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“I don’t know.”
“I covered her,” Paddy says.
Kai notices blood seeping through his shirt. “Paddy, your shoulder.”
“It’s a flesh wound,” the old biker hisses. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Nadia!” Orion shouts as he comes through the doorway, pale faced as soon as he sees me on the floor, unable to pull myself back onto my own two feet.
“She wasn’t hit,” Paddy says.
Drake joins us, equally concerned. “Are you okay?” he asks me.
I can’t even nod. I can’t speak. I can’t do anything other than look at them, look through them. The clubhouse’s parking lot is littered with corpses. Bullet casings cover the floor. So much death and so much violence. For what? For Colton Harrow to feel like a big man? What was the whole fucking point? A show of force, maybe. One last brutal attempt to intimidate.
Kai checks me from head to toe, fingers gingerly touching me to make sure I’m okay. Heat expands from my chest and spreads through my limbs. My eyes feel droopy all of a sudden.
“Nadia,” he says as he tries to help me to my feet.
“I’m okay,” I mumble, but my lips feel numb. My hands, too.
The burger and fries I had eaten moments ago threaten to come back up with a bitter vengeance, but I take a deep breath and try to regain my focus. Why the hell can’t I move? What’s wrong with me?
“I’m not okay,” I say as I feel the earth slipping out from under me.
“Catch her,” Paddy gasps.
I hit the floor hard. Limp as a noodle, I have no choice but to let this cold darkness take me over. My breath is uneven. My heart beats in my ears with a loud echo. My skin feels ice cold, yet my insides burn as I try to ascertain what’s happening.
But the darkness wins.
19
Nadia
It took a while for me to recover and remember what happened. By the time I’m once again fully aware of my surroundings, I’m already admitted into the emergency room, doctors and nurses buzzing around me like supersonic bees until I’m deemed safe and stable for one of their private rooms.
Orion and the guys had to stay back and deal with the police. Detectives are already waiting outside to take our statements.
“You’d better tell them the truth when they come to ask you questions,” my father says. As soon as the police secured the scene, Paddy called him and had him come straight to the hospital. Understandably, he’s furious but doing his best to keep it together, for my sake, but also his. The great Michael Kessler can’t be seen losing his marbles while his precious angel recovers from a bloody shootout. The stain on his reputation is damn near indelible at this point. “You hear me, Nadia?”
“For God’s sake, I have no reason to lie. All I did was witness a violent event. I don’t know anything about who or what,” I reply dryly, even though that’s not exactly the truth.
Half a gallon of water and vitamins via IV later, my head is clear and I’m able to judge my physical and emotional condition better. Granted, I’m a mess, but he doesn’t need to know about that. I’m more worried about the baby, and I have no idea how to get him out of the room so I can speak to my doctor in private. This sure as hell isn’t the place or the time to break such news.
“Honey, remember who I am, who I was, and who I was married to,” Dad says, half-smiling. For a moment, the glint in his blue eyes reminds me of that past version of him, the wrangler I saw in those clubhouse photos. “Your mother was an expert at lying to the cops for me. She covered my ass more times than I can count.”
“I’m not covering anyone’s ass,” I insist, thankful to be in bed for once.
The adrenalin has worn off, and now my body is mush. It will take a while for the shock to subside. Right now, I feel like I’m still ready to jump into my fight-or-flight mode in the blink of an eye. I’m still on edge. My ears twitch at every sound. My head snaps every which way at the slightest hint of motion anywhere around me.
“Nadia, what happened at the clubhouse?” Dad asks. The anger is slowly subsiding from his features, and fatherly concern is setting in. “What were you doing there in the first place?”
“I was just getting some papers for my employer at the café,” I lie, straight-faced.
I’ve always hated lying to my father, yet I seem to have been doing it more and more lately. I know he knows—deep down, he knows. He just can’t bring himself to say it out loud because we’ve already argued so much about so many things. He is exhausted, and so am I.
“At precisely the same time that the Black Devils decided it was time to shoot up the place,” Dad mutters.
