Page 55 of Beautifully Shattered
I shift so I can see him too, and his grin is fucking huge and obnoxious. He looks like a fucking proud dad who just watched his kid win a fight.
“I always thought there was a feisty killer in our little charity case,” he snickers, winking at her. “How does it feel?”
Stepping out of my arms, Abbey levels a death glare at my Prez, her top lip curling in disgust like she’s seconds away from spitting in his face.
“How do you think it feels?” she snarls a rhetorical question. “I just beat another human within an inch of her life, dragged her out here, and killed her in front of everyone to get justice for my little girl! And you know what?” She steps right up to my President and sneers in his face. “It hasn’t changed a damn thing. My baby is still dead!”
She’s still wearing the spiked knuckledusters when she shoves him, daring to lay a hand on a man who doesn’t take kindly to disrespect. A man who on more than one occasion, hasn’t thought twice about throwing fists at an unruly woman.
Smitty staggers back a few steps, and gasps spill from the Doxies’ lips as Abbey continues to glare at him like she’s daring him to do something.
My body fucking tenses, ready to move, ready to throw myself between my Prez and my wife, consequences be fucked.
But then Smitty starts fucking cackling like a goddamn lunatic.
“She’s fucking delightful!” he practically sing-songs, throwing his head back with laughter.
A few of the drunker brothers cheer, while others just shake their heads and laugh at our unhinged king.
“Tell me, Charity,” he grins, eyes wild as ever. “Shall we burn her corpse on the bonfire?”
My fucking brows hitch, my eyes cutting to my wife as she glares back at Smitty.
“My name is Abbey. Stop calling me Charity,” she hisses through clenched teeth, stepping back and glancing down atthe woman she just killed. “I’ll let Celina decide what to do with the body. I don’t believe in desecrating the dead.”
With angry tugs, she frees herself from the metal weapons on her hands and lets them fall to the ground with a heavy thud.
Her tear-glazed eyes dart up to me, and fuck, the trauma in her eyes is hard to miss, but there’s also something harder. Strength.
The tough woman she’s had to become in the blink of an eye is mixed with the sweet submissive soul who walked into my life a few months back. They’re at war inside her, and neither one is winning.
“I’m ready for that punishment now.”
Fuck.
I was furious with her before. For pointing a gun at me. For defying me. For making me feel like I’d lost her for good.
But now, all I want to do is pull her into my arms and kiss the weight of the world off her skin.
My gaze scans over the blood smearing her face, like painted evidence of what she’s done.
I need to clean her up. If we were to leave now and get pulled over by the cops, she’d be totally fucked.
And then I’d have to kill them, too.
Giving my Angel a nod, I mutter a quiet “excuse us” to Smitty, then start leading her away. Shielding her from the whispers and stares. From the aftermath.
Finding JD on the fringes of the crowd, I lean in as we pass. “Give me a couple of hours in the bungalow.”
He nods, saying nothing, as the crowd parts, not for me, but for my wife.
Once we break free through the thick of it, I scoop her up in my arms, cradling her to my chest as I carry her off into the night.
She doesn’t protest, snuggling into my chest, her body limp like she can no longer bear to function. She doesn’t ask me where I’m taking her. She doesn’t need to. She trusts me, even after the showdown we had minutes ago.
And fuck… when she had that gun on me, I didn’t know if lunging for it would end with a bullet in my chest. I couldn’t read her. Couldn’t be sure. There was a very real chance she would’ve pulled that trigger.
So I didn’t move. Didn’t push, because this unhinged version of my Angel is uncharted territory, and I needed her to know I meant what I said. That I wouldn’t stop her. Even though everything in me was fucking screaming to.
