll take away my uncle’s ability to get revenge. Isn’t that what you’re after?”

“What are you talking about?” I ask as I try to sit up. The world around me spins, and the pain is nearly blinding.

“Stay down,” Bianca tells me as the man I’d tackled aims his weapon right at me. And as I sit here, staring down the barrel of a loaded weapon, I’m hit with the realization that I’ve been on the run with a woman I know nothing about.

“Who are you?”

“You don’t know?” the first man says with a laugh. His beard is graying, his eyes hard and amused all at the same time. “You’ve been running around with the daughter of the very man who killed all your buddies.”

Sleep didn’t comelast night.

I tried. I counted sheep, the fan blades as they whirred around above my head, I even turned on white noise on my phone to see if it would help slow my brain down. But all I could think of was Bianca’s words over and over again.

“I loved you too, Silas.”

Love. What a joke. I’d fallen for her, sure, but we’d been starving, exhausted, in pain, unsure if we’d live to see another sunset.It took time for me to realize that it hadn’t been actual love. I’d just been too stupid to see it then.

I pour another mug of coffee and down the dark liquid as I watch Eloise play happily with her dolls.

She turns toward me. “Uncle Lassy?”

With a smile on my face, I carry my coffee into the living room, then set it on the end table as I take a seat on the couch. Eloise kneels on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, a pile of dolls in front of her.

“What is it, Nugget?”

Eloise holds up a doll that’s half-dressed with what I can only imagine is supposed to be a silver ballgown. “I can’t get her dress on,” she says, holding the doll out for me. I take the doll from her and work the dress up over the top of her, then Velcro it in the back. When I hand it back to Eloise, she’s beaming at me like I’m her hero.

“You’re the best, Uncle Lassy,” she says, happily taking the doll and adding her to the collection of other dressed dolls on the table.

Uncle Lassy. No matter how many times I hear it, it never gets old. The power this little girl has over me is endless. No matter how poor my mood is, one smile from her and it’s instantly lifted.

“I try. So where are they all going?”

“A fancy party,” she replies. “Like the one we had for Jaxson and Margot.”

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