Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 151097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 755(@200wpm)___ 604(@250wpm)___ 504(@300wpm)
Still…
The nurse cried out when I adjusted my grip and began smashing the butt of my Ruger into his face without a word. “Arrgh! Shit! Arrrgh!” Roshaun shrieked in pain while curling into a ball and trying to duck out of the way. “Fuck are you doing?” he shouted.
I didn’t stop until I heard a satisfying, sickening crack, followed by blood gushing from his shattered nose. Some of it splattered onto the machines reading his vitals and the whiteboard on the wall next to his bed.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” The nurse muttered hysterically before opening her mouth wide to scream. “Help! Somebody help!”
Swinging the gun the nurse’s way, I met her terrified gaze and felt no mercy in my heart—not even for an innocent woman just trying to do her job. The only good thing about me was gone, and without Coby, I had nothing to fucking lose. “Last warning to shut the fuck up. I’m not here for you. I’m here for him. He’s not worth getting shot over, sis. Believe me.”
That seemed to calm her down. “Okay,” she said with a quick and jerky nod, making the large bun of her box braids loosen. She threw her hands up in surrender. “Okay.”
Returning my attention to Roshaun, who was groaning in pain and clutching his side, I felt nothing but hate for Coby’s brother—a man I once trusted and looked at like a brother. “Don’t play games with me, Roshaun. Tell me who they took her, where, and why.”
“Who?”
Snatching the pillow from behind his head, I placed it over his thigh, pressed the Ruger into the pillow, and pulled the trigger. The muffled shot was punctuated by Roshaun’s scream of pain and the sound of a body hitting the floor across the room.
The fucking nurse had fainted.
“Arrrgh! My leg! My leg! Aww, fuck! You shot me, you crazy bitch!” The pussy motherfucker was crying now as he reached for his leg, only to be stopped by the pain of his broken ribs.
“You’re in a hospital,” I reminded him. “The sooner you tell me where she is, the sooner the doctors can save you.”
“Save my—what are you talking about? You only shot my leg.”
I retrained the gun, aiming for his liver this time. “So far.”
Roshaun collapsed against the bed with a groan and spent a few precious seconds trying to catch his breath. “It’s no use…Hunter. You’ll never…g-get…to her. She’s gone.”
“Where?” I urged through gritted teeth.
“He has her now. Kilpatrick.” The name made my stomach sink because I knew what it meant. Coby hadn’t been kidnapped by traffickers or garden-variety creeps. She’d been taken by the Fola. People with the power to make her disappear forever and get away with it. Roshaun chuckled, baring his blood-stained teeth as he stared at me knowingly. “I doubt Ocean will want to share.”
“What does he want with her?”
Roshaun coughed before shaking his head weakly. “Don’t know. Didn’t matter.”
“It didn’t matter, or you didn’t care?”
“Just kill me,” he muttered as he looked away, a stubborn look that reminded me of Coby entering his eyes. I hated how much they looked alike. Coby was fucking beautiful. Looking at Roshaun’s ugly mug just made me want to vomit. “I’m dead anyway.”
“No.” I shoved my gun inside my thigh holster to keep from using it again.
It’s not that I didn’t want to kill him. I really did. But I knew Coby would never forgive me. She loved her brother, and that love kept her from seeing just how much he resented her.
Having what I needed, I grabbed the remote-looking device, pressed the button to call another nurse in, then turned to leave without another word.
“Hey…”
Roshaun’s voice stopped me in my tracks just as I reached the door. Reluctantly, I turned to face him and found him glaring daggers while his breathing grew increasingly unsteady. “Judge me all you want, but Ocean gave me no choice, and Coby owed me. You should know better than anyone that I always collect my debts.”
Chuckling without any humor in the sound, I leaned my weight on one leg and crossed my arms. “You know what, Roshaun? I do know. I know you still ain’t shit and you don’t deserve Coby. She didn’t kill your parents. A drunk driver did. And it’s not her fault she was born second, and that responsibility of guardian fell on you, but even if it had…” My heart felt a thousand times lighter thinking about how much larger Coby’s was. “She would have done the same for you, and she wouldn’t have blamed you for any of it. Not for a second.”
He shrugged while looking away. “Guess we’ll never know.”
Hearing multiple footsteps outside the door, I quickly pulled it open and left the room. Down the opposite end of the hall, where the elevators were, two security guards jogged this way with their hands clutching their holsters. The nurse posted at the reception desk was nowhere to be found. She must have heard the screams and alerted them.