Page 97 of Coup De Grâce
Barely.
If we had gotten to him just a few minutes later, who knows what would have happened.
I brushed a strand of overgrown hair back from his forehead. Time had aged my husband. The pressure and stress of his newfound job had worn on him, making him appear older than he was.
I wished so badly that he would have trusted me with the information that had been weighing him down, but I knew deep down, he had kept it from me out of fear.
Even now, he laid knocked out in bed, but the tension in his body never fully relaxed. Deep bruising under his eyes proved just how stressful this whole mission had been. He had chosen to do this on his own, but the time for flying solo was over. The Shadow Government had turned violently on him, putting him in an untenable situation.
But I never would. And neither would anyone at OPS. I was beginning to think there wasn’t a single thing Cash could do to push any of them away.
“How is he?” Knight asked from the doorway.
“Still breathing,” I murmured, grateful that the damage last night hadn’t been worse. Thankfully, FNG had been there to save his life. However, the knock to the head was still a major concern.
“You should get some more sleep.”
Sleep. That was difficult to come by. What little I had gotten last night was constantly interrupted by the overwhelming concern that when I opened my eyes, my husband would no longer be breathing.
“I’ll try.”
“I’m serious, Eva.” He walked further into the room. I could feel the intensity of his gaze on me despite the fact that I was staring at my husband’s striking face. “We have a difficult road ahead. You need rest.”
“Yeah? What about you? How’s the hole in your chest?”
“No longer a hole,” he bit out.
I was pissed about that, too. The fact that Knight and Cash were so reckless, so crazed for the opportunity to end all this, that Knight agreed to let Cash shoot him…That my husband took on the guilt of yet another brother’s possible death…
“What was he thinking?” I whispered, trying to figure out my husband’s twisted mind.
“Which time?” Knight sighed, walking to the other side of the bed. He stared down at his brother, his eyes lit with anger and confusion. I could only imagine what this was like for him.
To find out he had additional family members, and then was taken before he even knew him. The other…was lying in a bed, on the brink of death if we couldn’t figure out how to save him. And his sister…well, at least she was coming around.
“Why did you agree to it?”
I didn’t need to explain my train of thought. It was clear when Knight raised his eyes to meet mine that he knew exactly what I was talking about.
“You could have died. Kate would have been left all alone.”
“It was the price we had to pay.”
“And your life was worth it? How could you do that to Kate?”
A flicker of guilt flashed in his eyes before he quickly wiped away all semblance of remorse. “I did it because my family is everything to me. And if Cash pulling the trigger ended this reign of terror, I would happily sacrifice everything.”
“She never would have recovered if you had died.”
He stared at Cash for a moment, the knowledge of what would have happened swimming in his eyes. “She would have been alive.”
“Tell me…I’ve been alive. Do you really think all this was worth it?”
“We didn’t have a choice,” he answered calmly. “They were coming for us one way or another. This gave him a shot to turn things around.”
“Months,” I murmured, brushing my fingers down Cash’s arm until I linked my fingers with his. “It gave us months, and what happened to his soul in the meantime?”
“I know my brother better than you think. Trust me when I tell you that he would sacrifice anything to keep his family safe.”
