AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Please!” I begged him, my voice strangled. I couldn’t stand the thought of something happening to him. He probably deserved it, but I could see underneath the front he put up that there was something else there, something decent, a man who could be better…
“Fuck,” he muttered and moved toward me, clasping my face in his hands. I stared into his eyes for a moment as the sound of voices filled the apartment. It was a matter of seconds until they busted in here and he would have to run. I knew they wouldn’t think twice before they pulled the trigger...
He kissed me, mouth on mine for one more second, before he pulled back and threw open the window. The door to the bedroom exploded inward a moment later, and I leapt backwards, terrified. How could I be scared of the people who had been my family for so long? I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t help it.
“Chelsea!” My father’s strangled voice cut through the noise around me. Despite it all, I felt a wash of relief hit me when I heard him speak my name, my dad, the one man I knew I could rely on above anyone else.
But as three other men filled the room, I knew it was far from over yet. I spun around just in time to see Zane swinging his leg out of the window, scrambling onto the fire escape below. Metal clanged against the building as he tried to make a break for it.
“He’s going down the fire escape!” Dad yelled. “Get him!”
“No, Dad, please—” I tried to reason with him, but I could tell he wouldn’t take in a word I had to say. He grabbed me and pushed me out of the room, and I tried to see past him, to make out what was happening to Zane, but I couldn’t make it out.
“Cut him off at the bottom of the building!” Dad continued. “We can still catch him!”
Please, please, please, just go as far as you can from here, I silently pleaded with Zane. I knew he was hot-headed and he would put up a fight if he got the chance, but he couldn’t take on all of these Dogs. He would wind up hurt, or worse...
“Are you okay, Chelsea?” Dad asked me as he turned his attention to me properly, looking me up and down.
“I’m fine,” I replied, my voice trembling. “But Dad, I—”
“You need to get out of here,” he told me as he steered me toward the door. “Come on, honey...”
I couldn’t argue with him. I could hardly even find the words to speak at all. I just wanted to tell him to stop, but I would have had to explain everything that happened between us before he would, and we didn’t have time for that. And besides, if my father found out everything Zane and I had done together, he would be even more determined to wipe him off the face of the map.
Outside, a handful of Dogs were racing around the back of the building to try and cut Zane off before he could get to the bottom of the fire escape. I followed them, breaking away from my dad, not bothering to explain what I was doing.
I caught my breath as I saw him round the final set of stairs toward the street below. His eyes were dark with what looked like fear, and he must have understood what he was facing now. If I remembered right, the car was parked around the back of the building. He just needed to get to it, and he would be out of here.
“Shoot him!” Dad roared. One of the Dogs pulled a gun. I screamed, diving toward him and knocking him off-balance before he could take the shot.
But I was too late. He wasn’t the only one armed. The world seemed to slow for a moment as I heard the gunshot ring out. I spun around just in time to see another one of the Dogs aiming his pistol and firing off a shot. I followed the trajectory of the bullet as Zane dropped to the ground below, my heart in my throat.
A spray of blood exploded from the back of Zane’s thigh as the bullet grazed him, but he didn’t stop moving, thank God. I watched as he vanished around the corner. The Dog went to cock his gun and pursue him, but my father lifted his hand to stop him before he could.
“Leave it,” he barked. “We’ll get him later.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It might not be much, but it was something. I didn’t know how far he was going to get, but at least he had made it out of here. Not unscathed, but alive.
And I prayed it was going to stay that way.
Chapter Fourteen – Zane
I groaned with pain as I extended my leg over the bathtub, the blood still dripping from the bullet wound in the back of my thigh. It could have been a lot worse than this, and I knew it, but it was far from pleasant.
My jeans were frayed around the entrance point to the bullet. I was lucky it hadn’t hit an artery—a few inches either side, and I could have been dealing with something a lot more serious. I pulled off my jeans and ran the water in the bath until it was at least slightly warm, then sank my bad leg into the water to clean it while I figured out what in the name of holy fuck I was supposed to do next.
Everything that happened since I’d woken up had been a mess. A complete and utter mess. From the moment she had woken me, with the shaft of light through the window, I had known something was wrong—but her getting me out, insisting that I ran? That wasn’t what I’d expected. Even with everything that had happened between us, I figured she would turn me over to the Dogs the first chance she got. They were her people, after all.
I had sped across the city, keeping a close eye on my rearview mirror, expecting to see Dogs swarming me the first chance they got. I didn’t know how much of a chance I stood of getting out of there alive, but none of them seemed to give chase, much to my relief. I doubted I had shaken them off completely—they seemed like the types who would come and track me down and make me pay one way or another, but for now, at least, I could breathe a sigh of relief.
I had checked into this dingy hotel with the last of my money. I never had much in the way of savings, and I had been relying on what I was pulling with the Dogs to get me what I needed to survive. I had half-expected the hotel to turn me away on the spot when they’d seen the state I was in, but the receptionist had just looked me up and down, then slid a key across the counter toward me with a bored expression on her face. I figured they saw a whole lot worse than me, all things considered.
I had stopped by a pharmacy on the way here to get some stuff to tend to my wound, and as I cleaned off the tweezers I had purchased under the slightly scuffed tap, I couldn’t help but think back to the time she had tended my wound for me. When we had first arrived at my brother’s place and she had been so careful cleaning off the blood from the glancing blow I’d received from the knife, she was so tender with me. She touched me like she really cared. I couldn’t recall the last time someone had made me feel that way.
I still didn’t know why she had done what she had done. She had gotten me out of there when she had no reason to even try to help me. Even in the midst of everything we had shared, I had thought it was just a play for her, just a game, something she was doing to pass the time until she could return to her real life.
But what she had done today, that proved to me that it had been real. And real... real wasn’t something I had been prepared for. I didn’t know how to feel about it.
