Page 117 of Beauty and the Daddy
The room gets smaller.
"Untie her," I say, and my voice goes like winter. "And I'll sit. You get me instead." I can live with that. I can't live with that gun going off an inch from her womb.
"Ah," he says softly. "There he is."
He likes this. He likes me drowning for him.
He adjusts his stance, and I take that half-inch shift like a blessing.
It opens a new line, a new angle, a new possibility.
I let my shoulders sag. I sell defeat. I let him smell it.
"Declan," I say. "Don't do this in front of my daughter."
Sofia is sobbing now, hiccuping. Belle's knuckles are white where the rope cuts.
I step in, just another inch and I keep talking so he doesn't notice I'm moving to stand between him and Belle.
"You want a throne?" I ask. "Take mine. Take me. That's what this is about. You never came for me because you're not brave enough to miss. So you came for what I love because you're smart enough to wound."
He smiles with all his teeth. "Finally. Honesty."
I let my gun hand slant, casual, like I'm tired. I'm not. I'm coiled.
He flicks the muzzle toward my heart to enjoy the view of me on my knees when he makes me take the chair.
That flick is all I need.
I go.
I launch myself at Belle's chair, shoulder driving into the wood hard enough to send it spinning.
The rope burns her wrists as she swings clear of Declan's line of fire, and I throw my body between the gun and her belly.
Declan staggers, but recovers faster than I want.
My hand clamps around his wrist, crushing bone as I drive my knee into his thigh.
He curses, but doesn't drop the weapon.
We're too close now. Too tangled.
Then, a shot rings out.
28
BELLE
Consciousness returns in fragments—the taste of copper in my mouth, the antiseptic burn in my nostrils, the steady beep of machines I can't see.
The ceiling above me tilts like I'm on a ship in rough seas.
Pain radiates from my shoulder in waves, each pulse a reminder that I'm alive when I probably shouldn't be.
What the hell happened? Where am I? And why does everything hurt?
My body's heavy. My arms feel like they've been stitched to the mattress.
