They released me and I staggered to my knees. Rubi’s hands were dead weights on my shoulders, but I lacked the strength to shake him off.
I asked you to kill me.
I’d never forgive him for making me live through this.
I took a shattered breath. Sirens wailed in the distance and men I didn’t know darted around, cleaning the mess we’d made from a night of murder and mayhem.
Viktor.
Why? In the back of my mind that still bore responsibility for my brothers, it mattered, but reality was a kick in the dick.
Reality was fresh pain and I fell forward, sinking my fingers into the hot earth.
Saint. He was gone.
And I didn’t know how the fuck I was going to live for Alexei without him.
“Cam!Cam!”
I jerked my head up, Nash’s shout piercing the despair swallowing me whole.
He limped towards me, arms waving at the warehouse. “Look!”
I followed his wild gesticulating. The warehouse was a monstrous ball of flame and smoke, collapsing more with every second that passed, but as walls disappeared and more sparks burst free, an interior door became unobstructed.
Anopendoor.
I scrambled to my feet as Saint emerged from hell, dragging a limp Rocco St John behind him.
Life poured into my lungs. I ran. Viktor released Alexei and he raced ahead, reaching the building first.
He leapt over burning metal and hauled Saint to safety, leaving Rocco to Decoy.
Decoy scooped up Rocco and carried him away. I didn’t watch. I didn’t care.
Saint.
He was bleeding from his temple, face smeared with soot. His clothes were torn, his eyes pointing in different directions. Alexei held him up, but he stumbled all the same, pitching forward.
I didn’t reach him in time and he fell, unconscious before his head hit the ground.
28
Cam
The hard plastic chair was moulded to my arse. My back ached, my legs were cramped, and my shoulder felt like I’d been shot all over again, but I ignored it. I ignored it all, gaze pinned on the door to the waiting room that Skylar, a nurse and blood-tied friend to the club, had herded us into when we’d arrived en masse.
That had been hours ago. I hadn’t seen him since, and no one else had told us shit.
Worry coursed through me, hotter than any fire, even the one Saint had willingly walked intotwiceto save the lives of people he wasn’t supposed to care about. Ten girls he’d never met. A brother from a club that had moved heaven and earth to obliterate ours.
I didn’t understand him and I never would, but the one person who could help me try wasn’t fucking here.
Alexei had disappeared before the feds and firefighters had swarmed the warehouse, taking every Russian, every dead body, and every Albanian girl with him. They’d melted away like ghosts, but the pain in him as he’d backed away from Saint haunted me every moment I wasn’t picturing Saint dead on a hospital trolley.
He’s not dead. They’d have told you by now if he was.
I held onto that and pushed the rest away. Boxed it up and shipped it to the land offuck the fuck off. Saint was alive. I believed it. I had to, or I’d die in this fucking seat.