Page 4 of Avenging Devil: Part 1

“Can’t treat her here, Knife. Just look at this fuckin’ place. My fix won’t work for long. She’ll drown in her own blood if she doesn’t get professional help. Then there’s a risk of sepsis.”

Take me to the hospital. Please, let me go.

Even if it’s just for a day or so. To get off the compound would be enough medication in itself. To be with normal people, people who wouldn’t hurt, degrade or humiliate me. That’s all the medicine that I want.

Do I pass out, or does Knife just take a long time deciding?

Whatever, it seems forever before I hear those glorious words. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, get her out of here. Tell the hospital it was a mugging, or someone out to get the club. I’ll clear it with Duke. One fuckin’ body already today was enough.”

Decision made, they don’t waste time springing into action. It’s Croak who says, “I’ll get her. You bring your car around, Doc.”

“Be care—”

Though I doubted I could do it, a piercing scream leaves my mouth when Croak picks me up. Once again, mercifully, I pass out.

The next couple of days I don’t care where the hell I am, as time passes in a blur of machines beeping and pain, then wooziness as the pain meds kick in. Unaware of the passage of the hours, I only find out how long I’ve been here when I finally struggle up to full consciousness, seeing the relieved looking nurse, and, for the first time, am able to understand what she’s saying.

While she catalogues my injuries, I tune out, not relishing hearing the damage he’s inflicted on me. From what I do let sink in, it sounds bad. I don’t even feel lucky he hadn’t caused mortal injury. If he’d finished the job this time, it would have prevented me going through this again. There can be no doubt, once I’m healed, it will only be to go through more abuse.

I lie still, lost in my abject misery, wishing I were dead. Or I do until some more words spoken by the nurse register.

I try to speak, but my throat is dry. After sipping at some ice she holds to my lips, I manage to get some words out. “You’re kidding me.” She has to be.

Trying to focus on her face, through eyes I can only just open, I see her smiling. “No, I’m not. Though how the baby survived is a miracle. It’s early days, you’re about six weeks.”

A miracle.Mine. Only mine. She starts to busy herself as if to leave me.

“My h-h-husband,” I stammer out. “Does he know?”

Her eyes sharpen. “I don’t think so. Honey, you were so badly hurt, I’ll be honest, it’s been touch and go. We’ve given him reports on how you’re doing. We honestly thought even if you’d make it, you’d lose the baby.”

“Is… is there still a chance I could miscarry?”

Compassion floods her features. “I can’t lie to you, but the baby’s made it so far. He must be one determined little soul to keep hanging on in there.”

How, I don’t know, but I’ll do everything to keep it that way. “Please.” Injecting as much pleading as I can into my voice, I beg her, “Don’t tell my husband.”

Duke’s been ambivalent about wanting a child, sometimes ruminating about an heir, a son he could mould to be a reflection of himself. But when that became a reality a year after our marriage, after his first moment of elation, he’d kicked the baby out of me. Then, of course, he blamed me for infuriating him so. It was my fault I lost his baby, not his violent and uncontrollable urges.

After the loss of that baby, it seemed all Duke had wanted was me pregnant again. He couldn’t fuck me enough and kept me full of his semen. I couldn’t risk it, unable to bear the thought of losing another to this irrational man, already knowing carrying his child was no protection.

So, I’d taken precautions. Duke would kill me if he knew, but on the pretext of needing women’s necessities that members didn’t want to purchase for me and women’s problems about which they didn’t want to know, I’d managed to secretly go on the pill. The pill I’d not had access to during the weeks of captivity while my legs had healed.

The nurse looks at me, her brow furrowed. “I won’t tell him if you don’t want me to. He’s here, though. It’s up to you if you want to share the news yourself.”

He’s here. Of course he is, playing the concerned husband role. He can do that very convincingly. Using his charm was what had originally allowed him to reel me in and foolishly accept his proposal. At that time, I’d felt the luckiest and most treasured woman in the world.

My face must betray how I feel about my husband being close by and probably a whole lot more as her face fills with commiseration. She tilts her head to one side, considers me for a moment, then asks, “Do you want me to tell him you’re not up to seeing him?”

I’d love that, but no. He’d only break down the door if he thought he was being kept away from his property. Analysing it fast, I realise I’m safe right now, hooked up to monitors that will alert someone if he so much as raises my blood pressure. “I’ll see him.”

She gives me another assessing gaze, then nods, albeit with a trace of reluctance. “I’ll send him in.”

When she goes out, I gather what strength I have, and focus my mind on how to get out of here. I’m determined not to lose this baby. It might be Duke’s seed, but it’s my womb it’s growing in. This baby belongs to me, and it’s up to me to protect it. Which means, whatever the odds against me, this time I have to escape.

With the Crazy Wolves controlling most of the surrounding area, how can I get away? I run through my problems in my head. I’ve no money. He controls all my documents. The only clothes I have here are the ones I was brought in wearing, and they’ll be bloodied and soiled and that’s if they hadn’t been cut off and destroyed.

But whether I have to run in a hospital gown and beg strangers to help me, I have to not only try but succeed. It’s not just me. It’s my baby.A new life inside me.As the realisation sinks in, so does my determination to get out of his clutches.

---