Page 90 of Shattered Dreams

I try to pry all the information I can out of him before he decides he’s done talking. “Did you blow up my truck? Did you try to burn down my apartment?”

“You’re just like Max. Would never stop even if you knew what was good for you. You dig until someone gets hurt. If you would have just left her alone, if you would have just fucking stayed away from her, none of this would have happened.”

“I’mnevergoing to leave her alone. I love her.”

Rourke’s face turns red, and he aims his gun at me, his hand trembling in a rage he can’t, and doesn’t want, to control.

Stella uses the distraction, jerks out of Rourke’s grip and ducks, and I let Baby do what she’s wanted to do since the first time she laid eyes on my stepfather.

She goes for his throat.

Rourke pulls the trigger, but Baby’s impact jolts him and the bullet shoots into the wall near the ceiling splintering the paint and plaster.

Stella kneels on the floor, rubbing her throat, and Zane rushes to her so quickly I don’t see him move. Banks’ partner keeps her gun trained on Jerricka and Dr. Pederson, and Banks restrains Rourke.

I don’t care about any of it, and I kick the door open that Baby sniffed at. The lock gives easily under my boot. I know Zarah’s in this house, and nothing is going to stop me from finding her.

There’s a light switch on the wall, and I flick it up. A fluorescent light blinks on, and I trot down the wooden stairs to a basement that’s designed to be one half of a laboratory, the other half a hospital room.

Zarah’s lying on a hospital bed, cuffed to the rail, her back to me.

“Zarah,” I say urgently, my strides eating up the space between us. “Zarah. It’s okay. You’re safe now. I’ve got you.” I gently touch her shoulder, and she rolls over.

Her deep brown eyes are blank, and tears streak her cheeks.

“Zarah, sweetheart.”

She says the words I’ll try my whole life to forget.

“Who are you?”

Everything moves quickly after that.

Banks’ partner flies out with Zane, Stella, and Zarah to find her medical attention as quickly as they can. “We’ll keep you in the loop,” Zane calls over his shoulder, but I’m already an afterthought to his sister’s care. He wraps his arm around Zarah’s waist and they hurry down the driveway.

Despite Zane’s last-minute promise, I feel like I’ve lost her.

I want to go along, desperately, but Banks and I stay and wait for backup. We watch Rourke, who’s pressing a handkerchief to his neck with a shaking hand, Jerricka, who’s pushing back angry tears, and Dr. Pederson, who looks sickened by the whole thing. Banks tried to question them, but now that they know they’ve been found out, they lawyered up and aren’t talking. Their cases won’t be as cut and dried as the Blacks’, but this house is full of evidence like the handcuffs and Jerricka’s lab, and adding our testimonies and eyewitness accounts, there will be enough to put them away for a long time.

Baby stands guard, her teeth bared and growling, Rourke’s blood tinting her fur pink. Banks nods in approval, smugly talking on his phone to his supervisor.

I make a phone call of my own and tell Pop I’m okay and that Zarah’s on the way to King’s Crossing with Stella and Zane to find the help she needs.

Pop hears the misery in my voice, even though I’m trying like hell to keep my tears locked away.

Since the day I met her, this is what I feared would happen.

That one day she would regain her memories and step into her rightful place as the Maddox heiress.

It hasn’t happened yet—she’s still on the chopper flying back to the city. But it will. Zane will pay for the best doctors to help Zarah, and after she recovers, there will be no room left in her life for me.

That’s okay. No, it is. I said I would walk away if it meant Zarah could be happy and healthy. I know the kind of woman she’ll be once she’s cured, and that means more to me than anything else in the world. I want that for her.

Banks decided ground transportation was the safest and most secure way to transport Rourke, Jerricka, and Martin Pederson into the city, and the police department of a small town half an hour away assumes custody of them. Banks, Baby, and I ride behind the law enforcement van in a county sheriff’s cruiser, and when we reach the FBI headquarters in King’s Crossing, Banks records my statement and congratulates Baby on a job well done. Hours later, I’m left to my own devices.

My apartment isn’t habitable, and though I’ve been spending time at the penthouse and the Maddoxes’ country house, I wasn’t invited to wait there, and I don’t feel welcome at either of those places. Having nowhere else to go, I hail a taxi and ride to Pop’s. I feed Baby, change into a pair of old sweats and a t-shirt, and fold up the clothes Stella bought me. I don’t want to wear them anymore. I don’t feel like they belong to me, or to the life I’m living.

Pop’s house feels familiar, in a foreign kind of way. Like coming home after a long vacation.

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