Page 234 of I Never Stopped Loving You

*Ding*

My phone goes off as I wash the last plate and place it in the drying rack. I told my little rabbit to go have a little fun with our target while I cleaned up from dinner. He should still be a bit weak from the sedative I gave him earlier. It wasn’t enough to knock him out, but enough to make him groggy.

I dry my hands off and pick my phone up off the counter. It’s a notification from Willow’s wristband. It’s got a built-in heart monitor and tracker on it so that if anything goes wrong I’ll be able to find her. There’s also another tracker in her shoes…Just in case.

The notification shows Willows' heart rate spiked high just a minute ago. Strange. It’s not her normal heart rate for jogging. She must have caught up to Vallero and is excited.

I can’t help the swell of pride in my chest as I think about the last few months. My woman is darker than I originally thought. It’s from all those years of bottling up her pain that no amount of therapy could ever relieve her of. I unleashed her darkness the first night we were here and got her to fully accept it.

She started training more and became interested in the cases that my father managed to get dropped when the fuckers should have gone to jail. She compiled her own list, and tonight we get to take down one that has plagued me since she first came back into my life.

Antonio Vallero. The sick sonofabitch who murdered his wife in cold blood. Stabbed her repeatedly shredding her apart. I tried to keep Willow away from the case as much as possible. She didn’t interact with him, never even saw the man face-to-face. That’s why it was her idea to use herself as bait, which I fucking hated from the start. But it all worked out in the end and now here we are.

*Ding*

Another spike, this one higher. And her oxygen level seems to be fluctuating weirdly. I quickly open the tracker app to find out where she is in the woods. A gnawing feeling is in the pit of my stomach. Something feels off.

She’s not far, but she’s up near one of the ridges I try to keep her away from. The edge is hidden by bramble bushes and dense trees. There isn’t even a second of clearance before it suddenly drops twenty feet. I get worried when she’s this close because one wrong move and I could lose her.

I quickly throw on my boots just as another ping comes through for her heart rate. That gnawing feeling is now a sharp stab deep in my gut. I rush out the back door, not even bothering to close it. There's a thick iron fence around this entire property and an electronic security gate up front. No one gets in or out without us knowing.

“Snuggs?” I shout as I start to rush into the woods.

He'd better be with her. He’s always with her.

I keep my eyes on her tracker noticing it hasn’t moved more than a foot or so. It’s causing my nerves to short-circuit. Her heart rate is erratic, yet she’s standing still. My mind begins to fly through every terrible possibility of what could be happening.

I know my little rabbit is strong. I know she’s fierce and bloodthirsty, but this is Antonio Vallero. He’s an abusive piece of shit with no regard for women. What if the sedative wasn’t enough? What if he managed to get the upper hand? What if he’s hurting her? What if he’s…

“Stop it, Noah. She’s fine,” I quietly curse myself.

I glance down at the tracker again and angle my path slightly more east. I’m almost there.

A shrill, primal scream echoes off the forest surrounding me followed by the sickening sound of bone being crushed.

“No,” I scream as I rush forward.

“You fuckingsonofabitch,” she screams in the darkness.

The loud slur of curse words flowing together has my heart rate calming. She’s not dead. As I get closer, all I can focus on is the sound of something heavy striking against something soft. Sickening sounds fill the darkness. The moonlight is barely shining through the canopy in this area of the trees casting creepy shadows across my path.

I can finally see her, and my steps slow. She’s facing away from me with a blood-stained rock in her hands. Snuggs is sitting next to her not even noticing me as I take a few steps closer. He’s watching her with that big dumb puppy dog look on his face, which is quite comical since our white floof-ball is currently coated in crimson. That’s going to be a long bath.

She’s currently straddling Vallero from what I can see and is bringing the rock down onto him in rapid succession. Each hit is followed by another curse from her beautiful lips.

I watch in awe as she destroys this monster once and for all. After witnessing this, I realize she’s honestly a bit more terrifying than I originally thought, and her darkness rivals my own. I think she might even be a bit more bloodthirsty than I am.

I wait silently until I can see her slowing. Her shoulders finally give in to the weight of slamming that rock over and over into his skull. The once crackling sounds of rock against bone are now nothing more than a squish. Blood pools around them, and more is sprayed around the forest floor.

A twig snaps as I take another step forward causing Snuggs to whip his head in my direction. Once he sees I’m not the threat, he stands, brushing his body against her arm before walking over to me.

I take a step closer and can finally see the carnal damage she did. She drops the rock onto Vallero’s head…Well, what was his head. Now all that lies on the ground above his shoulders is a pile of blood, brain, and skull fragments. She destroyed him.

“Easy there, Little Rabbit,” I whisper as I come up and kneel beside her.

She slowly turns her head to look at me, and that’s when I see all the damage on her face. I could see blood along her arms, but I thought it was just splatter from the impact. Now that I’m up close I can see that it’s because both of her arms are torn up.

Her nose is broken and still dripping blood. Her right eye is swollen and blood is dripping from a large gash just below it. Her lip is split and another gash is along her chin. Blood is coating her shirt and face. Saying she looks rough is an understatement.