Page 5 of Worship

Knock, knock, Heidi, baby. Let me in.

Doing this in broad daylight is new. Careless. Then again, haven’t I always conjured something insane in him?

I wait for a nurse to barge in, but the door remains shut, the person on the other side waiting for an invitation. Shooting a quick glance at the clock, I realize the nurses are doing their rounds and don’t usually arrive at this section until half an hour—

Bang, bang, bang.

My frown deepens. This isn’t Blake’s style. He at least lets the threat linger for more than a few days before unleashing fury. But if it isn’t him, who is it?

Slipping off my bed, I take a step, seeing the shadow of someone looming beneath the door. My heart pounds against my chest as I reach out and grab the handle, knowing Blake would be too impatient to wait like this.

I pull the door open slowly, and when I see who it is, my body freezes.Fuck.

A man stands in the place Blake should be. A man I believed to be dead and someone I thought I’d never see again. I shake my head, bewildered, in disbelief.

“You-You’re dead.”

As a smile tilts his lips, I realize how…differenthe looks. He isn’t the same as I remember, not at all, and for a moment, I think maybe I’ve made a mistake. But, then, there’s no way I would ever forget a face like his—the face of the man I had killed.

Swallowing is hard. My underarms and palms dampen with moisture as he stares down at me. When I was fifteen years old, the very night Blake stole everything from me, a man named Milton walked through the door and put a bullet into a man’s head who tried to attack me. To this day, I don’t know why, but he’d made a brutal impression, and Blake made him my reluctant bodyguard.

But this Milton isn’t the same as I remember.

Dark brown hair is now short at the sides and longer on top—handsomely styled instead of messy. Not like the times it was damp from the rain after he rode his motorcycle through the murky streets of Fair Haven doing Blake’s dirtiest deeds. Even the stubble on his chin and upper lip have been tamed. Shaped. He’s wearing a suit, one tailored to his tall, lean frame. Not the thick leather jacket that brandished Horn Hill MC’s slogan,Devil Horns.

No, he never looked likethisbefore. Polished and clean. Even the way he carries himself is miles apart from the man he was when he was a club member. And I know I’m in trouble because if this is the same person, he’s probably seeking revenge.

“Heidi Adams?” I jerk back, unnerved. He’sBritish? There was always a twang of something I could never make out, but it wasn’t an accent, and certainly not someone from England.

My heart thumps in my chest fast, my stomach queasy with shock. “W-What? Youknowthat’s my name?”

He ignores me. “I’m Milton Xavier Hood. Nice to meet you.”

Meet me?

He’s holding something in his hand. A brown folder Dr. Rogue had.Myfolder. Coldness slithers down my spine, not understanding what the fuck is going on. Is this a trick? A game?

“Now that we have that out of the way, may I?” Barging past me, he walks inside my room. My heart swells with discomfort when he shuts the door behind him. I move back. It’s too small in here to put space between us. Yet, he only observes the place, eventually making his way over to my bed, where he picks up the note I left on the sheet. He reads the words and says nothing, dropping it back down.

Watching him move around the room is both unsettling and fascinating. That this is the same Milton I knew less than a year ago. Pulling out the chair, he takes a seat, as if this were some normal situation. Folding one leg over the other, he rests the folder on his lap, eyeing me with a meticulously trained stare.

I don’t know what to say or do. Run or stay. Both seem like they would have the same outcome. Both sound foolish.

The name he called himself comes to mind then. It was alwaysjustMilton. Milton Xavier Hood sounds like an entirely different person altogether. Someone important.Feared.

And I do fear him. I always have.

Milton moved up the club’s ranks quicker than any Prospect ever had, as he often did everything Blake wanted efficiently.Cleanly.He became one of the best, better than Blake’s own son, Nicolas. I should’ve known Blake would keep him alive. After all, why kill someone that useful?

“Your file was quite the read. Very…interesting.” Flicking open the folder, his thumb brushes over the mugshot of me secured to the page with a paperclip.

Am I hallucinating that he’s here? Has being trapped within the walls of Stonehill for only a few months affected me so soon? “What are you doing?”

His eyes watch as I move further back until my back bumps into the wall, furthest away from him. “Excuse me?”

“Why are you pretending you don’t know me?” I run my hand over my face. “I-I mean, you’re really here?”

He slaps the folder closed and turns to the journal on the desk. Reaching over, he scans through the pages, the corners of his mouth lifting when he sees it’s empty as if he knew they would be. “Dr. Rogue, unfortunately, had to take emergency leave, and I’ve taken over during her absence.”