Page 75 of On The Run

Aiden blinked heavily, like he was coming out of a trance. His eyes flicked to me but then immediately back to the door. I kissed his forehead and moved his head with the lightest touch I was able to manage. I needed him to look at me.

“Aiden, please, look at me. Look me in the eyes when I tell you this.”

He eventually did, though I could tell he was fighting a battle inside his head in order to do so. “That’s it,tokki.”

He didn’t respond except for a tick in his jaw. It was almost like it was physically hurting him not to watch that door, but he was doing it for me. It might seem like a small thing, but it meant the world.

“Aiden, this is your choice, and I support whatever you want to do. If you still want to go through with this, then I will stand by your side while you do so. If you change your mind and want to go back to your room, that’s fine too. There’s no shame in that. I will follow you back up and hold you in my arms until you fall back to sleep.”

“I’m going in there,” Aiden gritted out.

“Ok. That’s fine. But remember, this is for you. For you to get closure or whatever you need. He can’t hurt you anymore. Don’t let him.”

Tears started to stream down his face, and I was honestly ten seconds away from taking his chair and sprinting out of this fucking place, regardless of what he wanted. Watching him suffer while I was helpless to stop it was nearly unbearable.

“I don’t know how to stop letting him hurt me. It’s all I know.”

It was like someone ripped out my heart and stabbed it with the heel of a stiletto. My sweet, sweet, Aiden. How would I make his pain go away?

While I sat there in silence, dumbly trying to work out what to say to make this better, Aiden cleared his throat. He sat up straighter in his chair and looked towards Kai. His moment was over. “I’m ready.”

Kai tilted his head. “Let’s go, then.”

Chapter32

Aiden

I wasn’tsure what I expected to happen once I saw Giovani’s body. Did I think I’d get closure, a sense of peace maybe? None of that was true though. All I felt was numbness. I thought I’d be relieved knowing it was finally over, but I didn’t even feel that. Maybe it would come eventually, but for now, I was just fucking hollow.

Max was holding my hand and kept shooting me glances when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew he was expecting me to have a breakdown or something, but I’d have to feel anything in order for that to happen. My wells were completely dry.

Looking at the pile of flesh and bones that was once my biological father, it was hard to believe that this was the man who spent years terrorizing Pops and me. There was nothing special about him, nothing that made him bigger or more terrifying than any other man. How could someone so fucking ordinary cause so much fear and agony? What a fucking waste.

The sheet was pulled up to the neck of Giovani’s body, though I didn’t know why. The bullet hole through his head was still very much visible. I knew so little about guns, but I expected it to be more gruesome. His head hadn’t exploded or anything though. There was no questioning this was Giovani. There was just a half an inch hole in between his eyes as the only evidence at what ended his pathetic life.

Max squeezed my hand. He didn’t say anything, but I imagined it was his way of moving me along. I didn’t blame him. The whole room was eerie. And while I felt nothing while looking at my father, there was an energy throughout, and maybe I was losing it, but I felt like I could sense those who had passed through here. By the way Max kept shifting every few seconds, I thought he might be feeling it too. Or maybe it was just because he was staring at a dead body for the last five minutes. I doubted he’d ever done that before.

Either way, I was with Max. It was time to leave. I expected a come to Jesus moment when I looked at the dead body of Giovani Santino, but life wasn’t like the movies. I wasn’t suddenly free of all the baggage I carried. And yeah, maybe I was finally physically safe, and maybe Pops and I could start to have a real life, but that didn’t feel any more believable now that I was staring at the fucker’s rotting corpse. It would take a whole lot more than that to stop looking over my shoulder every time I thought I felt someone behind me. This certainly wasn’t going to stop the nightmares either. Even just closing my eyes, I was right back there in that damn bunker. This was a waste of time.

I looked at Giovani Santino for one last time. “I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch.”

I looked up at Kai. “You can get rid of him now.” Much to his credit, Kai didn’t say anything, just picked up his phone and began texting, probably someone who was able to dispose of the body.

“Can we get out of here?” I asked Max. I couldn’t look at him. He was right. This didn’t help anything.

Max stepped in between my legs and tipped my chin up. He didn’t speak and neither did I, but we didn’t need to. I saw everything I needed to see in his eyes, and I hoped he did too. The moment was intense, and I wasn’t sure what was going to break it, but it wasn’t going to be me. And then Max released my chin. “Let’s get you to bed,tokki.”

Whatever just passed between us broke, and Max wheeled my chair out of the morgue and away from Giovani Santino forever.

Chapter33

Aiden

Three Weeks Later

“Hey, love, how was therapy?”Max asked as he helped me into his car. Damn, did I adore when he called me that. I wasn’t sure what I preferred, that ortokki. Both felt special and made me feel loved and cared for in a way I didn’t think was possible. Max helped me maneuver my leg comfortably into the front seat and took my crutches from me, sticking them in the back. One of the gashes on my leg ended up getting infected after I got back to Colorado, and now my dumb ass was on crutches. It was my own fault, of course, because I refused to take it easy and would push myself when Max or Pops wasn’t watching me. I was just sick of being cared for. It wasn’t a role I was comfortable with.

“Rough, but I think it’s helping.”

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