Page 131 of The Assignment: Room 3

“I need you to call 9-1-1 for me, pet. I asked your mom to call the police, but I’m going to need an ambulance. My cell is in my left pocket. Then slip my belt off.”

“What?” She grabs the phone out of my pocket and dials. If they take longer than five minutes, I’ll bleed out before they get here.

“Don’t get excited, pet. The belt isn’t for that delicious ass of yours. You need to make a tourniquet and tighten it above the gunshot.”

Tears fall from her cheeks as she wrestles off my belt. “How can you make jokes at a time like this?”

“Because I love to see you smile, pet. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” My eyes flutter shut, and I know it’s bad. “I can’t bear to see you cry.” I muster whatever strength I have left, reaching up to wipe her tears. “Don’t cry over me, pet.”

“Stop!Stop saying goodbye to me.” She’s not tightening the tourniquet enough.

“You need to really pull the belt hard.”

“I…”

“Do it. That’s an order from your Master,” and the only shot in hell I have of surviving.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Do it!” She yanks on it, and I roar with searing pain, unable to hold it in. I don’t want her last memory of me to be me crying like a baby. I’m her Dom. I’m supposed to protect her for the rest of her life. She and Gracie.

“I need to apply pressure. It’s going to hurt, Flex.”

I take a deep breath and steel myself for the pain, but the moment she presses down on the wound, I feel like I’m about to throw up. My extremities are getting cold, the slow tendrils of death spreading throughout my body, beckoning me to give myself over to the darkness creeping its way into my vision. The walls are closing in. “Celest, make sure Gracie knows I wanted to stay. I pinky promised her I’d be back. She called me Daddy. Best moment of my life.” It’s getting harder to draw breath. “Promise you’ll tell her I wanted to be her daddy.”

“You tell her yourself. We’re going to get through this.”

“I’m sorry, pet.” I always thought if I died young, it would be fighting for my country. When I left, I assumed I’d die an old man in my bed with a wife who had lived through so many adventures with me. It wasn’t supposed to end this way.

I close my eyes and take shallow breaths as I prepare for the inevitable.

“No. Flex. Stay with me. Please.” The urgency in her voice is the only thing tethering me to this life. It breaks my heart to know she’ll be left alone. I wanted to be her forever like she was mine. I just didn’t realize my forever was going to be so soon.

“What is your name, pet? Your real one.” I can barely get the words out.

“Helena Maxwell.” Her sobs become distant, and all I want is to comfort her, but I can’t move. Or speak.

I want so badly to kiss her one last time. To tell her I wanted to marry her. That she is my soul mate, but nothing happens.

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but it’s not mine I see. It’s two people who I’ve had nightmares about for years and what I imagine their last moments to be. The driving force for everything I do.And everything I haven’t done in this life.

And my world goes silent.

Chapter 25

CELEST

“Don’t do this to me, Flex.” I keep my hands against his gunshot wound, trying to stem the flow of blood, but he’s not responding. “Please, don’t leave me. Ineedyou.”

Where the hell is the ambulance? This can’t be happening. It was supposed to be me. Flex can’t die because of me. I should have told him everything sooner. He was putting his neck on the line when he asked Gracie and me to move in. Maybe if we hadn’t, he wouldn’t be…

“Please, please, please, stay with me, Master. I need you, Flex. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.” It all seems ridiculous now. I was afraid to lose him by letting him in. Allowing him to love Gracie and me.

He stops moving, and the rise and fall of his chest comes to a halt. My world crumbles around me.

“Please! Help me!” I scream for anyone to appear and save his life. If I stop pressing the wound, he’ll bleed out, but none of that will matter if he’s not breathing. If his heart doesn’t beat. “Please, don’t take him from me. I haven’t had a chance to love him the way he deserves.” I don’t recognize my own voice. Strangled. Desperate. Devastated. Hysterical.

I hear sirens and beg Flex to stay with me. I’ve always known fear—Michael made sure of it—but as I sit beside Flex’s lifeless body, all the pain he inflicted on me for years feels like nothing compared to the agony and terror of Flex straddling this life and whatever comes next.

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